Resolution DNRT-DT-2025-001 has been in effect since December 2025 and allows for the registration of off-plan sales, preventing double sales and ensuring traceability of the transaction. The market is not using it. The question is no longer whether it works, but why we continue to neglect it
A few months ago, I documented in this column that DNRT-DT-2025-001—the provision that allows for the provisional registration of legal situations such as a promise of sale or a purchase option—had been in effect for months without the sector incorporating it into its daily operations. That situation remains virtually unchanged.
And there is a question we still haven't answered honestly: do we not use it because we don't know it, or because, knowing it, we decide it's not right for us?
What this tool specifically protects
It's worth being specific, because legal certainty isn't sold in generalities. Provisional registration allows for the registration of a promise to sell or an option to purchase a property, provided the corresponding requirements are met. This has a direct impact on off-plan sales: a buyer who signs a promise to sell before the unit is built is no longer solely dependent on the developer's word. Their contractual situation is made public to third parties.
This advertising serves a very specific purpose: it prevents the same property from being sold twice. Double sales—selling the same apartment off-plan to two different buyers—remain one of the most costly risks in our market, largely because there is no official record of the commitments already made. Provisional registration creates that record. It provides traceability to a transaction that, until now, existed only in a private contract filed away.
Legal certainty doesn't kill sales. Uncertainty does.
For years we've treated legal certainty as a cost, an extra layer of red tape between signing and closing. But when the buyer demands transparency and we don't have an answer, the sale still stalls. The difference is that it stalls due to uncertainty, not excessive caution.
The contradiction that no one names
There's something curious about the industry's discourse: privately, many developers already recognize the value of contractually protecting the buyer—they include it in clauses and conditions within their own sales agreements. But publicly, that same protection rarely becomes a selling point, and even less often is it registered. It's signed, but not publicized. The buyer is shielded behind closed doors, but publicly, sales continue as if legal security were a technicality unrelated to the sales conversation.
That gap between what is signed and what is registered is, in itself, a missed opportunity. What we already protect in the contract could also be protected against third parties, and we could be using that to differentiate ourselves in the market.
What provisional registration does—and doesn't do
A necessary clarification: provisional registration does not automatically make the buyer the owner, nor does it freeze the property against other rights, unless a specific regulation provides otherwise. What it does do is provide publicity, traceability, and a real barrier against double sales. Legal certainty does not complicate the sale when it is well explained. It complicates it later, when it was not explained in time.
From protection to commercial conversation
Instead of waiting for the buyer to ask how to protect themselves, let's incorporate this tool from the very design stage of the project. A developer who offers to provisionally register the sales agreement isn't complicating the process. They're answering, before the question even arises, the doubt that every informed buyer already has: how do I know this property isn't also being sold to someone else?
This doesn't require the agent to become a registrar or a lawyer. It requires them to know the tool exists, to be able to explain in simple terms what it protects, and to know when to seek professional help to activate it. Legal certainty doesn't scare off buyers. The seller's silence does.
Almost nine months, and one question remains unanswered
The provision remains in effect. The risk of double selling persists. And almost nine months later, the market still has the same tool lying unused—whether due to lack of awareness, habit, or a resistance that no one can quite explain. The question is no longer whether the tool works. It's why we continue to not use it.
If you are an investor: Have you asked your seller if your sales agreement can be registered, or did you assume it wasn't necessary?
If you are a developer: Are you registering what you already protect in your contracts, or is it kept in the legal file?
If you're a real estate agent: could you explain to a client what this tool protects against double selling, without immediately referring them to a lawyer?
If you are a lawyer in the sector: are we recommending this tool from the beginning of the negotiation, or only when there is already a conflict?
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