Dominio and Condominio: What the Words Tell You About What You Own
The Latin root says everything.
Dominium — from dominus, lord, master, one who commands. In Roman law it meant absolute power over a thing: to use it, enjoy it, transform it, destroy it, or transfer it without asking permission from anyone. When the Costa Rican Civil Code codifies private property in Article 2506 as “el derecho de gozar y disponer de una cosa sin más limitaciones que las establecidas por la ley” — the right to enjoy and dispose of a thing with no limitations beyond those established by law — it is speaking in an unbroken line from Rome. The owner commands. The property obeys.
Condominium adds a single syllable: con. Together. With others. Co-lordship. Shared mastery over the same thing. And in that syllable, everything changes.
What Condominium Ownership Actually Means
In Costa Rica, propiedad en condominio is governed by the Ley Reguladora de la Propiedad en Condominio, Law No. 7933. Under this framework, a real property development is legally divided into two categories that coexist on the same land:
Private units — the portion that belongs exclusively to you. Your home, your apartment, your commercial space. Registered in your name at the National Registry with a dedicated finca number.
Common areas — the shared infrastructure that makes the development function: roads, perimeter walls, green areas, pools, lobbies, drainage, security gates, water systems. These belong to all unit owners simultaneously, in proportional undivided shares. No single owner controls them. All owners pay for them.
This is, on paper, a clean arrangement. In practice, it is the source of almost every dispute that comes through a real estate lawyer’s office.
The Restrictions That Come With the Co
Co-Owning a condominium unit does not mean owning it freely. The unit comes embedded in a legal structure that was created before you arrived and that will persist after you leave.
The reglamento interno — the internal regulations — governs daily life within the condominium. It can restrict the colors you paint your facade, the hours your contractors may work, whether you may rent your unit short-term, how many vehicles you park, what species of dog you may keep, and whether you may modify your windows. These restrictions are legally enforceable. You accepted them when you signed the purchase agreement, whether or not you read them.
The assembly of owners makes binding decisions by majority vote. If the assembly votes to increase monthly maintenance fees, you pay. If it votes to repave the road at a cost divided among all owners, you pay your proportional share. If it votes to prohibit Airbnb rentals throughout the development, your short-term rental income disappears — by a vote you may have lost.
The administrator — whether an individual or a management company — has the authority to enforce the reglamento, call assemblies, manage common area funds, and in some cases impose fines. If you fall behind on maintenance fees, your debt becomes a lien against your unit in the Registry. A buyer conducting due diligence will find it.
These are not theoretical inconveniences. They are the practical daily reality of condominium ownership, and they are built into the structure by law.
Gated Communities, Modern Developments, and the Boom You Are Buying Into
Horizontal condominium developments, hippie communities, gated communities, residential master plans, beachfront urbanizaciones — are the dominant form of new real estate development in Costa Rica’s most active coastal markets. Santa Teresa, Nosara, Tamarindo, Uvita, Jaco, Manuel Antonio: if a developer is building a community of homes or lots with shared infrastructure, it is almost certainly doing so under a condominium regime.
The reason is practical. A condominium regime allows the developer to sell individual units while maintaining shared control over roads, water systems, and common areas through the reglamento. It provides a legal mechanism to collect maintenance fees from all owners. It creates the governance structure that allows a private community to function like a small municipality.
For buyers, these communities offer real value — professional management, maintained roads, security, shared amenities, and a coherent aesthetic. The international market in Costa Rica has come to expect them.
But when you buy into one of these developments, you are not just buying land. You are buying a set of legal relationships with every other owner in the project, with the developer’s original reglamento, and with the ongoing decisions of an assembly you share with strangers.
The Problem Nobody Warns You About: Private Land Sold With Community Rules Attached
This is where it gets dangerous — and where buyers lose money.
Creating a proper condominium regime in Costa Rica is not cheap or fast. The process requires architectural plans, regulatory approvals from INVU and the municipality, environmental clearances, a notarial deed constituting the condominium, registration of the master plan at the National Registry, and the formal establishment of a governance structure. For a developer working quickly in a hot coastal market — or a landowner subdividing a few lots to sell to foreign buyers — this process is expensive, slow, and complicated. So many of them skip it entirely.
Instead, they sell the lots as private property — independent fincas with clean individual titles — and attach a separate document to the sale. Call it what they like: community norms, development guidelines, neighborhood rules, architectural standards. The intent is the same: to impose the appearance of a managed community on buyers, charge a premium for the lifestyle it implies, and retain control over how neighbors use their land — without bearing the legal and financial cost of actually creating the structure that would make any of that enforceable.
There is a practice in Costa Rica’s real estate market, particularly in fast-developing coastal areas, where developers or sellers sell privately titled lots — genuine fincas with individual Registry numbers and no condominium master plan — while simultaneously handing buyers a document called “community norms,” “neighborhood rules,” “development guidelines,” or some variation of the same idea. These documents purport to restrict what you can build, what colors you can use, what commercial activities you may operate, and sometimes even whether you may sell or rent freely.
Buyers sign them. They believe they are buying into a managed community with enforceable standards. Sometimes they paid a premium for exactly that.
Then they discover what the document actually is.
If the land is privately titled and not registered under a condominium regime, those rules have no binding legal force over the property. There is no assembly. There is no administrator with legal authority. There is no reglamento registered at the National Registry. There is no Law 7933 governing the structure. What the buyer received was a private contract — binding between the two parties who signed it, perhaps, but not a property right that runs with the land, not enforceable against future buyers, and not backed by any legal governance structure that gives it teeth.
Private means private. The Civil Code and the Constitution do not create an exception for developers who prefer that their former neighbors maintain a certain aesthetic. A seller cannot unilaterally impose perpetual governance obligations on private property through a PDF of community guidelines. Costa Rican law does not recognize informal covenants that run with the land the way some common law jurisdictions do. If it is not a condominium, it is not a condominium — and the rules that come with the sale contract do not transform it into one.
What the Condominium Cannot Do: The Limits of the Con
Even when the structure is properly constituted — a real condominium under Law 7933 — there is a constitutional floor that no reglamento can breach.
Article 45 of the Costa Rican Constitution is absolute: “La propiedad es inviolable.” Private property is inviolable. The State may only expropriate for reasons of public necessity or social utility, with prior payment of fair compensation, and following due process. A condominium reglamento, a developer’s community guidelines, a neighborhood association, or a majority assembly vote — none of these have such power.
A reglamento can tell you that you may not rent your unit on Airbnb. It cannot take your unit away because you tried. An assembly can vote to increase fees. It cannot vote to confiscate your unit because you voted against the increase. A developer can write a reglamento that restricts facade colors. The developer cannot write one that permanently prevents you from selling to a buyer of your choice.
The line is this: restrictions on use are enforceable within the legitimate framework of Law 7933. Restrictions that would amount to expropriation — that eliminate your property rights rather than regulate them — are unconstitutional and void. And restrictions imposed on private property outside of a properly constituted condominium regime are, in most cases, simply unenforceable against the land itself.
The Questions You Must Ask Before You Sign
Whether you are buying a condominium unit in a new coastal development or a private lot in what someone is calling a “community,” the questions are the same — and the answers are what determine whether what you are buying is what you think you are buying.
Is this property registered as a finca filial under a condominium master plan, or as an independent private finca? If it is a condominium unit, what does the reglamento actually say — not what the sales agent summarized, but what the document says? Are the fees current? Is the administration functioning? Has the assembly made any resolutions that affect your intended use?
If it is private land, what is the legal basis for any “community rules” being presented to you? Are they registered anywhere? Are they enforceable against future buyers, or only against the person who signed them? Who has the authority to enforce them, and what remedy do they actually have?
Peninsula Counsels answers these questions as part of every real estate due diligence. We read the Registry. We review the reglamento. We assess what is legally enforceable and what is wishful thinking dressed up in official-looking language.
Private means private. Before you sign, make sure you know exactly which one you have.