Residency Through Property in Indonesia: The Golden Visa and Second Home Visa

Indonesia offers two long-stay routes that connect directly to property and capital: the Second Home Visa and the Golden Visa. They sit at very different price points and suit very different buyers, but both solve the problem that holding property here legally requires residency status in the first place. A foreigner who wants Hak Pakai on a home needs one of these, or a KITAS, to qualify. Here is how each works and which one fits which buyer.

The Second Home Visa

The Second Home Visa is the more accessible of the two and the one most relevant to a typical villa or apartment buyer. It grants a stay of either five or ten years without requiring a local sponsor, employer, or business. Family members can be included.

The qualifying requirement is financial proof rather than a specific property purchase. An applicant either places a deposit of roughly 130,000 US dollars in a state-owned Indonesian bank in a fixed-term account, or holds Indonesian property of equivalent value. The deposit route keeps your capital liquid and recoverable; the property route lets the home you were going to buy anyway satisfy the requirement. Government issuance fees run in the millions of rupiah depending on whether you take the five or ten-year term, with separate stay-permit fees.

For a foreigner buying a mid-range home in Bali, Lombok, or a Jakarta apartment, the Second Home Visa is usually the natural fit. The property value threshold is within reach of a single quality purchase, and the residency it confers is exactly what you need to hold that property under Hak Pakai.

The Golden Visa

The Golden Visa targets higher-net-worth investors and scales with the size of the commitment. It is structured around investment categories rather than a single number, and the thresholds differ sharply between the passive and active routes and between the five and ten-year terms.

For passive investors, the relevant category requires purchasing Indonesian government bonds, public shares, or mutual funds. The five-year permit sits at around 350,000 US dollars in such instruments, and the ten-year permit at around 700,000 dollars, with a real-estate-linked threshold near one million dollars for the longer term. For investors who establish a business in Indonesia, the active categories require investments measured in the millions of dollars, with corresponding revenue conditions. These are not property-buyer numbers. They are for serious capital deployment, and the payoff is a longer, more stable residency with fewer conditions.

The Golden Visa makes sense for a buyer whose plans go well beyond a single home, someone placing substantial capital into Indonesian markets or building a business, who wants residency that reflects that scale. For most people buying one property, it is more than the situation requires.

How the visa connects to property

The connection is indirect but essential. Indonesian law lets a foreigner hold Hak Pakai, the Right to Use, on a home only if that foreigner has valid residency status. The Second Home Visa and the Golden Visa both supply that status, as does a KITAS or KITAP. Without one of them, you cannot legally hold the title, which is part of why nominee structures tempt buyers who skip the residency step. The legal sequence is to secure a residency basis, then take Hak Pakai in your own name, not to buy through someone else because you lacked the visa.

It is worth being clear about what the visa does not do. Neither the Second Home Visa nor the Golden Visa grants freehold ownership. Freehold Hak Milik stays reserved for Indonesian citizens regardless of how much you invest or how long you are permitted to stay. The visa unlocks your eligibility to hold Hak Pakai or a strata-title apartment and to reside long term. It does not change the underlying ownership rules.

Choosing between them

The decision usually comes down to scale. A foreigner buying one home and intending to live in it is almost always best served by the Second Home Visa, where the threshold matches a normal property budget and the property itself can satisfy the requirement. A foreigner deploying large capital into Indonesian markets or a business, who wants the longest and least conditional residency, is the Golden Visa's intended audience. Because thresholds, fees, and category definitions are revised as the programs mature, confirm the current figures with the Directorate General of Immigration or a qualified Indonesian immigration advisor before committing.

When the property that anchors your residency plan is a developer project still under construction, the developer's track record becomes part of the equation. Bektu (https://bektu.com) tracks developer delivery histories so a foreign buyer can confirm a company has delivered its past projects before tying a residency plan to one that has not been built yet.

Both visas do the same essential job from different ends of the market: they give a foreigner the legal standing to hold property and live in Indonesia. Match the route to the size of your plan, and the property side falls into place behind it.