How do agency fees work when selling in Serena del Mar?

Sell property in Cartagena

Real estate fees when selling in Serena del Mar Here is what changes in this sector and what to have ready before going to market.

What matters is not the amount charged but how the arrangement is structured, and that belongs in writing before work begins. Three things need defining. First, the base on which compensation is calculated: whether it rests on the closing figure or the asking figure, whether it covers the property alone or includes furniture and other assets, and how currency is handled when the buyer pays from abroad. Second, when it is earned and when it is paid, which do not always coincide, and what happens if a deal collapses after the purchase promise is signed. Third, what is included and what is billed separately: promotion, photography and video, notary and registry costs, transaction taxes, and legal services, which in Colombia are provided by Nisimblat Law. It is also worth settling whether the engagement is exclusive, for how long, what happens if a buyer reaches you directly, and how compensation is shared when another intermediary takes part, including allied brokers abroad. A clear agreement removes nearly every argument that arises at the end.

What Serena del Mar is, and what changes there

Serena del Mar runs on rules of its own. The land is developed under a plan parcial, a master plan adopted by District decree, and that decree, not a general reading of the POT, the city land-use plan, is what sets uses, land transfers to the city and development obligations for a given lot. So the document to request here is the adopting decree with its drawings; the land-use certificate that serves in a settled neighborhood is not enough. The second difference is a layer of private government that exists nowhere else: the ciudadela, the master community, has its own statutes, an architectural committee and design rules governing façades, fences and renovations, and those rules follow the property on resale, binding a buyer who never negotiated them. The third is the counterparty: you usually deal with the developer or with a fiduciaria, a trust company, administering the stages, and the unit's registry record descends from a very large parent parcel subdivided in phases, so title is verified upward, to the matriz, the parent record, and to the deeds transferring land to the District. Infrastructure was built by the developer: what matters is whether it has been handed over to the utility or is still privately held.

American buyer

Moving the money is not a formality. Funds leaving a US account have to enter Colombia through the regulated foreign-exchange market with a declaración de cambio, the exchange declaration, and the Banco de la República is the body that explains how the operation is recorded as foreign investment and in whose name, because whoever sends the money and whoever appears on the escritura, the deed, must be the same person or the same company. Signing from abroad has two routes that are not interchangeable: a poder, a power of attorney, granted before a Colombian consul where you live, or one granted before a notary public and then apostilled. Which one the Cartagena notaría will accept is a question for that notaría and for the Cancillería before you pay for a translation. Visas and the cédula de extranjería, the foreigner ID card, are a separate matter from the purchase and belong to Migración Colombia: buying does not stand in for the immigration process, nor the reverse. On tax, the question to settle is whether a treaty exists between Colombia and your country and what it says about rental income and about ganancia ocasional, the gain taxed on sale. Confirm that with an accountant in each country, not with the seller.

The next step

Write to us with what you are looking for and we will send you what is available. Availability, price and the terms of each property are confirmed before any offer.

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