EPISODE 16:
BALI REAL ESTATE: HOW TO TRIPLE YOUR INVESTMENT RETURNS!

00:00:33
Bali Business Club. We’re back today with Omri Ben-Canaan Hey Gawain Blizzard! How are you? Nice to be back in our office Yeah, yeah. This is this is actually our office. People don’t know that. But whenever you see that smartboard this Is where we work everyday. And today we’re talking about how to 2.3 to 3.1x, your returns in Bali property market. How to make a bunch of money. How to make a lot of money. in 2 or 3 years. Yeah. Basically that’s it. Yeah. So yeah, let’s. Let’s go. Yeah. So we back. Omri Ben-Canaan. Man, who knows

00:01:05
how these things work? Yeah. For those who don’t know I suppose this is a bit of a history of a Pererenan Batu Bolong developments you know going up the west coast of Bali and then how you maximize your returns on property investment. All right. Thanks Gawain Blizzard. So, guys before we get into that, quick disclaimer this is not a financial advice. Yeah. I think we should say that every podcast. So I’m doing the disclaimers now for all the podcasts none of them are financial advices, yeah. Secondly, because we are

00:01:37
directly involved in the real estate market ourselves I just want to quickly make you more understand how this can be some sort of conflict of interest of you know. so I’m Omri Ben-Canaan I’m the CEO of Kosong Satu Group I’ve been in Bali for 30 years and under Kosong Satu Group we have a few different brands about 20 plus brands. Some of them in media in the media industry some of them in the business services some of them in the retail and some of them in real estate. In the real estate is related to this

00:02:08
We have The Kedungu Fund which is a real estate investment fund If you’re interested in that there are other podcasts and we can put some links down there. Or you can go on thekedungufund.com if you want to invest money in Indonesia without the hassle of going through all the problems and potential risks of investing. And then we have, Kedungu Real Estate which is the only real estate agency in Kedungu at the moment sure that would be some in the future. But so whatever we say here is, we talking from experience.

00:02:42
We’re talking from our own experience. And, it’s, again, not in any way And, it’s, again, not in any way shape of form financial advice. This is what we do and we just sharing with you guys what we do and how we think we can multiply. How we can all make good returns in the next 5 years? Basically what this is about this is about how to multiply by by 2x or 3x your investments in a span of three years ish. Yeah. More or less. Three to four, yeah. Three to four years, more or less. Yeah. Again,

00:03:20
we don’t have a crystal ball so this is only we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Those things might change. This is why it’s dotted and not a plain line. In other areas we invested in Pererenan, for example and we believe this area we’re going to talk about here Kedungu is, has a similar pattern than Pererenan or Batu Bolong before And it’s based also on what happened in the last 2 – 3 years in this region of Kedungu which we are going to talk about now. So basically in Bali what we’ve noticed

00:03:54
over the course of the last 15 years we’ve been doing real estate here. We identified a pattern that explains how a region goes from completely avoid of any tourist development to fully developed. So if you take, for example a region like Pererenan Pererenan when we moved here six years ago it was a giant rice field with a few local houses basically. There was nothing. We were the first foreigners Major tenants, to set up shop like probably one of the first who set up shop in here, yeah. And I mean, I always

00:04:38
make the joke, but basically when you would see a foreigner in the street you would say hello you know, like now if you say hello to a foreigner in the street they’ll think like “what you want?” So Pererenan is a very good example because it’s the, the latest the newest development here, that follow that pattern but basically takes five years five years ish, yeah to go from nothing so this is when we arrived to like overdeveloped it’s not overdeveloped, very developed like it is now. So if you look at Pererenan

00:05:08
for instance Maybe just explain also like how this works up the West Coast. So you’ve got like Yeah. from Kuta back getting to that. I’m getting to that my friend But so Pererenan, it started around like 2018 more or less here. And now we are in 2025, which is, perfect. I hadn’t reviewed that graph before we started. It’s perfect. It works. So that’s five years. Of course, there was the COVID period which slowed down a little bit. It plateaued a little bit the land price evolution. But it never went down.

00:05:42
It never went that way. To get to what you just asked me to do how does evolution of tourist spots happen in Bali? And I forgot to mention it now because we’ve done multiple, we’ve said it multiple times. Basically, you have to understand if you want to understand how this works you have to understand three main points. First, government is pushing for more and more tourists every year because it’s obviously more foreign currency coming into the country. And it’s make the GDP grow and everything

00:06:19
and business grow. And they’re succeeding. I mean Oh, completely. 2024, highest ever 2025 better than 2024. It’s always highest ever. Every year is highest ever. I think that year We have a thanks Gawain Blizzard That year Back in a sec Good job. Good job. Professional. Oops All right. 2024, I think it was 6.5 million foreign tourists and 22 million local tourist something like that. The year before was almost a million less. And next year, expecting 7 million, yeah So yeah, always more and more tourists.

00:07:04
So that’s the first point. So remember, the golden rule. We did a podcast on that, the golden rule. There is three golden rules. I think we got one. Sorry? I think we got one. Yeah, we did one. Oh, yeah. We did one. The link below link below, yeah. So golden rule number one always more tourists because government is pushing. And because there’s more people, you have to put these people somewhere. So they need villas apartments, hotels restaurants, shops, massages, spa, whatever you need. you name it

00:07:33
And also, a percentage of those tourists will always stay. So, you know, get so many tourists, they’ll stay as expats at percentage I mean, it’s It’s stimulates It’s not only tourist It’s a tourist plus expats because the more tourists, the more expats basically, yeah. The second rule is the the coconut tree law So there is a funny law in Bali. It’s not Indonesia it’s Bali, called the coconut tree law which forbids any developers, any building to be higher than 15 meters. This date from 1966, when Tommy Suharto

00:08:06
built his hotel in Sanur It’s still there. It’s still there, yeah. Sanur Resort something the big 10 story or 12 story building on the beach, yeah. And Balinese people were like, “oh, what’s happening?” And they voted they created that law, that rule, that forbid to build above 15 meters. Because you have that rule, and you can’t build upward so you have more tourists to lodge somewhere, you cannot build high buildings and such. No high rise. No high rise. Forbidden in Bali. There’s not one. It’s four, basically

00:08:43
four levels max, yeah. So ground floor and three level up, yeah. So because of that, mechanically, it’s expanding horizontally. Yeah. So if you want to fine tune that you just look at the map, and you have the coast you can see it going westward from Kuta towards Canggu, Pererenan, and Kedungu, and so on and so forth. And it won’t stop. As long as more people find hotels and such, it won’t stop. It will keep expanding, regardless of what people say and trying to preserve what Bali is. And it’s another

00:09:21
debate, but it always made me laugh how people are pointing the figure at the bad “bule” developers, foreigner developers, when they actually, government is pushing for more tourists. So the government is elected by locals. So it’s not the foreigners. It’s not it’s everyone. It’s locals and foreigners. Anyway, that’s another debate personal opinion there’s a lot of things to say about that. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole And so one, more development And so one, more development by government.

00:09:50
Two, number two rules second rule is the coconut tree law and third rule is if you want to really fine tune where to invest next and how it explains that development that rapid development westward, is the surf spot. So you basically take the coast, and again, we can put that little map here. If you look at the map, it goes from surf spot to surf spot. And those are the places whenever you have a surf break, this will develop before anything else. So for example, Kuta Seminyak, Berawa Batu Bolong, Pererenan.

00:10:31
Those are the breaks we currently know, that have developed super fast. And then there’s nothing until Kedungu. So after Pererenan, you have Seseh, Cemagi Nyanyi, Tanah Lot and then Kedungu, yeah. And all of those names that I just mentioned they don’t have surf at all. So the next surf spot is Kedungu, which is explaining why it’s developing it’s going to develop so fast now. All right, so that was a very, very long introduction. Let’s dive into some numbers and what to do with your money. If you have some capital, you

00:11:12
want to invest somewhere in our opinion And this is what I do. So I always tell people, look at what I’m doing and copy trade me, so to speak. So this would be, in our opinion something that could be interesting for you guys if you want to invest some money in Bali, Another disclaimer very quick, there are other areas in Bali that are good for investment as well. I won’t name them here, but there are a few. I’m not saying this is the only thing. For me, this is the one that makes the most sense

00:11:44
because it’s the one that’s the most obvious. Let’s go into some detail data and how it works exactly. So we just, we mentioned before that there’s a pattern and it’s following the same pattern. So Batu Bolong, 5 years Pererenan, 5 years And then, Kedungu is next. So that’s going to be around five years as well. Right now, we are more or less halfway, or let’s say in the first we are entering the third year, let’s say of developments. When we came into Kedungu, when we started, was around here.

00:12:25
And I remember, land back then was around Rp 5 million per are So Rp 5 million I’m going to talk in millions of Rupiah here because this is easier for everyone to understand. I mean, everyone that knows a little bit about the Bali market. We are going to talk about in Rupiah and we’re going to talk about Leasehold. I’m not going to go into what is different between Leasehold and Freehold. I assume people know that. If not, there’s there’s another link there’s another link somewhere, or just look in the videos.

00:13:01
And just so you understand so a quick one, in Bali, Indonesia, we count the number of ares. An are is 100 square meters. And this is the the trick we use in Bali to count the size of a land. So if you go to someone’s house, you go, “Ah, nice house and how many are is your house?” So it’s seven are. And then on this land is 10 are. This one is one are. So one are is 100 square meters. So this is the price. Any prices that we mention here is for one ara. 1 million Rupiah is about 60 USD. 60 to 65 USD depends

00:13:42
on the effects here, on the exchange rate. So 10 million Rupiah is 600 to 650 USD. So when we moved into Kedungu, and we started business there and acquiring land with first was me, on a personal and then we created The Kedungu Fund and we started buying land. Land was at around 5 million Rupiah. 5 million Rupiah per are, per year. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry. So we count It’s important. Yeah, we count the land per are, and we count the land price on a per are per year basis. So when you buy I’m not going to explain how

00:14:26
everything works. There’s another podcast about a leasehold extension about leasehold versus freehold, where we explain all this. We assume you guys know this. So back then, the price was 5 million per are. Today and that was the lowest the lower range. Was between 4, let’s say 4 million to 7 million, yeah Maybe 4 to 7 I’m going to put it. Today, the price is, on average, around 15-ish million per are, per year, yeah. So 15-ish, yeah. The range is 11 to 19. How do we know that? Because we have Kedungu Real Estate

00:15:11
which is the only real estate agency in the area. We have about 100 I asked them last time I think 150 or 180 properties. So we make averages every month and data to see the price evolution. So well, it’s too bad I didn’t ask before the podcast. But remember, last month was around 15 million, yeah. So basically, the evolution from here to here is 3x. So if you’re lucky enough to have invested in Kedungu back to two and a half years ago and you sell your asset today, if you are within the average

00:15:58
within that range, whatever if you didn’t get ripped off in the first place back then, you would probably 3x your investment, which is insane. It’s crazy, you know. And not a lot amount of time to use. That’s insane, yeah. So let’s say two and a half to 3x, yeah Now, today, the price is 15, right? If Kedungu follows the pattern and it will of Pererenan and Batu Bolong, and all the one before that it will probably arrive in that price range around 2028, 2029 which means around Rp 35 million from Rp 35 million to Rp 45 million

00:16:45
Okay. Right now in Pererenan for instance, this is the price I even have a friend even more than that. My friend just bought an extension at Rp 60 million which I found a little bit crazy. If you’re watching this, you know. So if you take that range into account from 11 to 35 and from 19 to 45 why there’s a range? 19 million is more towards the beach, so every land that’s close to the beach is always more expensive. Or commercial. No, no, no, not commercial. This is always I should have said that before.

00:17:26
Sorry, guys. This is only about residential. Commercial is a I can talk about for commercial after. I mean, it’s just location, location, location, right? So 19 million is super well-located, super close to the beach. This is the 19 million end of the range. 11 million is a little bit more inland, less well-located. But that’s debatable as well. I personally don’t buy near the beach. And we have other podcast on that. So I always buy those 11 million land because I like the multiplier better. And you’ll

00:18:07
understand why in a second. So if you take the 19 million figure and you go to 45 million, that’s 2.3x here. So 2.3x, which is amazing. It’s great money. I mean, there’s no doubt that you won’t make that in your country. You’re from Cape Town. I’m from Paris. There’s no way you can double your money in any deal, it’s probably illegal. The tax office would be like sleeping in your house. So those multipliers are just completely insane. And this is the kind of money you can make in Bali Not everywhere, not in Seminyak

00:18:47
anymore, not in Canggu anymore but in Kedungu, you can. If you’re fast enough, time is of the essence here. And that’s the key location because a lot of people like to buy here. Yeah, everybody does what everybody does. They come to Indonesia and they come to Bali on holiday and they spend, they rent a house in Canggu and they say, “Oh, cool, me too, I want a house.” And they buy the land next door at 35 million. And what are you going to do with it? You can do a bit of passive income if you have an

00:19:19
Airbnb or something. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I’m just saying there are better ideas. Don’t be a sheep. Don’t do like everyone else. Think outside the box and do your own research. There are things if everyone is doing something, there’s a better way to do it. It’s good for any business, any industry and any topic in the world. So back to that. 19 million will become 45 million at 2.3x. If you buy at 11 million today, you will go to 35 million in the matter of like three max four years, same as

00:19:59
the other range, yeah. And that’s 3.1x. So that’s tripling your money. So if you came here and you sell here, you can do like 6x – 7x it’s crazy. You have to understand that. You have to understand how it works. And then you replicate the next plan, maybe like three, four years you buy. That’s Yeh Gangga. Here, hint, Yeh Gangga Good information. I hope you buy some land there, my friend. I am not yet, but soon I will. Now it’s too early, guys. Too early. Don’t buy Yeh Gangga today. Too early. Better to buy in Kedungu,

00:20:36
sell, and buy Yeh Gangga in a couple of years. I had a friend actually who bought at 3.5 on Yeh Gangga Yeah. It’s still cheap. Yeah, but it’s too much here. So we don’t know when it’s going to pick up exactly. I never buy at 3 million. 3 million is like everyone in Bali 3 million to start with, yeah. I always buy once it goes from three to four to five. This is for me the trigger. This is where I invest, yeah. Ok, back to this. 3.1x, yeah this is, of course again, this is we don’t have a crystal ball.

00:21:10
And it might not be 3.1. It might be better, I don’t know. Or it might be a bit less. But I can guarantee that you can’t lose. It’s an impossibility. It’s inevitable. It will grow because it is growing every day every month it’s growing, you know Not a financial advice, but if there is any advice to give This is it. Buy today in Kedungu anywhere between 11 million and 19 million and sell in three, four years when the market is optimal, when the market is already saturated and high, when everyone is looking for

00:21:55
searching for land there. And this is how you make money. I’ve done this for the last 15 years. I don’t understand why people don’t understand have not understand this before. This is beyond me. And it’s everybody buying here this is crazy. So let’s avoid doing that. It’s ridiculous. Exactly. So this is residential, yeah. Now, a quick one on commercial lands. But don’t get, the numbers are even crazier than this. But don’t get your hopes too high because it’s extremely difficult to find a commercial land in Kedungu today

00:22:28
With the Fund, we acquired a lot of commercial land back then. So we locked most of the available land. And we’re lucky enough to own the real estate agency So whenever there’s one available, we grab it before everyone. Sorry, guys. With commercial land, it more or less starts at the same price. It just grows. It goes. So for example, let’s take Pererenan, yeah. Pererenan today, commercial land, we’ll probably I’m going back to white. So what is commercial land? Commercial land is high street retail land.

00:23:07
So land on the main street, yeah. So for Pererenan, it’s from the beach to a couple of kilometers up to the jalan Raya Canggu. Same thing for Batu Bolong from the beach to the Pepito probably, yeah. In Pererenan today, this price here, if it was commercial land, will be around 70 to 80 million per are per year, okay. So if you bought land when it was here at maybe like 5 – 7 million, I mean, you 10x your money. In Kedungu, what I did when I started to invest back in 2022 I think 2022 I only bought commercial land.

00:23:56
Back then, there were a few available. So I bought two large plots. I have some residential land now as well. But I focus on commercial land because I knew the multiplier is much higher. I bought my plots. The first plot I bought was at 7.9 million. And that’s the plot that is on the right side of the stables, Salty Cowboy on the main street. And then I bought sorry, I say bought. I didn’t buy. I leased, okay, just for clarity, yeah. I don’t want to get sued by the government saying I purchased land in

00:24:36
Indonesia being a foreigner. I leased, yeah, my mistake. So I leased that plot. And the other plots that I leased was the one where our good friends from Little Ripper are next to it after the gang south of Little Ripper in front of TMC Cafe. TMO TMO TMO, sorry. And that plot I leased at, I think, 9 million or 9.5 million. Right now, on the main street, I’ve had people offering me plots at 30 million 30 So that’s, yeah. So the price on the main street is slowly getting now, the price of residential in three years.

00:25:22
That’s how fast it goes. Because there’s a scarcity of land. So what is rare is expensive. High value So that’s the price in Pererenan In Batu Bolong, I would think it’s around 110 million – 120 million If you find it, you won’t find it. I mean, it’s already super hard to find today high street retail land in Kedungu. Imagine in Pererenan I mean, nobody wants to sell. Impossible. Nobody. Why would you sell your land on the main street in one of these busy area? It’s a cash cow. Business land on

00:25:58
the main street there’s restaurants, bars, cafes You can see a couple. But usually, it belongs to a rich corporation in Jakarta or somewhere. But no one I mean, no local family that owns the plots on the main street would be crazy enough to sell. It’s a cash machine. Whatever you do, I mean, you open a little toko a little shop, a really cool shop that costs you nothing to build and you rent it out for crazy money you make I mean, it’s a great business, you know. Well, that’s it. Any question, my friend?

00:26:32
Anything I forgot? What do you think? No. I think you covered it all. Yeah. Yeah. Long enough. Touch on everything. Not a financial advice. But this is what we do. And this is what we are known for. You won’t cut me dead buying a plot in Pererenan or Canggu today It doesn’t make sense. I don’t want to be part of the sheep pack. I want to be part of the guys that understand how real estate actually work and be ahead of the pack, ahead of everyone. And this is how you invest a little money. You make a lot of money.

00:27:10
You reinvest and so on and so forth. This is what the The Kedungu Fund does. This is exactly the core thesis of The Kedungu Fund is land banking, so buying plots around basically, I mean, until here, it’s good to buy. To lease, sorry. It’s good to acquire. Okay? In my opinion, when we reach around this price this here we should be sorry, the graph is not very, very accurate. It should be around 2027. This is when it’s a good time not to liquidate, but to To hold. To hold until here. And to acquire

00:27:54
to start acquiring in Yeh Gangga maybe Kelating. Kelating is a little early. Yeah, so yeah, this is what the Fund does. The Fund does exactly this. So we spread our risk on multiple assets because we have a lot of plots. And we develop as well. So we’re developing an international school. We have a shopping plaza in the works, a bunch of other things, yeah. That’s it. Yeah, if you want to find more about The Fund, also, we’ve got a FAQ, which is really informative. So yeah, in the link, also. All right, cool

00:28:31 Thank you, everyone. Feel free to ask any question you have in the comments. As you guys know, we always try to answer, except on the last one. I took a bit of time to answer. Sorry about that. But we usually answer within one, two, three days. So if you have any more questions about that, I’m very, very happy to engage with you guys and answer your questions in the comments. If you want to meet us, we’re always open for a coffee. Our office is in Pererenan I mean, we always have people coming for coffee here.

00:29:04
So we welcome meeting new people and investors. Happy to have a chat. And see you on the next podcast. Yeah. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Thank you. I forget. Right. We’ll have a second. Second. It’s, so that’s that’s To the. Business kind of, let’s. All right. Cool. Okay. One, two three. Hey, my little dance lab. Cut it. Use it for, bloopers. Okay. Yeah, we have a bloopers. For the competition. We love it. Yeah. Okay. Bridget, that was good. All right.