What should I review in a sale contract in Bocagrande?

Sell property in Cartagena

Review the sale contract in Bocagrande Here is what changes in this sector and what to have ready before going to market.

The contract is not a form to be filled in: it is where the rules of the closing live, and reading it is an attorney's job, not the owner's and not the sales agent's. What does help you to know in advance is the information that document has to reflect without contradicting itself: the exact identification of the property and of what is included, who appears and in what capacity, the form and timing of payment, who bears each transaction cost, the condition in which the property is delivered, and what follows if either side defaults. The circumstances that slow things down are recognizable: a mortgage or restriction still recorded, holders who cannot sign in person, powers of attorney drawn too narrowly, areas that do not match the registry folio, outstanding debts, a tenant in place, or a buyer relying on bank financing or on funds coming from abroad and therefore on banking timelines. Each of those has to be resolved in the text before signature, not after. In Colombia this review and the path to the deed are handled by Nisimblat Law.

What Bocagrande is, and what changes there

Bocagrande works like a mature resale market, with consequences that do not repeat up north. The counterparty is almost never a builder: it is a long-standing owner or, very often, an unsettled sucesión, an estate proceeding, whose heirs live in different countries, so closing depends not on one power of attorney but on several, and on the partition among them. The registry record is old too: it was opened when the building was submitted to the condominium regime, it carries legacy entries such as cancelled mortgages, patrimonio de familia and afectación a vivienda familiar, both family-home protections, or lifted attachments, and the recorded area does not always match a current survey, so you compare the registry record against the deed and against the unit's floor plan. The peninsula is also land reclaimed from the sea under subdivisions the District authorized in their day, and the oldest deeds still carry references to those parcelaciones, the original platting. Day-to-day power sits with the owners' assembly and its manager, so in a tower with a long record of decisions the minutes and the status of the condominium's lawsuits matter more than the brochure.

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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