Bali villa handover: what to check before you accept
Check the services, the water systems and the waterproofing before anything cosmetic, and record everything with dated photographs. There is no statutory defects scheme behind you here. What you can require later is what your building agreement says and what you recorded on the day.
Start with water, in every direction
- Roof and terrace waterproofing, ideally after rain rather than before it.
- Falls on every wet floor, and where the water actually goes.
- The pool: structure, circulation, the plant, and the ground around it.
- Drainage away from the building, and what happens to it in a downpour.
- Supply: pressure at the furthest outlet, the pump, the tank, and the filtration if there is any.
Then the services
- Every socket and switch individually, with a tester.
- The distribution board: labelling, breakers, and whether the earthing is actually connected.
- Hot water at every outlet and the time it takes to arrive.
- Air conditioning in each room, including where the condensate drains to.
- Anything that will be inaccessible once the ceilings are closed.
Against the drawings, not the render
Compare room dimensions and layout with the approved drawings rather than with the visualisation you were shown. Check the specified materials, and check what is present at all: fittings, appliances, gates, external lighting.
Where a substitution has been made, ask when it was decided and what it replaced. On a directly contracted build these decisions are frequently made on site and communicated afterwards, or not at all.
The paperwork
- 01The completion documentation your agreement requires, in the form it requires.
- 02As-built drawings, particularly for anything buried: services, drainage, pool plant.
- 03Warranties and manuals for every piece of equipment installed.
- 04A dated defect list, signed by both sides, before any acceptance document is signed.
- 05The retention or final payment, held until the list is worked through, if your agreement provides for one.
Questions on this
How long should I hold the final payment?
Whatever your agreement says, and if it says nothing, that is the finding. A retention against a signed defect list is normal practice and is far easier to agree before construction than at the end of it.
Is there a defects liability period by law?
Nothing you should rely on as a foreign buyer. Treat the period in your agreement as the whole of it, and diarise its end date.
The builder wants to hand over before the pool is finished.
Then the outstanding items belong on the acceptance document, in writing, with dates. Accepting on a promise is how the last ten per cent of a build takes a year.
Read one before you buy one
The specimen shows the whole structure: status, what each payment was meant to buy, the forecast with its range, the photographic record and the limits of what was checked.