Beware: Land for sale scams and problems in Cartagena

As the title says: "Beware". There are a number of scams regarding land for sale here in Cartagena that I'd like to share with you. The items mentioned in this post are only of concern to those of you who are considering buying a patch of land and building on it. If you fit into this category then please read carefully.

PROBLEM NUMBER 1 - Escritura de Posesion
If you are looking at a piece of coastal real estate, more than lightly you will be purchasing directly from one of the locals. While not every black fisherman is dishonest (I live with these people and have several wonderful friends) there are ALL poor would would love to make some money to live on and as a result often resort to unorthadox ways of doing it. In Cartagena, as I believe is true in the rest of Colombia also, if you have documented proof that you have lived on a piece of land for 20 years or more you then have legal possession rights to that land, but this does not mean that you have owners rights (propriedad) to that land. Therefore, if you purchase land from a local with a escritura de posesion you will not be the lawful OWNER of the land. You will have to go through the process of legalising your purchase afterwards. Whilst this will greatly increase the value of your purchase, it takes approximately 14 months and costs 10% of the value of your land (legal fees) plus a host of other fees. I will go over this in detail in a later post.

PROBLEM NUMBER 2 - Minuta
This is something that you should ALWAYS be very careful about. The minuta has even less value that the escritura de posesion, which is at least written up by a public notary. The minuta is just a simple piece of paper saying that Mr or Mrs so-and-so has possession of a given piece of land. You will have great problems verifying this and it is possible that the "owner" has already sold this piece of land to one or more other purchasers - believe me this has happened on many occasions so beware.

PROBLEM NUMBER 3 - Maritime Law
In summary, there is a law that states that no property can be built on coastal land that is closer than 50 or 60 meters (I can't remember the exact distance) from the highest tide. Looking at many of the properties in this area would never believe that such a law exists, but it does and word has it that this law will soon be enforced. Recently a condo complex was stopped in Santa Marta beause it didn't respect this law.

So, there you have it, while building you vacation home can be a wonderful and rewarding experience, please be careful when making a purchase. Always use a reputable lawer to carry out what they call a "studio" on the real estate you