Akta Jual Beli: the deed of sale. Until it is signed, nothing has moved.

A buyer signs something in an office, money moves, and they fly home believing they own a parcel in Bali. Sometimes they do. Sometimes what they signed was a preliminary contract and the deed that actually moves the land has not been drawn at all. The two documents look alike, are both signed in front of someone official, and land on the buy side with completely different consequences.

What is an Akta Jual Beli and who is authorised to draw it up?

An Akta Jual Beli is an authentic deed recording the sale and purchase of a registered land right. It is not a contract the parties write and take somewhere to be stamped. It is drawn by a specific official, in a prescribed form, and its whole function is to be registrable.

That official is the PPAT. Government Regulation No. 37 of 1998, Article 1(1), defines one as a public official authorised to make authentic deeds concerning certain legal acts over land rights. The 2016 amendment sets a PPAT’s working area at one province — a checkable fact about the person sitting opposite you.

Article 37(1) of the 1997 land-registration regulation makes a PPAT deed the only evidence on which a transfer can be registered, auction aside, and Article 38(1) requires it to be made in the presence of the parties before at least two qualified witnesses. The pre-purchase sequence this appointment sits at the end of covers the certificate work that has to finish before anyone reaches this room.

What is the difference between an AJB and a PPJB?

A PPJB is an agreement to sell. An AJB is the sale. Not two names for one document, and the gap between them is where a large share of foreign-buyer confusion lives.

For developer stock the PPJB is defined in regulation. Government Regulation No. 12 of 2021 describes it as an agreement between a developer and a person to buy a house or strata unit, made before a notaris — a notaris, not a PPAT. A developer may enter one only after certainty as to land ownership status, the matters agreed, the PBG, the availability of infrastructure and utilities, and construction of at least 20 per cent. The same regulation entitles the buyer to at least seven working days to study it, and requires the certificate to be shown at signing. Five conditions and two rights, all of them questions to ask about any off-plan purchase.

A private resale is different. There the PPJB is a preliminary contract before a notaris under general contract law, and its content is whatever the parties agreed. It can be sensible. It is not a transfer, and it does not change the register.

A PPJB binds two people to each other. An AJB moves the land. If the certificate still names the seller and no AJB has been signed, what you hold is a promise, whoever witnessed it.

One step narrows the gap and almost nobody asks for it. Government Regulation No. 18 of 2021, Article 90, lets an interested party apply to the Kantor Pertanahan to have a PPJB — or a lease — recorded against the registered land and noted on the register and the certificate. The nearest thing in the system to a caveat. Whether it fits your parcel is a question for your own notaris.

What has to be settled before an AJB can be signed?

More than most buyers expect, and the regulation says so in the negative: it lists when the PPAT is required to refuse to draw the deed at all.

Article 39(1) requires refusal where the original certificate is not produced or does not match the Land Office registers; where a party or a witness is not entitled or qualified to act; where a party acts on a surat kuasa mutlak, an irrevocable power of attorney, that is in substance a transfer; where a permit needed for the act has not been obtained; and where the object is in dispute as to its physical or juridical data. Article 39(2) requires the refusal in writing, with reasons.

Read that from the buy side and it stops being administrative. Every limb is a question you can ask before the appointment is booked. Is the original certificate in the room, not a photograph of a cover. Does it match the register. Is every named party entitled to act. Is there a live dispute over boundary or entries.

The certificate check is not optional either, and it produces an artefact you can ask to see. Ministerial Regulation No. 3 of 1997 requires at Article 97(1) that before making a transfer deed the PPAT first check at the Kantor Pertanahan that the certificate matches the office registers. Article 97(3) then has the Head of Office stamp the certificate to record that it has been checked and agrees with the register, initialled and dated.

Ask to see that stamp. Dated, initialled by the Land Office, it is the difference between “the certificate is clean” as a sentence and as a fact.

Which taxes fall due on the day the deed is signed, and on whom?

Two taxes, two sides, and both of them gate the signature.

The buyer carries BPHTB, the duty on acquisition of land and building rights. Law No. 1 of 2022 sets the rate at Article 47(1) at at most 5 per cent, with Article 47(2) leaving the operative rate to regional regulation, and Article 46(5) fixes the non-taxable threshold at at least Rp 80,000,000 for a first acquisition in the region, again set regionally. Five per cent is a ceiling, not a rate. The figure for your parcel is a regency-level fact to confirm rather than assume.

The seller carries a final income tax on the transfer: 2.5 per cent of the gross transfer value under Government Regulation No. 34 of 2016, Article 2(1)(a), outside the simple-housing category. The wider Indonesian tax treatment of a villa covers what sits around it.

The sequencing is the part worth knowing. Article 3(1) of that regulation requires the seller to pay before the deed is signed, and Article 3(5) allows the official to sign only once shown a Surat Setoran Pajak examined by the Tax Office. The buyer-side gate sits elsewhere: Law No. 1 of 2022 never mentions the PPAT, and the rule lives in Government Regulation No. 35 of 2023, Article 60(1)(a), requiring proof of BPHTB payment before signing, with a Rp 10,000,000 administrative fine per violation.

The deed is not the first event of the day. The tax payments are, and it cannot be signed until both sets of receipts exist. A closing timetable that treats tax as a follow-up item has the sequence backwards.

One wrinkle catches people out. Article 49(a) of that 2022 law fixes the moment BPHTB falls due for a sale at the date the PPJB is signed, not the date of the AJB. Where a deal runs through a preliminary contract, the duty clock and the deed date are different dates. The rest of the one-time cost stack sits alongside it.

What happens between signing the AJB and the certificate changing name?

A gap. Short, defined by regulation, and routinely mistaken for the end of the process rather than the middle of it.

Article 40(1) requires the PPAT, within at most seven working days of the date the deed is signed, to deliver the deed and its documents to the Land Office for registration, and Article 40(2) requires written notice to the parties that it has been delivered.

Then read the elucidation to that article, because it draws a line most buyers do not know exists: the PPAT’s obligation extends only to delivering the deed with its files; the subsequent registration and receipt of the certificate are the business of the interested party. Lodgement does not put your name on the certificate, and nobody is chasing it for you afterwards. That is balik nama, the name change at the land office. Ask for the Article 40(2) notice by name: it is the receipt that the clock has started.

Why can a foreign buyer not be the named party on an AJB for freehold land?

Because of who may hold the right, not because of anything about the deed.

Hak Milik — Indonesian freehold, evidenced by an SHM — is restricted by the Basic Agrarian Law, Law No. 5 of 1960, to Indonesian citizens. What an SHM is, and why the door is closed to a foreign national covers that in full. Article 26(2) deals with crossing the line: every act intended to transfer Hak Milik directly or indirectly to a foreigner is null and void by law, the land falls to the State, and payments the owner has received are stated not to be recoverable. Read that last clause twice.

Now put it next to the refusal duty. Article 39(1)(c) requires refusal where a party is not entitled to act, and a foreign buyer named as transferee of Hak Milik is exactly that case. Article 39(1)(d) requires refusal where a party acts on a surat kuasa mutlak amounting in substance to a transfer. The nominee structure, and why the wrappers do not cure it covers the mechanics.

The practical consequence is sequencing. If the parcel is SHM and the buyer is foreign or a foreign-owned company, something has to change about the title before there is a deed anyone may lawfully draw. Penurunan hak, the downgrade that happens first is that step.

What does an AJB look like when the underlying title is HGB rather than SHM?

Structurally the same instrument, with a different object and a different eligibility test at the top of it.

Hak Guna Bangunan is a right to build: under the Basic Agrarian Law, Article 35, a right to construct and own buildings on land that is not one’s own, granted for at most 30 years and extendable by at most 20, with Government Regulation No. 18 of 2021 setting out the 30 plus 20 plus 30 structure. Article 36(1) limits holders to Indonesian citizens and bodies corporate incorporated under Indonesian law and domiciled in Indonesia. What an HGB certificate actually says, field by field reads the document itself.

That rule is why a foreign-funded HGB deal puts a company on the deed: an Indonesian company with foreign shareholding is still an Indonesian legal entity, so the named transferee is the company, not the person who funded it. The PT PMA that ends up holding the certificate carries its own annual overhead, permanently.

One variant changes who the counterparty is. Article 37(b) provides that where the land is Hak Milik, an HGB comes into existence by an authentic agreement between the landowner and the party acquiring it, rather than by government determination as on state land. Two certificates can both read Hak Guna Bangunan and stand on different foundations. A Hak Sewa closing is not this document at all, which is why the routes sit in one comparison. The Chanote and the Philippine TCT are the same reading exercise in other registries.

What checks should be complete before the appointment is booked?

All of them. The deed appointment is not where diligence happens; it is where diligence is cashed in.

1. Read the certificate header in Indonesian. Sertipikat Hak Milik, Hak Guna Bangunan, Hak Pakai and a Hak Sewa contract are four different objects. English listing copy uses one word for all of them.
2. Get every page, not the cover. Land book page, entries page, surat ukur. Encumbrances live on the entries page and nowhere else.
3. Run the certificate number through the ATR/BPN Sentuh Tanahku application, then have a PPAT lodge a formal pengecekan sertipikat and show you the dated stamp.
4. Confirm every named party is entitled to act — identity, marital status and consent where relevant, corporate authority where an entity transacts, and the standing of anyone signing under a power of attorney.
5. Verify zoning against the use you intend, on the government system rather than a brochure map. Zoning, and the document that states it for your parcel covers where to look.
6. Verify the building: a PBG for anything standing, with an SLF behind it where it is finished. What replaced the IMB covers what to ask for by name.
7. Model the full tax stack before agreeing a price, and settle in writing who pays what and when — the seller’s payment has to clear before your deed can be signed.

None of this makes you a lawyer and none of it replaces one. It is a reading order. Amateurs read the price first. I read the header, the entries page and the eligibility of the named parties first, and most of the deals that die, die there.

What should a buyer keep a copy of afterwards?

A file that outlives your own memory, because the person who will interrogate it is the buyer after you, several years from now.

• The signed AJB, complete, with its deed number and date.
• The Article 40(2) notice confirming the PPAT delivered the deed and files to the Land Office, with the delivery date.
• The tax receipts — the seller-side Surat Setoran Pajak examined by the Tax Office, and your own BPHTB payment evidence.
• The pengecekan result obtained before signing, and the plotting report if one was commissioned.
• The certificate as it stood before the transfer, every page, and the new one in your name once balik nama completes.
• The PBG, the SLF and the zoning document for the parcel, dated, with reference numbers.

The test is whether a stranger could open that folder in eight years and reconstruct the transaction without you in the room. Building it on the day is free. Rebuilding it later is not.