Hello my name is Santiago Lampón. I am a lawyer and notary in Puerto Rico and this is the third part on my land subdivision series of videos. I will give you, you will see access to the video number 1 and you will see access to video number 2. You can link through this video without closing this one. You don’t need to necessarily go back and watch those two to understand this one but it is good that you watch them all. At the end of the video you may be able to post some questions if you have it.
In the two videos, I spoke about the land. In this one I am talking about the structure. In Puerto Rico law, just like almost anywhere else in the world we have what you probably know as condominium law. It has a different name in Spanish, I am not even going to go there, but we do have our condominium law. We also have some variations of condominiums law, but when you have a structure sitting on top of a land and that structure has different apartments or living areas so that I don’t limit it to the name of apartments, it is important that you have to comply with applicable law with sub divisions. As it is the case with land, if you purchase, let’s say you have 4 apartments and you purchase one of those 4 apartments. If you purchase that apartment and it is not properly registered as individual units at the property registry you actually bought a percentage interest on the whole land. Not the apartment, the whole thing. That means that besides being partial owner of the whole thing, you are also partially liable for the whole thing and there are some serious implications with regards to liability under Puerto Rico law.
The other thing is how much did you buy? if you pay $100,000 for each apartment and they are 4 apartments so you purchase 25% because there are 4 apartments and your purchase one. What was the value of the asset? What was the value of the corporation? What was the value of the partnership? (Whatever the name it was) How much did you put into i. It becomes more complicated than just this one apartment, 4 apartments, I bought one 25% easy.
If you are buying into a property with somebody else, you are a partner. If you are buying into a property and the proper segregation documents or land subdivision or apartment or a structure subdivision documents are in place, then you are buying that apartment and maybe perhaps a share of the common elements or everything like the road going into the building belongs to everybody, it’s not only one person owning it. So be very careful with that. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy it, it doesn’t mean you can do the transaction it just means you must be a little bit more careful. I hope you have enjoyed this video. My name is Santiago Lampón, A lawyer and a notary in Puerto Rico. Remember you can post your questions or your ideas at the end on this very same page and I hope you have a great day.