Max,
here's my 10c worth to take or leave as you please.
I certainly agree with your main point, there's more of what I'd call a 'fresh off the boat' premium which increases according to your haste, general gullability regardless of race, skin palor and demeanour for sure. If you swagger around acting like a baller, you are going to naturally attract a baller price. If you look on swanky websites, blindy trust total strangers - your new best friend(s) - you are going to get hosed and end up paying easily twice the fair market price and possibly more.
Particularly with a properly motivated native speaker (your wife) acting in your joint best interest, by being patient, taking time to understand the market and by clocking up a lot of scooter miles and doing lots of talking before you do anything, you should be able to avoid the pit falls that await fresh-off-the-boat guy.
Note: just by buying a "villa" rather than a "house" may add 50%+ on
Some tricks you should think about using might be as follows:
1. Get your wife to speak to the BPR banks and obtain their repo lists for defaulted properties. Even if you dont want to buy this way it gives a better take on the fair market price. Undrstand they are playing the game too but they are often more motivated sellers and you can get tothe fair price far quicker..
2. As per mrrfixit (
https://www.mrfixitbali.com/buying-property-and-land/land-price-cost-of-building-90.html) do a back of the envelope calculation of the replacement cost ie land cost + cost of building and see how it compares to the market price you are being offered for a given property. What's the mark-up?
3. Google Earth Pro is your friend. Check out any parcel of land you are interested in, lengths, areas, whats nearby - rubbish tip, 30m phone mast etc. Just be aware there's some distortion in the image so its more guideline but will quickly let you know if 5are is only really 3..
Apologies if I am teaching you how to suck eggs here.
Your choice as to freehold vs leasehold obviously depends on many things mainly your needs, goals, desire for mobility and circumstances which I know nothing about so I'll only give my thoughts on - if leasehold offers value relative to a freehold.
In my opinion and experience, the answer is generally NO , if you can and its appropriate to your needs and goals then I think a freehold generally offers much better value ...... and security. Its not uheard of for lessors to try to infringe your rights, snatch back property early, to default on paying land taxes or to just be disinterested in cases where you might need the legal owner to intervene.
Onviously the terminal value of a lease is zero wheras a freehold is a perpatuity so its terminal value is current market price when you want to sell it. You are right that the frictional costs are marginally lower for a lease assuming just a notary fee of perhaps 2.5% vs more like 8-10% for all in purchase costs. I'd argue this will probably be negligible when comparing the lease and freehold values just 5 - 10 years in.
In my experience, I don't think your argument holds, that fair rental values are low vs fair property prices and I havent found this to be the case. Rental values in my experience are pegged to some multiple of property prices and not normally dislocated. If you are comparing rental price to a doubled 'bule' pruchase price then for sure, they appear better value but if you can get the property at its fair market price then this illusion of value goes away.
I also think locally the lease multiple used is extreme ie a 30 year lease is often priced the same as a freehold (perpituity) which is in my opinion absurd except in cases of the most exclusive and prime properties.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by a " freehold lease" unless you just mean the lease of someone else's freehold which I would just call a lease.
I am also not an expert in this and maybe another more experienced member on here can give a definitive view rather than my untested belief. I was under the impression that the purpose of the required pre-nup was to throw you under the bus rather than to protect your interests so perhaps my udnerstanding is totally wrong.
I'd understood, to be compatible with the Indoensian constitution not allowing foreigners to control land and this conflicting and overriding civil law that states married couples have equal ownership of all assets, the pre-nup must assign all rights to the Indonesian party, so in this case your wife, at the expense of the foreigner (you). So in summary, you are hosed, not protected. Hope I am wrong about this.
Hope this makes sense and is helpful