SHM, HGB and hak pakai: what the certificate records, and for how long

The right, the parcel and the land underneath. Listings name the first. The third decides whether a hak pakai runs eighty years or thirty.

SHM, SHGB, SHP, Sarusun, girik: thirteen labels and what each certificate records

A Bali listing names a certificate the way it names a view: briefly and favorably. The certificate records one right, over one parcel, sitting on one kind of land. Each of those three facts changes what the certificate is worth to you, and the third is the one almost nobody mentions.

The last row is a gap we name rather than fill: the HGB-to-hak-milik procedure sits in a ministerial regulation this site has not read.

The land underneath changes the term

HGB and hak pakai both come in two versions, and the certificate tells you which. Granted over State land or hak pengelolaan, each runs 30 years + 20 years + 30 years — eighty years (PP 18/2021 art. 52(1); PP 18/2021 art. 37(1)). Granted over someone’s hak milik, each runs at most 30 years, renewable only by a new grant deed (PP 18/2021 art. 52(3); PP 18/2021 art. 37(2)).

The difference is not a detail. Over State land, the extension and renewal are applications to the land office. Over hak milik, there is no extension limb at all, and the second thirty years exist only if the Indonesian owner — or their heirs — grant again. On that version the right behaves much more like a registered lease than like the eighty-year ladder, and a price that assumes eighty years is wrong by fifty.

A correction. Until 27 September 2026 several pages on this site quoted hak pakai as 30 + 20 + 30 without saying that this applies only over State land, while also describing hak pakai over freehold as a common foreign structure. The articles above are the fix, and those pages now say so. Hak pakai in full.

What a certificate proves, and for how long it can be challenged

A certificate is strong evidence, so far as it matches the register (PP 24/1997 art. 32(1)) — strong, but not beyond challenge, and only as good as the match between the paper and the land office’s register. That is why checking the certificate at the land office matters more than inspecting the paper.

The protection hardens with time. Where a certificate was lawfully issued to someone who acquired the land in good faith and actually possesses it, anyone else loses the right to challenge it after five years unless they objected within that period (PP 24/1997 art. 32(2)). A certificate issued last year is a younger and more exposed document than one issued in 2015. What each document can and cannot prove.

Land without a certificate is a different category. Girik or petok D is evidence of acquisition, not a registered right; registering such land rests on written evidence, or a sufficiency finding (PP 24/1997 art. 24(1)).

What a foreigner ends up holding

A foreign individual cannot hold hak milik (UUPA (Law 5/1960) art. 21(1)) or HGB (PP 18/2021 art. 34). What a foreigner’s landed house sits on is hak pakai (PP 18/2021 art. 71(1)(a); Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 art. 185(a)), and where the house was held under hak milik or HGB, it must be converted to hak pakai (Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 art. 187(3)). HGB is reachable through an Indonesian company — what that company has to be — and strata title over a unit is open on its own conditions.

So for a foreign buyer the certificate question is usually not “SHM or HGB”. It is: which hak pakai will I hold, over what land, and therefore for how long.

We do not check certificates or sell land. We are paid a fixed fee per enquiry whether you buy or not; this page gives the articles so you can read a certificate you have been sent.

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