Can there be a property registration without a property?

By: Andrea Pieschacón

Traditionally, Colombia's property registry has rested on a simple relationship: each real estate unit has one title record (matrícula inmobiliaria) where the legal history of that property is recorded. The recent regulation of the Accessory Real Right of Surface (Derecho Real Accesorio de Superficie, DRS), however, introduces a registry figure that calls for rethinking that logic.

What is the Accessory Real Right of Surface?

The DRS allows a public entity that owns a fiscal or public-use property to grant a third party, called the surface holder (superficiario), a right to build and operate, at its own cost and risk, on a usable area, without the entity losing ownership of the underlying property. It is a contractual, transferable and onerous right, with a maximum term, including extensions, of 80 years (Article 284 of Law 2294 of 2023).

Put simply, the entity keeps ownership of the property, while the surface holder may temporarily develop and operate buildings on it.

The DRS is created by a contract executed as a public deed and is registered as an accessory right in the title record of the underlying property. But how are the buildings arising from that right identified in the registry? The regulation adds a further figure: the property sub-folio (subfolio inmobiliario).

What is the difference between a title record and a sub-folio?

Law 1579 of 2012 provides that each real estate unit is assigned a single title record, defined as the folio where the acts, contracts and decisions affecting a property are registered (Articles 3 and 8).

Decree 1037 of 2026 defines the sub-folio as a derived, accessory record of the underlying property's title record. It makes it possible to identify in the registry the usable area and, where applicable, the units making up the buildings developed under the DRS, called secondary surface units (Article 2.2.5.8.1.7 of Decree 1077 of 2015).

So no new title record is opened for these units: sub-folios are enabled, each with its own identification and autonomous registry handling, although subordinate to the DRS that gives rise to them.

What does that registry autonomy mean?

The difference is not merely formal. Transfers, liens, restrictions and precautionary measures over the surface units can be registered in the sub-folios without carrying them over to the underlying property's title record. As many sub-folios may be enabled as units are identified (Article 284 of Law 2294 of 2023 and Articles 2.2.5.8.6.9 to 2.2.5.8.6.11 of Decree 1077 of 2015).

Nor does this individualization require a horizontal property (condominium) regime: while under that regime private units have independent title records, here accessory sub-folios apply.

The autonomy has one essential limit: it is temporary. When the DRS ends, the sub-folios cease to have effect, together with their liens, restrictions and precautionary measures, and the buildings become part of the underlying property.

The DRS thus breaks an association that seemed natural: that having one's own property registration requires an independent property. Sub-folios show this is not always so: they allow autonomous but temporary identification and registry handling, since they are born with the DRS and disappear when it ends.

Originally published in Spanish in the Consultorio section of Asuntos Legales on August 1, 2026.