Bouncing around

A necessary meandering path

Most of the previous emails had to do with sketching out a financial picture that offered a tantalizing scenario for living a very good life without big money pressures. Of course it would mean changing one’s priorities and uprooting your existing life. I realize that probably less than 1% of my readers will actually make such massive changes.

However, the tips for arranging financial priorities are hopefully universal and useful enough for you to maintain your readership of this newsletter. And, you may know of someone else who may want to change their lives by moving to a place like Bali. They will owe you big time :)

Towards a community? Or something else?

My partner Shelly is Indonesian and one day we rode out to the countryside (mostly rice fields) and found a local farmer by the side of the road. He knew of a friend who wanted to sell his land. Usually Bali farmers sell their land for financial reasons, but sometimes it may be that their children no longer want to be farmers. In any case the farmer doesn’t sell his own house. Just the land he uses to grow rice.

The problem we ran into is that farmer land is zoned agricultural. While some agricultural land is deemed residential, most are considered “green zone,” so they’re not subject to residential development.

As you can see, there’s a lot of green zone land. The farmer above promised that we’d be able to build homes, as he is a neighborhood leader. But the ultimate decision falls with the government. Land certificates have numbers so that they can be checked at the government office for ownership and zoning status information.

A significant amount of available land is narrow and long, to comply with the Balinese approach to rice farming:

Rice, the water required to grow rice, and subak, the cooperative canal system that controls the water, have together shaped the landscape over the past thousand years. Water from springs and canals flows through the temples and out onto the rice paddy field. In total, Bali has about 1,200 water collectives and between 50 and 400 farmers manage the water supply from one source of water.

Read more here

Sketching a possible future

The above are sample drawings to see how we can fit several one bedroom and two bedroom apartments into 15 are (pronounced ah-ra). One are is 100 meters X 100 meters. One acre is 40.5 are. Ideally I’d like to get 25 or 30 are.

In front is a large building that would be the community house. Inside would be a hotel-quality restaurant, kitchen and bar. Upstairs would be gaming rooms.

In the second drawing there’s an opening in the lower level for a snack bar and lounging area besides the oversized pool. Between the community building and the residential spaces is a spa.

By building the units together there’s significant cost savings. I’m guessing a one bedroom apartment might cost $75-85,000 USD for a 25 year lease (less than $300 USD per month), and a two bedroom about $110,000 (less than $400 per month). Monthly maintenance might be $75 a month. Land ownership is restricted to Indonesian citizens and so the living units will be leased.

For issues such as sub-leasing there would have to be community input. Should there be a one month minimum sub-lease period? Or more? We don’t want the community to resemble a hotel, with people coming and going.

Click Leave a comment above with your feedback. Are the living units too close? The land too narrow? Obviously wider land and separate units are nicer but they’ll cost more. I want to build what you want, so feedback throughout this process will be very helpful.

This is a different style, with larger units above and smaller units below. But there’s no shaded spaces to hangout, and with the tropical sun, this doesn’t work. But it’s inspirational for the exterior look and feel, yes?

For more design ideas please follow my Pinterest board here. I will be updating architectural drawings in this newsletter once we nail down a piece of land.

Later,

Neill