What It Is, When It Must Happen, and Why It Can’t Be an Afterthought
If you’re developing a residential or commercial project in Costa Rica with the intention of selling individual units — homes, lots, apartments — you’ve probably heard the term “condominium constitution” or “condominium regime.” What many developers don’t realize is that this is not a last-minute administrative formality. It’s a legal and technical decision that must be planned from the earliest stages of the project, and it can determine whether your development sells smoothly or gets stuck in legal bottlenecks.
What is the constitutive deed of a condominium?
The constitutive deed is the public document, executed before a notary, that legally creates the condominium ownership regime over a property. Once registered with the National Registry, a single parent property (finca matriz) is transformed into multiple individual filial units (fincas filiales) — independent units with their own registry folio, each capable of being sold, mortgaged, or transferred separately — plus the common areas, which remain under shared ownership of all unit owners.
This deed, required under Costa Rica’s Condominium Property Regulation Law (Law No. 7933), must contain at minimum:
- A description of the parent property and each filial unit, with their respective surveyed plans
- The co-ownership coefficient of each unit, which determines its proportional share of common areas and common expenses
- Identification of the common areas (access roads, green zones, recreational areas, treatment systems, etc.)
- The Condominium Regulations governing coexistence, administration, and maintenance
Without this deed properly registered, independent filial units do not legally exist. No matter how many homes you’ve built on the land, you legally still hold one single large property.
When should this be done? The answer that surprises most developers
This is the point most frequently misunderstood: condominium constitution is not something done at the end of construction. It happens in parallel with it — and in many cases, before physical construction even breaks ground.
This isn’t incidental — it’s a strategic decision. By constituting the condominium regime early, based on plans approved by the relevant authority (Municipality, INVU, as applicable), the developer can:
- Sell individual filial units from the pre-sale stage, before construction is finished
- Allow buyers to secure individual bank financing on their specific unit — something a bank cannot lend against on an undivided parent property
- Transfer ownership of each unit independently as it sells, without waiting for the entire project to be completed
Waiting until construction is finished to constitute the condominium delays sales, complicates buyer financing, and can force costly amendments if the built structure doesn’t exactly match what was originally planned.
As is common practice in real condominium regulations, the developer typically covers the condominium’s operating costs throughout the entire construction process, funding maintenance fees until each filial unit is actually transferred to its new owner. This confirms that the legal regime and the physical progress of the project move together — not in sequence.
Who is this process for?
This is not something the end buyer needs to think about — it’s the developer’s or project promoter’s responsibility. The developer:
- Defines the overall design and operational systems (electricity, water, telecommunications)
- Approves the plans that will support the constitutive deed
- Retains control of condominium administration while holding a significant share of the co-ownership coefficient
- Absorbs the cost of constituting the regime as part of the project’s development cost, not as a post-sale expense
If you’re a developer with construction plans already advanced and you haven’t yet spoken with your legal team about the condominium regime, now is the right time — or you may already be behind schedule.
How are legal fees calculated?
Fees for constituting a condominium are not a fixed or standard amount across projects. They depend on variables such as the property’s value, the number of filial units being segregated, the complexity of the plans and regulations, and processing time with the National Registry. A reference professional fee schedule exists for notarial services in Costa Rica, but in practice each project requires a specific quote based on its actual scope.
Our recommendation: request a formal quote before finalizing construction plans, so legal costs are built into the project’s financial structure from the start rather than showing up as a surprise at the end.
Why a properly constituted condominium regime matters
A correctly constituted condominium isn’t just a legal requirement — it’s what makes your project sellable:
- Provides legal certainty to each buyer about exactly what they’re purchasing
- Enables individual bank financing, expanding your pool of potential buyers
- Protects the project’s long-term value through clear regulations on maintenance, common expenses, and use of shared areas
- Prevents future disputes between owners, keeping them from landing on your desk as a developer years after the last unit was sold
Integrated work: technical and legal teams, not separate tracks
The most common mistake we see is treating the technical side (surveying, plot plans, engineering) and the legal side (constitutive deed, regulations, registration) as independent processes that get coordinated at the end. They shouldn’t be.
Co-ownership coefficients are calculated based on the value of each filial unit — a figure that depends directly on the technical design and plans of the project. A design change made after the deed has already been granted requires amending it, with the cost and delay that involves. That’s why the legal team needs to be involved from the moment the preliminary project is defined, working alongside engineers, surveyors, and architects — not after the plans are already locked in.
A developer who brings their attorney in at the design stage avoids redoing work, shortens the time between the construction permit and the first sale, and reaches pre-sale with a solid legal structure instead of just a promise.
Developing a project that will require a condominium regime? At MAGMA Legal, we work alongside developers from the design stage through registration, in close coordination with your technical team. Let’s talk about your project.