"Deslinde" Procedure Necessary for Real Estate Transactions after April 4, 2009

As you may know, the new Property Registry Law (Law #108-05) that has been in effect since April 4, 2007, and its enabling regulations, have drastically changed Dominican real estate law. One essential element of this modernization has been the requirement of a "deslinde" for all real estate transactions: purchases, sales, mortgages, condominium formation, etc.

A "deslinde" ("segregation" in English) is the legal procedure by which a portion of land within a parcel is segregated from all the other portions within the same parcel. In other words, the deslinde procedure converts a provisional title that guarantees the property right of ownership for a portion of land within a bigger parcel into a definite title that guarantees the ownership of an individual parcel. The result of the procedure is that the segregated portion will become its own parcel with its individual cadastral designation, guaranteed by a definite title. The majority of jurisdictions around the world only recognize and register segregated portions of land and do not allow any transactions of portions of land that are not segregated. The purpose of the new Property Registry Law is to reach exactly the same level of sophistication and security as these modern jurisdictions have had for a long time: no recorded property rights without a deslinde.

Read "Deslinde" Procedure Necessary for Real Estate Transactions after April 4, 2009