Down payment and payment schedule for an office unit in Bocagrande: who receives the money and what documents it

Between the reservation and the deed of an office unit there is a chain of payments, and each one needs an identified recipient and a document behind it. Whatever that chain fails to record is what later cannot be claimed or proved.

A payment schedule is not just a calendar: it answers three questions that decide money. Who the money is paid to, because paying the sales agent, an individual, or an account that appears nowhere in the signed document leaves the buyer with no claim against whoever is actually selling. What document supports each payment, because a cash receipt does not say which obligation it is applied against, and that application is precisely what gets argued when something breaks. And under what structure the money is held, because a finished office unit and one still to be built are neither paid for the same way nor held by the same third party. When the buyer wires from abroad, the trail of the transfer is added: the bank and the Banco de la República record how the funds came in, and that record is what gets asked for when selling or sending funds back out. What applies to your case is a question for your bank, the fiduciaria and your attorney, not something to infer from a brochure.

An office unit is bought differently because it does not live on passing footfall but on the building's ability to work as a business address. What makes it usable are services the unit does not control: the hours lifts and security actually run, the air conditioning and how it is metered, backup power, connectivity and visitor parking. None of that is fixed inside the unit and all of it runs through the administración, so the review looks at the building rather than at the door. The second difference is destinación, the recorded permitted use: in mixed-use towers, units whose registered use is residential are routinely sold as offices, and the mismatch between what the deed says, what the reglamento allows and what planning rules require is what later blocks registering the activity or receiving the public. The third is the rental market: an office tenant is a company choosing on address, floor area and building services, and is replaced by another of the same kind, so occupancy depends on the state of the whole tower far more than on the state of the unit.

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.

What is specific to Bocagrande

What to verify, step by step

1. Ask in writing for the full payment schedule showing the name, tax identifier and bank account of the recipient of every instalment, and confirm that recipient is the same party signing the document.
2. Require each payment to be applied against an obligation in the signed document, with the receipt stating which item it covers and over which property.
3. Ask whether what you are signing is a promesa de compraventa, a reservation or a deposit instruction, because that decides what delivery you are buying and from whom.
4. Check what belongs to an office unit itself and shapes how its payments are structured: whether the deed's permitted use is office or residential, because in mixed-use towers residential units are routinely sold as offices; the hours the lifts, air conditioning and security actually operate, and whether use outside those hours is billed separately and whether the administración requires a declared destinación (recorded permitted use) and prior notice to receive the public, and which visitor parking is assigned to the unit.
5. If you are wiring from outside Colombia, ask your bank and the Banco de la República what record the operation leaves, and keep a copy of every transfer document naming the property.
6. Before the deed, order the updated folio from the Oficina de Registro and compare the registered owner against the recipient you have been paying.

Mistakes that cost money

• Wiring to an account sent to you by message. The valid account is the one in the signed document, and a change of account is confirmed through the company's own channel, never through the message that requested it.
• Accepting receipts with no application stated. A receipt that says only «payment on account» proves nothing about which obligation was paid when more than one document is in play.
• Leaving the transfer trail to be assembled at the end. Reconstructing later how each instalment came in is harder than asking for the document on the day.

Frequently asked questions

Can the down payment be wired to the seller as an individual?

That depends on who appears as seller in the signed document and on the folio. Compare the two and ask your attorney what record each option leaves before you wire.

What role does the fiduciaria play in the payment schedule?

Where funds are received through a patrimonio autónomo (a trust estate), the fiduciaria holds the money and can certify what you paid in. Ask it for that certificate, not only the seller.

Can I pay from an account that is not in my name?

That is a decision with banking and tax consequences, answered by your bank and your adviser rather than the seller. What does help is that the signing buyer and the account holder both appear on the supporting document.

Where to check it

• Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia — whether a trust company exists and is supervised, before transferring money to a patrimonio autónomo
• Banco de la República — registration of foreign investment and the official exchange rate
• Superintendencia de Notariado y Registro — the certificate of title and encumbrances, which is the property's full history
• Cartagena de Indias — the rules of the municipality Bocagrande belongs to

Official bodies. Specific figures are requested there, not copied from a listing.

Updated 2026-11-06