Double-leasing in Bali: when one home is rented twice
Nest team · Last updated:
Double-leasing in Bali is when one home is rented, or promised, to more than one tenant, or rented out by someone who doesn't control it for the time you are paying for. You protect yourself by checking, before any upfront payment, that the person taking your money is the owner, or holds a lease and the owner's written permission that cover your whole stay.
It usually comes to light too late: the real owner turns up asking for rent, another tenant arrives with a key, or a lease you never saw runs out. Below are real cases from Bali news and court reports, the forms the scheme takes, and the checks that catch it.
How double-leasing in Bali works
Every version has the same gap: the person you pay doesn't control the home for the whole time you pay for. That gap opens in three ways.
| Form | Who takes your money | How it comes to light |
|---|---|---|
| Re-renting | A tenant or middleman who rents short-term, then re-rents to you for longer | The middleman stops paying the owner, and the owner asks you to leave |
| Promised twice | Someone with a real lease who transfers or rents it to two people | The second person can't move in, or finds someone already living there |
| The "owner" who isn't | Someone who advertises a home they don't control, or an owner who has lost the right to it | The real owner, or a new one, appears |
Long upfront payments make all three worse. Someone who has collected six months or a year in advance has time to disappear before the owner notices.
The Denpasar kos case: rented for a month, re-rented for up to two years
The clearest recent case surfaced in South Denpasar in April 2025. A tenant posted a video on Instagram saying about 17 people had been tricked by the same woman, and detikBali and Bali Express reported it.
According to the account in that video, as Bali Express reported it, the woman rented kos rooms (rooms in a shared building, usually paid monthly) and rented houses for just one month, then offered them to newcomers to Bali as if they were hers or rented long-term. She asked for six months to two years of rent upfront. When her own rental period ran out and the owners received no further payment, the owners told the occupants to leave.
What the reports describe:
- Losses per tenant ranged from Rp 25 million to more than Rp 35 million, according to the tenant who spoke out (detikBali, 17 April 2025).
- One tenant had first found a kos she advertised on Facebook; later he paid Rp 8 million for a six-month package on a bigger room she offered him. Four days in, he said, the woman had vanished, and a person saying they owned the kos told him to leave. Another, a 23-year-old from Jakarta, had paid Rp 10 million for a year and was told to go on 15 April 2025 because she hadn't paid the owner the monthly rent (detikBali, 22 April 2025).
- By 19 April, one tenant's own count had reached 26 people and Rp 616 million, across kos rooms and rented houses (detikBali).
- The tenants reported it to the South Denpasar and then the Denpasar city police, which confirmed the report and later said the case was still being handled.
The detail that matters most: according to the tenant who first spoke out, before moving in the tenants had viewed the place, met the woman and signed rental agreements with her, and she was also listed as staff of a genuine property sales company (Bali Express). None of that showed whether she had the right to rent the rooms out for two years.
We found no report of a verdict; in the last reports we found, police were still handling the case.
A villa lease sold twice in Sanur
The second form needs a real lease. In Sanur, a Dutch national had leased a plot of land until 2045 and built a villa on it. According to Bali Express's report on the appeal, he had already passed the rest of that lease on to another person, from September 2020, when he signed a second transfer of the same lease, an oper kontrak (a takeover of the remaining lease), with an Indonesian businessman who paid Rp 455 million. The transfer was signed before a notary (CNN Indonesia). The villa wasn't handed over to him.
The Denpasar District Court sentenced him to two years and three months in prison for fraud in July 2023 (detikBali), and the Denpasar High Court upheld the sentence on appeal, as reported on 31 August 2023 (Bali Express). Signing before a notary didn't reveal that the lease had already been passed on.
The "owner" who isn't the owner
The third form doesn't need a lease at all. In April 2026, NusaBali reported that a 26-year-old newcomer from Medan paid a Rp 500,000 DP (uang muka, the first payment that books a place) for a kos in North Denpasar he had found on social media. The number went silent, and the real owner turned out to be someone other than the person named in the ad.
Even a real owner can be the wrong person to pay. In an indictment read at the Denpasar District Court in November 2023, prosecutors said a couple took payment for a five-year lease on a villa in Sanur, advertised on Facebook Marketplace, without saying that its certificate had been pledged against a debt. According to the indictment, the villa had already been sold at auction in March 2019, before the tenant paid in April; the tenant was evicted in September 2019, with a loss prosecutors put at Rp 900 million (Radar Bali). The defence said the owner hadn't known about the auction and argued the case was a civil dispute (RMOL). These are allegations; we found no report of the verdict.
Why a viewing and a contract don't protect you
A viewing shows the home exists. A signed contract shows what you agreed with the person who signed it. Neither shows that this person controls the home for your whole term, which is the one thing double-leasing exploits.
Indonesia's Civil Code explains why that matters. Article 1559 of the Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Perdata (text published by the Sukoharjo district prosecutor's office) says that a tenant who has not been given permission may not pass the lease on to someone else ("melepaskan sewanya kepada orang lain"), on pain of the lease being cancelled and of paying costs, damages and interest, and that after such a cancellation the owner does not have to honour the re-rental agreement ("tidak wajib menaati persetujuan ulang sewa itu"). The same article lets a tenant who lives in a house rent part of it to others, at their own risk, if their lease doesn't forbid it.
In practice, that makes it worth seeing the middleman's own lease and the owner's permission before you pay. This is general information as of October 2026, not legal advice: before you sign a long lease or take over someone's lease, check with a licensed notary (PPAT).
The checks that catch double-leasing before you pay
Do these before you pay for more than a month.
Find out who owns the home
Ask who the owner is and whose name is on the land certificate (sertifikat). If you are dealing with the owner, that name should match their KTP (Indonesian identity card) or passport.
If it isn't the owner, see their right to rent it out
A middleman, caretaker, agent or leaseholder should be able to show their own lease with the owner, ending after yours does, and the owner's written permission to rent it on (or the clause in their lease that allows it). In the Denpasar case, according to the tenants' account, the middleman's own rental ran for one month; the tenants paid for up to two years.
Contact the owner yourself
Get the owner's number from somewhere other than the middleman, and ask directly: who may rent this home out, until when, and has anyone else paid for it?
Ask the other tenants, the neighbours and the banjar
People already living in a kos can tell you who they pay. For a house or villa, you can ask the neighbours, or the kelian banjar (the head of the banjar, the local Balinese community council), who the owner is and who usually collects the rent.
For a lease takeover, read the original lease
Before you take over the rest of someone's lease, read their original lease with the landowner: its dates, whether it allows a transfer, and whose name is on it now. Then ask the landowner to confirm the lease hasn't already been passed on. In Sanur, it had been, before the second buyer paid.
Sign with, and pay, the right person
Sign with the owner, or with the leaseholder whose lease and permission you have seen, and pay into a bank account in that person's name against a receipt. Be most careful when a middleman asks for six months or more upfront: that is the kind of payment the Denpasar tenants say they lost.
What to do if someone else turns up with a key
If the owner or another tenant appears, gather the facts before you hand over keys or more money.
- Keep everything: the ad, chats, contract, receipts, transfer slips and the profile of whoever rented it to you.
- Ask the owner or the other tenant to show their documents, and show yours. You may both have been deceived by the same person.
- Stop all further payments to the person who rented it to you.
- Report it to the police, as the Denpasar tenants did, and report the ad or profile on the platform where you found it. If you found it on Nest, use the report button on the listing or Nest's safety page.
The first days after a rental scam (your bank, the police, the platform) deserve their own guide; the points above are the ones specific to double-leasing.
The short version
- Double-leasing works because the person you pay doesn't control the home for your whole stay.
- A viewing, a friendly meeting and a signed contract don't settle that. The owner's name and the owner's permission do.
- Before you pay months upfront, see the certificate or the lease, contact the owner yourself and ask the people next door.
- Pay only the person named in your contract, into an account in their name, and keep every receipt.
When you're ready, compare long-term rentals from verified listers across Bali.
Sources
- Kejaksaan Negeri Sukoharjo: Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Perdata (Burgerlijk Wetboek voor Indonesie), PDF (accessed 6 October 2026)
- detikBali: Nasib 17 Korban Penipuan Kos-kosan di Bali Rugi Puluhan Juta Berujung Diusir (accessed 6 October 2026)
- Bali Express: Modus Licik Penipuan Kos-Kosan di Bali Terbongkar, Sewa Sebulan, Dikontrakkan 2 Tahun ke Korban (accessed 6 October 2026)
- Bali Express: Dikira Pemilik Kos, Ternyata Penipu! Begini Cara Pelaku Bikin Korban Kos Bodong di Bali Luluh (accessed 6 October 2026)
- detikBali: Korban Penipuan Kos-kosan di Denpasar Jadi Puluhan Orang, Kerugian Rp 616 Juta (accessed 6 October 2026)
- detikBali: Cerita Tony Tergiur Bayar Kos Rp 8 Juta untuk 6 Bulan, Ternyata Kena Tipu (accessed 6 October 2026)
- CNN Indonesia: WN Belanda Ditahan Buntut Kasus Penipuan Sewa Vila Rp500 Juta (accessed 6 October 2026)
- detikBali: Tipu Pengusaha Ratusan Juta, Bule Belanda Diganjar 2 Tahun 3 Bulan (accessed 6 October 2026)
- Bali Express: Kasus Penipuan Tanah Warga di Bali Ratusan Juta, Hakim PT Putus Bule Belanda Bersalah (accessed 6 October 2026)
- NusaBali: Awas Penipuan Berkedok Kos, Perantau di Denpasar Jadi Korban (accessed 6 October 2026)
- Radar Bali: Penipuan Modus Sewa Vila Nyaris Rp 1 Miliar di Sanur, Suami Jadi Pesakitan, Istri Buron, Begini Ceritanya (accessed 6 October 2026)
- RMOL: Kasus Sewa Vila di Bali, Eko Sembiring: Ini Kasus Perdata yang Dipaksa Jadi Kasus Pidana (accessed 6 October 2026)