Which document proves that an apartment in Punta Cana is mine?

The certificado de título issued by the Registro de Títulos. Ley 108-05 makes registration constitutive of the right (Article 90) and defines the certificado de título as the official document, guaranteed by the State, that proves ownership (Article 91). The definitive sale contract signed before a notary does the job a deed does elsewhere, but ownership exists from the moment that contract is registered.

Does signing a promesa de venta make me the owner?

No. A promesa de venta commits both parties to close the transaction later and governs what happens in the meantime, but it does not transfer ownership. For an off-plan apartment the transfer comes with the definitive contract and its registration, after delivery — at Crystal Garden, scheduled for 2027.

Can a foreigner buy an apartment in Punta Cana?

Yes, on the same terms as a Dominican and with title in their own name. There is no nationality restriction and no residency requirement, and no prior approval has been needed since Decreto 21-98. The details of any individual transaction are worth reviewing with a Dominican attorney.

How can I check a property's legal status from abroad?

By requesting the Certificación del Estado Jurídico del Inmueble from the Registro de Títulos. The published fee is RD$1,000 per property; anyone with a legitimate interest may request it — foreign nationals with a passport and a second form of ID — and it can be requested remotely through the registry's Oficina Virtual or mobile app. It reflects the entries standing on the day it is issued.

What does an apartment at Crystal Garden cost?

Published prices run from $475,000 to $750,000, in US dollars, for residences in Cap Cana on the Las Iguanas golf course. The terms of each transaction are agreed in the contract and are not published on this page.

Buying process

Buying an Apartment in Punta Cana: Familiar Words That Mean Something Else Here

Published September 23, 2026 13 min read

A Dominican apartment purchase is conducted in Spanish from the first contract to the registry certificate, so a buyer who reads Spanish can go through the file without a translator. The catch is subtler than language. Several words that a buyer from Madrid, Mexico City, Bogotá or Buenos Aires uses without thinking name a different document, a different step or a different legal figure in the Dominican Republic. This guide, written first for Spanish-speaking buyers, goes through them one at a time from a single development — Crystal Garden, 196 residences on the Las Iguanas golf course in Cap Cana — so that when the paperwork arrives, you know exactly what you are reading.

Six words that change meaning when they reach Punta Cana

There is no single Spanish of property. Every Spanish-speaking country has built its own real-estate vocabulary, and anyone who has bought or rented at home arrives with that vocabulary switched on. Most of the time it works. Where it does not, nobody notices, because the word sounds right: you ask for the deed, someone hands you a document, and neither side realises they meant two different things.

The table sets out the six cases that trip up Spanish-speaking buyers most often. The sections after it explain each one and how it applies to an apartment at Crystal Garden.

What the word means at home, and what corresponds to it in a Dominican purchase
The word you would use at home	Where you hear it	What corresponds here
Escritura (deed)	Spain and much of Spanish America	The definitive sale contract, signed before a notary, plays that role; but what proves ownership is the certificado de título issued by the Registro de Títulos.
Arras, boleto de compraventa, promesa de compraventa	Spain, Argentina, Colombia	The contrato de promesa de venta: the document through which an off-plan apartment is bought. It does not transfer ownership.
Constancia	In everyday use, any certificate or receipt	Constancia anotada: a right to an unlocated share of land inside a larger parcel. The law bars issuing new ones, except on property already under a condominium regime.
Condominio	In everyday use, the building or the complex	A regime registered at the registry that turns one building into separately owned units, each with its own certificado de título.
IBI, predial	Spain; Mexico, Colombia and others	IPI, the Impuesto a la Propiedad Inmobiliaria: 1% a year, charged only on value above a threshold adjusted every year.
Gastos de comunidad, expensas, administración	Spain, Argentina, Colombia	The condominium's cuota de mantenimiento, governed by the reglamento de condominio.

Escritura and título: the paper that actually makes you the owner

In Spain and across much of Spanish America, ownership is associated with the escritura pública executed before a notary. The Dominican Republic has an equivalent — the definitive sale contract, signed before a notary — but the order of importance is different. Article 90 of Ley 108-05, the Real Estate Registry Law, makes registration constitutive: the right comes into being when it is registered, and the contents of the registry are presumed accurate. The document that proves it is the certificado de título, which under Article 91 is issued and guaranteed by the State itself.

The practical consequence is easy to remember. A signed contract, however well drafted, does not yet make you the owner; registration does. So the useful question is not "do you have the deed?" but "what does the Registro de Títulos show for this property today?"

That question has an official answer. The Certificación del Estado Jurídico del Inmueble, issued by the Registro de Títulos, sets out the property's legal status and the entries standing against it on the date it is issued. The registry publishes a fee of RD$1,000 per property; anyone with a legitimate interest may request it — a foreign national with a passport and a second form of ID — and it can be requested remotely through the registry's Oficina Virtual or its mobile app. Keep the two papers apart: a certificado de título reflects the registry at the moment it was printed, while the estado jurídico certification is the current reading.

Rendering of the open-plan living room and kitchen of a Crystal Garden residence, one of 196 apartments in Cap Cana scheduled for delivery in 2027.

Promesa de venta: how you buy an apartment that does not exist yet

An off-plan buyer does not begin by signing a sale. In Dominican practice a large share of property transactions start with a contrato de promesa de venta, and for a new-build apartment it is the central document for the whole of construction. The promesa governs the transaction from the start until the price has been paid in full and the definitive sale contract is signed; what it does not do is transfer ownership. That transfer comes later, with the definitive contract and its registration at the Registro de Títulos, once the building exists and the unit can be registered.

The name invites confusion depending on where the buyer comes from. In Spain the best-known preliminary document is the contrato de arras; in Argentina, the boleto de compraventa; in Colombia buyers speak of a promesa de compraventa, which is the closest match. None of these carries over unchanged into Dominican law: what happens if either side withdraws, if construction runs late or if the project changes depends on the wording of the promesa itself, not on what the word means where you live.

Three habits help. Ask for the promesa early enough to read all of it, and have a Dominican attorney review it before you sign rather than after. Check that it describes the unit precisely: its identification, its position in the building, its size and the basis on which that size is measured. And remember that the commercial terms of each transaction are agreed in that contract; this page does not publish them. At Crystal Garden, delivery is scheduled for 2027.

Condominio and constancia: two words that are registry concepts here

In everyday speech a condominio is simply the building or the residential complex. In the Dominican Republic it is also, and above all, a legal regime: Ley 5038 on Condominiums, of 1958, as modified by Ley 108-05, governs how one building is divided into homes that are owned separately. Under Article 101 of Ley 108-05 the condominium is constituted once it is registered at the relevant registro de títulos, and from then on each exclusive unit is registered with its own certificado de título. The land underneath, by contrast, is common and undivided among all the owners (Article 100, Paragraph I).

The other misleading word is constancia. Outside the registry a constancia is any certificate, and it sounds reassuring. In the Dominican registry, a constancia anotada shows how much land someone owns within a bigger parcel without that land ever having been pinned down on the ground: it is not a title to a bounded lot. Article 129 of Ley 108-05 prohibits issuing new constancias anotadas over registered property, except those over property already held under a condominium regime, and Article 100, Paragraph V, bars constituting a condominium over land held under constancias anotadas. Put another way, a properly registered condominium sits on land that has already been individualised.

For a building under construction the registry publishes a specific route: constituting a condominium regime "en proceso". That the route exists says nothing about where a particular project stands on it, and this page makes no such claim for Crystal Garden; it is a question for your attorney, who should ask for the declaración de condominio, the reglamento de condominio and the approved construction drawings. The papers reviewed in an occupied building — a certificate of maintenance payments and the minutes of recent owners' meetings — do not exist yet for a building delivering in 2027, and it helps to know that rather than wait for them.

IBI or predial: here it is called IPI, and CONFOTUR changes the sums

The taxes change names too. A property transfer is taxed at 3%, and every year the IPI, the Impuesto a la Propiedad Inmobiliaria, is charged at 1%. The IPI is not levied on the whole value, only on the part above a threshold that is adjusted every year; anyone used to Spain's IBI or the predial in Mexico or Colombia should keep that difference of basis in mind before running numbers.

Both taxes are affected by Ley 158-01 on the Promotion of Tourism Development, known as CONFOTUR, enacted in 2001 and amended by Ley 195-13 in 2013. For qualifying projects it exempts first buyers from the transfer tax and from the IPI, and the law provides a fifteen-year IPI exemption counted from the completion of construction. Three qualifications matter as much as the exemption itself:

It is not automatic. It has to be applied for and recorded on the title.
It belongs to the buyer who purchases from the developer. Resale is excluded, so the benefit does not travel with the property when it changes hands.
How it applies is individual. How it lands on a particular unit and owner is a question for your attorney, not a conclusion to draw from a brochure.

Crystal Garden's own page publishes the CONFOTUR exemption for its residences. What is worth confirming in writing is that the application and its recording on the title are part of the closing file.

3% Transfer tax, from which CONFOTUR exempts the first buyer

1% Annual IPI, charged only on value above the threshold

15 years IPI exemption the law provides for qualifying projects

Size: square feet, and two figures for the same home

Much of the Spanish-speaking world thinks about homes in another unit. This site publishes in square feet, and before converting anything there is an earlier question to settle: what the figure measures. Crystal Garden uses two bases and says so. The sizes quoted in its text are interior: from about 920 sq ft for a two-bedroom to about 1,360 sq ft for a three-bedroom, before terraces are added. The plan cards, on the other hand, show total constructed area, interior plus terraces. That is why the same three-bedroom, with 1,360 sq ft of interior, appears on its plan card at roughly 2,250 sq ft in total.

Neither figure is wrong; they answer different questions. The mistake is comparing one with the other, or comparing the total area in one listing with the interior area in another. If you convert the figures into the unit you use at home, always convert the same basis, and ask for the promesa de venta to state which of the two describes your unit.

Extranjero: the word that changes nothing in this purchase

Many buyers from Latin America and Spain ask first whether they can buy as foreigners. The answer is short: a foreign national may acquire property in the Dominican Republic and register it in their own name on the same terms as a Dominican, with full freehold title. There is no nationality restriction, no residency requirement and no approval step.

It was not always so, which is why the doubt still circulates. Until 1998 a foreign buyer needed the President's approval in advance, a requirement dating from Decreto 2543 of 1945; Decreto 21-98, dated 8 January 1998, ended it. What survives is a statistical tally the registry offices keep on their own account, not something the buyer has to do. The specific shape of your own transaction — how it is titled, with which documents, on what timetable — is a matter for your Dominican attorney, not something this page can settle for you.

Crystal Garden, read with this vocabulary

Applied to this development, the words above put the purchase in order:

What is being bought. One of Crystal Garden's 196 residences in Cap Cana, on the Las Iguanas golf course, with published prices in US dollars from $475,000 to $750,000.
Under which contract. During construction, a promesa de venta; ownership arrives with the definitive contract and its registration once the building is delivered, scheduled for 2027.
With which title. One certificado de título per unit, within a registered condominium regime. Where the project stands on that route is the first question for your attorney.
With which taxes. Those described by CONFOTUR, whose exemption the project's page publishes — always applied for and recorded.
With which size. Interior or total constructed, stated explicitly.

The location, too, is better described with figures than adjectives: Juanillo and Playa Caracol are 8 minutes away by car and Punta Cana International Airport around 20 minutes. If you want to review the file for a specific unit, the form on the home page is the place to start.

Common questions

Which document proves that an apartment in Punta Cana is mine?: The certificado de título issued by the Registro de Títulos. Ley 108-05 makes registration constitutive of the right (Article 90) and defines the certificado de título as the official document, guaranteed by the State, that proves ownership (Article 91). The definitive sale contract signed before a notary does the job a deed does elsewhere, but ownership exists from the moment that contract is registered.
Does signing a promesa de venta make me the owner?: No. A promesa de venta commits both parties to close the transaction later and governs what happens in the meantime, but it does not transfer ownership. For an off-plan apartment the transfer comes with the definitive contract and its registration, after delivery — at Crystal Garden, scheduled for 2027.
Can a foreigner buy an apartment in Punta Cana?: Yes, on the same terms as a Dominican and with title in their own name. There is no nationality restriction and no residency requirement, and no prior approval has been needed since Decreto 21-98. The details of any individual transaction are worth reviewing with a Dominican attorney.
How can I check a property's legal status from abroad?: By requesting the Certificación del Estado Jurídico del Inmueble from the Registro de Títulos. The published fee is RD$1,000 per property; anyone with a legitimate interest may request it — foreign nationals with a passport and a second form of ID — and it can be requested remotely through the registry's Oficina Virtual or mobile app. It reflects the entries standing on the day it is issued.
What does an apartment at Crystal Garden cost?: Published prices run from $475,000 to $750,000, in US dollars, for residences in Cap Cana on the Las Iguanas golf course. The terms of each transaction are agreed in the contract and are not published on this page.