Zona de bajamar in Bocagrande: why fenced lots on the shore cannot be sold

The zona de bajamar — the tidal strip between the high and low water marks — is public domain of the Nation and cannot be privately owned. That does not stop it from appearing in Bocagrande fenced, built on, and covered by a notarised deed.

Public-domain property is outside commerce: it cannot be sold, mortgaged, or acquired by possession, however many generations a family has occupied it. What can exist over the beach and the tidal strip is a concesión or a permit from the maritime authority — temporary, revocable, and transferring ownership to no one. The consequence for a buyer is financial: if part of the area being priced falls within the zona de bajamar, that part is not being bought and a bank will not take it as collateral. The line is invisible from the terrace and is not drawn on the deed.

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 DIMAR, the maritime authority, for information on the deslinde — the official demarcation of public-domain land — along the stretch of coast where the Bocagrande property sits, and whether any concesión is current over that beach and in whose name. The request is made in writing and does not require being in Colombia.
2. Compare the area and boundaries on the certificado de tradición y libertad (the title and encumbrances certificate) against the IGAC cadastral record. A discrepancy in area on the seaward side is the signal worth understanding before going further.
3. Read the certificate's entries from oldest to newest, looking for allocations, falsa tradición, or consolidations that extended the property toward the beach at some point in the chain.
4. Insist that the survey be properly referenced and signed by an identifiable professional, not a sales-office plan with no author.
5. Check in addition what is specific to Bocagrande, which is not the same from one stretch of coast to the next: the building's actual age and whether it has a structural vulnerability study, since much of the stock was built under seismic codes earlier than those now in force; what the condominium bylaws say about daily rentals, which on this peninsula is the difference between being able to rent and not and how many parking spaces the unit holds in the deed, not in the brochure, because older towers do not have one per apartment.

Mistakes that cost money

• Treating the fence, the building and the paid property-tax receipt as proof of ownership. It is the mistake of someone buying a beach lot: none of the three turns public-domain land into private property, and a tax receipt is not title.
• Confusing the concesión with ownership. It is the mistake of someone buying a tower apartment facing the beach and assuming the access comes with the unit: a concession authorises an use for a term, it is held in someone's name, and it is not sold with the property.
• Accepting that “it has always been done this way here”. Local custom does not change the legal nature of the land, and the foreign buyer is the one who absorbs the difference.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know where the zona de bajamar ends on a specific property?

You cannot infer it by looking at the beach. DIMAR is the competent authority, and the deslinde for that stretch is what you ask it for.

If the deed is registered, is the question settled?

Registration records that the transaction was filed, not that the thing transferred was capable of private ownership. Those are two different questions, and the second is answered by the maritime authority.

What is it about Bocagrande that changes this enquiry?

The rule is the same across the city; the history of the land is not. Bocagrande and Castillogrande include land reclaimed from the sea, La Boquilla combines a coastal sandbar with collective title, and in Bocagrande the right move is to ask about that stretch and not the one beside it.

Where to check it

• Dirección General Marítima (DIMAR) — public-domain tidal land and concessions over the beach
• Superintendencia de Notariado y Registro — the certificate of title and encumbrances, which is the property's full history
• Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi — the cadastral record, area, boundaries and assessed value of the property
• Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial de Cartagena — land use, the rules applying to the property and protected land
• Cardique, autoridad ambiental del Canal del Dique — environmental permits, water setbacks and mangrove or wetland constraints
• Ventanilla Única de Registro (VUR) — checking the registry folio online and ordering the certificate without visiting the office
• Cartagena de Indias — the rules of the municipality Bocagrande belongs to

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

Updated 2026-11-05