Due diligence, then a notary

The 50 km border rule

Foreigners generally cannot own property within 50 kilometers of Peru’s borders without special authorization. The restriction is aimed at land and related resources in that strip. It affects parts of the Amazon, the far north, and the far south. A city can sit outside the strip while a rural lot an hour away sits inside it.

I will not guess from a town name. Punta Sal is in Tumbes. Parts of Loreto, Madre de Dios, Tacna, Puno, and other frontier departments need a measurement. Your lawyer should check the exact coordinates. Special authorization, when it exists, is a formal act. It is not a friendly exception at the notary’s desk.

I bought as a foreigner and later as a citizen. Citizenship changes this particular limit, because the rule is about foreigners. It does not erase title problems, and buying did not grant me residency. That story is on the residency page, without a citizenship manual.

SUNARP: what the registry shows

SUNARP is the public registry. For a property, three pieces come up constantly:

• Partida registral. The file number of that property in the registry. It is the address of the record, not a deed you wave at a neighbor.
• Certificado literal. A certified copy of the current entry. It shows how the property is described and who is registered as owner, along with the annotations sitting on that file.
• Certificado de gravámenes. A certificate focused on burdens: mortgages (hipotecas), liens, embargoes, and other annotations that mean someone else has a claim. “No gravámenes” is what you hope to read. You read it close to the signing, not six months earlier, because files change.

The registry is what later buyers and banks believe. A private contract that never gets registered is how people discover they bought a story.

Titled land and possession-only land

Registered title means the owner is in SUNARP. Possession is physical control. A constancia de posesión, often from a municipality or another local body, records that someone is in possession. It is common in rural areas and the jungle. It is not the same document as a title.

The risks are concrete. The person in possession may not be able to sell you a registered right. Someone else may have a better claim. You may not be able to get a building license, a bank, or a later buyer to treat it as yours. Fences and receipts do not repair that.

Formalization paths exist. COFOPRI is the state program associated with titling informal urban property. Prescripción adquisitiva is a way to ask for title after a long, qualifying possession. Both take time and money. Neither is easy, and neither is certain. I will not hand you steps to file them. If a deal only works if formalization succeeds, treat that as a risk you are choosing with your lawyer, not as a plan I am selling.

Who has to sign

The name on the listing is not always the person who can sell.

• A spouse. Under the ordinary marital regime, sociedad conyugal or sociedad de gananciales, both spouses usually have to sign to sell. A separation-of-property regime is different. The lawyer checks the regime. A missing signature is how a sale falls over later.
• Heirs. If the owner died and the estate was never finished, you are in sucesión intestada or some other succession. All the heirs have to be in the process. One helpful nephew is not the estate.
• Co-owners. Every registered co-owner signs, unless someone has proper authority to sign for the others.

The municipality

The registry says who owns the recorded right. The municipality says what you may build and what is already recognized.

• Zoning and parámetros urbanísticos. Use, height, setbacks, and density. A dream of three floors can be illegal on that lot.
• Construction license and conformidad de obra. Permission to build, and later confirmation that what was built matches it.
• Declaratoria de fábrica. The building, registered. If only the land is on the title, the house you walked through may not exist for the registry. That changes value, tax, and the next sale.
• Unpaid predial or arbitrios. Property tax and municipal service fees. Unpaid years are a fact to clear in the deal, not a surprise after you are the owner.

Land trafficking, fake sellers, double sales

Peru has fraudulent sales, double sales of the same lot, and invasions by squatters. The careful process is how you notice. It is not a way to confront anyone.

• The seller’s identity matches the registry, not only a WhatsApp name.
• A fresh certificado literal and certificado de gravámenes, read by your lawyer close to signing.
• You, or I, have stood on the land. Empty land that someone will not let you walk is a stop sign.
• Neighbors’ account of who has been there, without treating gossip as a verdict.
• Money moves in a way you can prove later. Large cash handed to an individual is how double sales get easy. See bancarización.

If people are already on the land and the seller says “we will sort them out,” that is a legal problem for your lawyer before any deposit. I do not offer to remove anyone.

How a purchase usually moves

Ranges I treat as typical sit on the timeline. They are not a promise. The shape is:

1. Arras, or another separation agreement. A deposit and a written promise, with conditions. What you lose if you walk away, and what you get back if the papers fail, has to be written. Do not improvise this in a chat.
2. Minuta. The contract your lawyer prepares for the notary. This is where the price, the property, the names, and the conditions are nailed down.
3. Escritura pública. The public deed, signed before a notario. The notary is not your advocate. Your lawyer is.
4. Registration at SUNARP. Until it is registered, you are holding a deed that the rest of the country has not fully absorbed. Observations and delays happen.

A clean urban purchase, once you have chosen the property and the seller cooperates, often takes on the order of one to three months. Succession, possession, or a messy file does not use that range.

Buying while you are in another country

You can sign through a poder, a power of attorney. People grant it at a Peruvian consulate, or they sign abroad and use an apostille, usually with an official translation. I am not giving you the forms.

Scope it so the person in Peru cannot do more than this purchase. One property. One transaction. An end date. No open-ended right to sell your other assets or to take a loan. Your lawyer drafts or reviews it. I can help you see why the scope matters. I cannot be the attorney-in-fact and your independent counsel at the same time in a way that pretends those are the same job.

Rural land: water and the road

A field is not only a polygon. Water rights and many irrigation questions run through the national water authority, ANA. A ditch everyone uses may be a registered right, a custom, or a fight. Easements (servidumbres) are how a road or a canal crosses someone else’s land with a real right attached.

If the only access is a track across a neighbor, and nothing is registered, you own a lot you reach by permission. Permission changes when the neighbor changes. I look at this during scouting. Your lawyer says whether the access is a right.