Why we changed markets

We didn't leave Budapest because the market collapsed. We left because our craft, renovating and managing properties for investors, is better practiced elsewhere today. Here's why, plainly.

Ten years, around sixty renovations

François has been investing in real estate since 2012. In 2015, he founded Investissement Budapest. Since then, the company has carried out around sixty full renovations in Budapest and managed a similar number of properties for investors, mostly French-speaking. That experience is the foundation of everything we do in Bali today. It doesn't fade: it's what trained us.

The real difficulty, said honestly

The biggest obstacle was never the property market itself. It was construction labor. A large share of Hungary's skilled tradespeople work abroad, and full employment makes crews hard to find, and harder still to keep.

On our sites, that meant repeated delays, contractors abandoning a project midway, when they didn't go under altogether, and work that had to be redone for lack of quality. Every time, the final cost of the operation suffered.

It's a feature of the local labor market. It didn't depend on us.

Short-term rental, closed off

Meanwhile, regulation tightened the other side of the equation: rental yield. Since 1 January 2026, Budapest's 6th district has banned short-term rental outright. The decision was confirmed by Hungary's Supreme Court in November 2025, following a local referendum. A moratorium also freezes new registrations across the whole city until the end of 2026, and other districts are studying similar measures.

At the European level, the short-term rental transparency regulation, applicable since 20 May 2026, gives cities far more effective means of enforcing this kind of rule than before.

Budapest remains a solid place for building wealth. The tax framework hasn't changed: 15% tax on rental income, and a capital gains tax base that falls to zero after five years of ownership. Full details are in our FAQ. But living off short-term rental income there has become much harder than it was ten years ago.

Why Bali, concretely

Since our move to Bali in 2022, the Hungarian context has kept evolving. The new majority that took office in May 2026 is suspending new permits for non-EU workers from June, and the residency-by-investment program is also being called into question. It wasn't the reason for our choice, but it confirms that a market can never be read as a fixed reality. Our decision to diversify dates back to that move.

In Bali, we found an ecosystem of local crews that is far more available, provided you set clear procedures, train, and supervise on the ground. What changes the game isn't the absence of difficulty, it's the ability to build a stable organization around the project. The regulatory framework, once the right permits and the right structure are in place, leaves room to do what we know how to do: designing and operating properties for private hospitality, rather than managing sites in crisis. Tourism keeps growing, in Bali as across Asia, which supports rental demand over time.