Q: Purchased 9 acre property w/ house.We are interested to subdivide a parcel off to sell as lot.What is req. process?

A: In general terms, you should start by procuring either a Title Study or a Registry Certification from the Property Registry, to certify that you appear as owner of the real estate property. Next, you need to retain the professional services of a civil engineer, who'll prepare a plot plan ("plano de mensura") and issue a sworn measurement statement ("certificacion de mensura"). If any part of the parcel subdivide requires access or segregation of servitudes, the municipality of Rincon may need to grant authorization and may need to appear for signing the deed, accepting said servitudes. The plot plan and sworn measurement statement are submitted to the Office of General Permits ("OGPe", by its Spanish acronym), who'll issue a resolution authorizing the seggregation, assuming all the documents are in order. As a rule, the engineer can help with procuring the permits.

Once the OGPe Resolution, a notary in Puerto Rico prepares and authorizes the segregation deed, which must be signed by all of the owners of the property. A certified copy of the segregation deed is then filed with the Puerto Rico Property Registry. When each subplot has been assigned its own lot number ("número de finca"), the Municipal Income Collections Center ("CRIM", by its Spanish acronym) must be notified to assign individual property identification numbers (PINs) to each subplot. At that point in time, you may sell the individual subplots.