Prime 6 Hectare Hilltop Land with Sunset View in Lamboya, West Sumba

About the location

• Rua Beach — 10 minutes
• Waikabubak, capital of West Sumba — 20 minutes
• Tambolaka Airport, daily flights to Bali — 1 hour

Why Investing in This Property

Six hectares for USD 500,000 is about USD 833 per are. That is the lowest price per square metre of any land we hold, anywhere — a tenth of what elevated land costs on the fringes of Bali, and a fifth of what beachfront costs on Sumba's own north coast. Sixty thousand square metres is a site on which you could place a thirty-key resort and still not see your own buildings from the far boundary.

What that price buys is position without services: at this figure the land is the small part of the budget, and the access road, the water, the power, the earthworks and the drainage are the project.

The site itself is unusually good for what Sumba sells.

Gently sloping is the key phrase and it is worth more than it sounds. A steep hilltop looks spectacular and costs a fortune: retaining walls, cut and fill, access hairpins, and a drainage problem every wet season. A gentle slope on a high point gives you the view without the engineering, and it lets you terrace buildings naturally down the contour — which is how every good hillside property in Indonesia is laid out.

Elevation itself earns its keep in the tropics. High ground gets the breeze, which means fewer mosquitoes and less air conditioning. It drains, which matters enormously in a West Sumba wet season. And a 360-degree outlook on six hectares cannot be built out by a neighbour, because on a site this size you own your own foreground. Coastal land can be overtaken by whatever appears in front of it. A hilltop cannot.

The west-facing sunset point is a real commercial asset rather than a romantic line. On a resort site, the sunset position determines where the bar, the restaurant and the highest-rate rooms go, and it is the single most photographed thing a guest takes home. Sites with a genuine western outlook are rarer than they sound, because most hills have something in the way.

And ten minutes from Rua Beach with twenty to Waikabubak is a workable combination: close enough to the coast to be a beach property in practice, close enough to the town for staff, supplies, fuel and a hospital. An hour to Tambolaka, with daily flights to Bali, means a guest can leave Denpasar in the morning and be here for lunch.

The title is freehold (Hak Milik). For a development parcel of this size, foreign buyers acquire through an Indonesian company — a PT PMA — with the title converted to Hak Guna Bangunan, a fixed-term right to build that the company holds and that can be extended.

This island has one hotel of genuine world standing, an airport with daily flights to Bali, a paved road along this coast, and land at a fraction of Bali's price.

Additional information

• Land 60,000 m² (6 hectares) — gently sloping hilltop site, buildable across its area — around USD 833 per are
• Uninterrupted panoramic outlook in every direction — west-facing sunset point
• Freehold title (Hak Milik) — for a development parcel, foreign buyers acquire through a PT PMA with the title converted to Hak Guna Bangunan
• Rua Beach 10 minutes — Waikabubak, capital of West Sumba, 20 minutes — Tambolaka Airport, with daily flights to Bali, 1 hour
• Raw land: internal access, water, power, earthworks and drainage remain to be built by the buyer