Buying property in the Dominican Republic: step by step

Buying property in the Dominican Republic is procedurally straightforward and legally unforgiving. The steps are few and the timeline is short by regional standards. What separates a clean purchase from a five-year lawsuit is almost never the process itself. It is whether anyone checked what kind of title the seller actually holds.

This guide walks the purchase from first offer to registered title, in the order it happens, with the checks that matter at each stage. It is written for a foreign buyer who has never bought in the DR before.

Can foreigners actually own property here?

Yes, and you will find that stated everywhere in absolute terms. The reality is slightly narrower than the marketing, and worth understanding precisely.

Foreign Investment Law 16-95 grants foreign investors the same rights and obligations Dominican law confers on nationals. That is national treatment, and it is real. But the same law, at Article 3(b), covers investment in Dominican real estate "with the limitations in force applicable to foreigners." So 16-95 does not by itself create unrestricted ownership rights. It puts you on the same footing as a Dominican buyer and leaves any existing restrictions standing.

In practice that distinction rarely bites, because the restrictions that exist apply to everyone rather than to foreigners specifically. You do not need a local partner, residency, or a Dominican company. You can hold title in your own name.

One caveat on the citation itself: a bill to repeal and replace Law 16-95 has been sitting in Congress since 2021 and had not passed as of mid-2026. The framework below is current, but it is under active legislative review.

What you cannot buy

A strip of land 60 metres wide, measured inland from the ordinary high-tide line, is public domain along the entire Dominican coast. Law 305 of 1968 defines this zona marítima and prohibits construction in it, including provisional structures, unless the Executive authorises a tourism or public-utility project. The rule applies to Dominicans and foreigners alike, and the statute preserves property rights that already existed when it was passed in 1968.

This is why a villa can be beachfront without being on the beach, and why any listing promising private ownership of sand deserves a hard look at the survey plan.

The document distinction that decides your risk

Before anything else in this guide, understand what you are being sold. Dominican registered property comes in two forms, and they are not equivalent.

Certificado de Título

Article 91 of Real Property Registry Law 108-05 defines the Certificado de Título as the official document issued and guaranteed by the Dominican State, evidencing the existence of a real right and its ownership. It attaches to a specific, individually designated, surveyed parcel. Boundaries are fixed. This is what you want.

Constancia Anotada

Also called a Carta Constancia or, informally, a título provisional. It is also a State-guaranteed official document evidencing a real property right, so it is not fake and not worthless. But it covers a portion of a larger parcel that has no individual cadastral designation and no approved individual survey plan.

What you own under a Constancia is a quantum of rights inside a bigger parcel rather than a bounded, located, individually identified plot. That is exactly where the trouble comes from. Boundaries are unfixed, adjoining claims can overlap, and the same underlying area can be sold more than once by different holders of rights in the same parcel.

Deslinde

The deslinde is the contradictory legal process that locates, determines and individualises rights held under a Constancia Anotada. It ends with an approved individual survey plan and a full Certificado de Título. Until that happens, the boundary risk stays live.

The purchase, step by step

Timings below are typical rather than guaranteed. The registry's workload and the state of the seller's title move them more than anything you control.

1. Offer and reservation

An accepted offer is usually followed by a short reservation agreement taking the property off the market. Keep this stage short and keep any reservation deposit small and refundable, because you have not yet checked anything.

2. The promise of sale

The contrato de promesa de venta is the real contract. It is signed with a deposit of roughly 10% and sets the price, the closing date, what is included, and the consequences of either side failing to complete.

The clause that matters most to you is the due diligence condition. It should let you recover your deposit in full if the title checks come back with anything material, and it should say who holds the money in the meantime. Sign nothing that makes the deposit non-refundable before due diligence is complete.

3. Due diligence

Your lawyer confirms at the Registro de Títulos that the seller is the registered owner, that the document is a Certificado de Título rather than a Constancia, that the survey is registered and current, and that the property carries no liens, mortgages, unpaid taxes, pending litigation or occupants.

On a new development, add the developer's corporate standing, the construction permits, the environmental licence, and whether the project has approved CONFOTUR status. That last one changes your closing costs materially, and we cover it in our CONFOTUR guide.

4. The deed of sale

Once due diligence clears, both parties sign the contrato de venta before a Dominican notary, who legalises the signatures. The balance of the price is paid at this point. The deed is the instrument that will be filed for registration, so the details on it, names, parcel designation, price, need to be right.

5. Transfer tax

The 3% transfer tax must be settled before the title can be transferred. DGII allows six months from the date of the deed, after which late-payment surcharges and indemnity interest apply. Do not let this drift, because the registry will not issue a new title without proof of payment.

6. Registration

The deed, the tax receipt, the seller's title and any power of attorney are filed at the Registro de Títulos, which cancels the old certificate and issues a new Certificado de Título in your name. Until that certificate exists, you have a contract, not registered ownership. Chase it.

Who holds your deposit

This is the least documented part of a Dominican purchase and the one most likely to cost a foreign buyer money.

There is no automatic third-party escrow of the kind a US or UK buyer will expect. In practice the deposit sits with the seller's lawyer, the developer, the agency, or an escrow account arranged specifically for the transaction. Those are very different levels of protection, and the promise of sale is where the difference gets settled.

Before you transfer anything, get three things in writing: which named account receives the funds, what conditions release them to the seller, and what triggers a return to you. If the seller resists putting release conditions in the contract, that is information.

Your own name, or a Dominican company?

Both are common. The right answer depends on what you plan to do with the property, and the tax treatment differs more than most buyers realise.

Hold in your own name and you are within the IPI regime, the annual property tax, which for individuals applies at 1% only on value above an exemption threshold that DGII adjusts each year. Hold through a Dominican company and IPI does not apply at all, because companies are not IPI taxpayers. They fall under the separate 1% asset tax instead, with no equivalent exemption threshold. A fideicomiso, a Dominican trust, is an IPI taxpayer but gets no threshold either, paying 1% on the full taxable value.

On exit, the gap widens. Since Law 30-26 took effect in June 2026, capital gains on real estate sold by individuals are taxed at a flat 10% as a single and final payment. Property held in a company is taxed inside the corporate income tax regime at 27%.

None of which makes personal ownership automatically correct. A company can be the right structure for multiple properties, for shared ownership, or for estate planning reasons that have nothing to do with tax. It is a question for an accountant who knows both jurisdictions, and worth asking before you sign the promise of sale rather than after.

Closing without flying in

You can complete the entire purchase remotely. There are two routes, and the second is simpler if you live near a Dominican consulate.

The first is a special power of attorney, a poder especial, executed before a notary where you live, then apostilled. The Dominican Republic has been party to the Hague Apostille Convention since 2009, so an apostille replaces consular legalisation. Registry rules then require the document to be translated into Spanish by a court-appointed interpreter, an intérprete judicial, before it is filed.

The second is to grant the power of attorney directly at a Dominican consulate, where the consular officer acts as a notary. Because the instrument is issued in Spanish by a Dominican authority, it needs no apostille and no translation. Consulates typically ask for your passport, a copy of the property title, the full name, ID and address of the person you are appointing, and one witness.

Either way the power of attorney is deposited at the registry alongside the deed. Give your lawyer a narrow, specific power rather than a general one, and name the property in it.

Does buying get you residency?

It can, though not automatically, and the threshold is higher than the price of a lot of the inventory.

Article 55 of Decree 631-11, the regulation implementing General Migration Law 285-04, sets a minimum investment of US$200,000 for permanent residency as an investor. The Dirección General de Migración still cites that figure and that decree on its current service page, with processing quoted at 45 business days.

One detail most guides omit: the decree does not say "real estate." Property qualifies because Law 16-95 counts investment in real property as a form of foreign investment. That means the purchase has to be formally registered as foreign investment, and the application requires a current registration certificate from ProDominicana. If you might want the residency route later, register the investment at the time of purchase rather than trying to reconstruct it years afterwards.

What the process costs

Budget roughly 4% to 5% of the price in closing costs if the transfer tax applies, less if the project carries CONFOTUR. The components:

The full breakdown, including the annual costs and what changes if you buy through a company, is in our closing costs guide.

That 3% is worth a second look. It is charged on the higher of the price stated in the deed and DGII's own valuation of the property, not on the contract price alone. Buyers are sometimes encouraged to declare a lower price to reduce the tax. It does not work, because DGII's valuation sets a floor, and an artificially low declared price becomes your acquisition cost for capital gains when you sell.

Where to start looking

Different parts of the country behave differently, and the buying process is identical in all of them. The resort corridor around Punta Cana and Bávaro is the most liquid and the most short-let driven. Las Terrenas and the Samaná peninsula skew European and lower density. The north coast around Cabarete, Sosúa and Puerto Plata is where the entry prices and the yields both sit lower. You can browse all of them from our Dominican Republic market page.