By Massiel Martínez
Special for El Inmobiliario
Buying and selling real estate in the Dominican Republic are processes that, although they seem
simple, should not be carried out under any circumstances without the guidance of a
true real estate advisor or an expert in the real estate field.
In my years as a real estate advisor and lawyer within the real estate sector, it has been
very surprising to see the number of people – when selling a property – who still
keep their titles with the paper prior to the one used by Law 108-05 and who also
keep titles called Annotated Certificate or Certificate Letters.
The Annotated Certificate or Certificate Letter is the document issued by the Registry of Titles
that, without having its own cadastral designation or a duly approved individual survey plan
, certifies the existence of a property right over a portion
of a parcel, as established by article 2 of the Regulation for the Control and Reduction of
Annotated Certificates.
It is important to note that selling a property with this type of document carries
the risk of acquiring or selling it incorrectly, since
these documents lack a clear location and measurements,
describing only surface area units. They are portions dependent on the
cadastral designation or unique identifier of the parcel from which the certificate originates, and
because they are not depicted on a map, their exact location cannot be disclosed. This is
the opposite of what is found in a title certificate.
In my experience, many sellers are reluctant to follow the proper procedure for
accurately locating and measuring a property through a surveyor, due to the
associated costs. However, the act of buying and selling real estate must
always be governed by legal regulations, safeguarding the legal security of both
parties involved, ensuring that the seller can sell correctly and that the buyer can properly transfer ownership of
the property.
Hence, Article 129 of Law 108-05 on Real Estate Registration prohibited the issuance
of this type of document to force the owner of any property to individualize
their portion of land and obtain a title certificate with the corresponding security seals
, which allow the real estate transfer to take place.
However, the procedure by which the
Recorded Certificate can be corrected and converted into a Title Certificate must be carried out through a surveyor - as
we indicated above - who must exhaust different steps for the normalization of the
measurements and location of the property and thus obtain the corresponding title certificate.
As a final recommendation, I would venture to add for real estate advisors that before
selling or buying a property with this situation - or even without it - they should consider
working with a surveyor who can verify both the
recorded documents and the title certificates, since only a surveyor can
provide accurate and truthful information in this regard.
