Check a lot's permitted use before buying in Buenos Aires

A lot is advertised with its area, its frontage, a price per square meter and a declared use. That is enough to compare offers. It is not enough to know whether the logistics shed, the storage warehouse or the branch office you have in mind can legally work there. That depends on the land use rules for the parcel, and in Argentina those rules are set by each jurisdiction, and within it by the ordinance or code that governs that land.

There are three separate questions, and each one has its own documents: what use is assigned to the land and with what restrictions; who owns the property and what its cadastral area and identification are; and which hazards and environmental conditions affect the site. A seller can answer all three in good faith. An investment needs the public authority to answer them in writing.

• Use and rules: the report or certificate from the planning authority, city or municipal.
• Title and encumbrances: the title report from the relevant Property Registry.
• Geometry and identification: in the province, the ARBA cadastral report with district, account number, cadastral key and areas.
• Hazards and environment: the official flood hazard maps and, for certain activities, the environmental certificate or declaration.

Order matters. If the permitted use rules out your activity, no other document will save the deal. If the use works, title, cadastral and hazard checks decide what the project really costs. On PlataStar's lots for sale a listing may carry a land use field, and that field starts the verification. It never replaces it.

In the city, the rulebook is the Código Urbanístico (Urban Code), which orders the urban fabric, the land uses and the public burdens of every parcel. Uses are grouped into four Areas of Use Mix (Low Mix 1, Medium Mix A 2, Medium Mix B 3 and High Mix 4), and Land Use Chart No. 3.3 (art. 3.3.2) states, for each line of business, in which areas it is allowed. How the permit is processed once the lot is chosen is in commercial permits in Buenos Aires City.

Productive and industrial activities have their own chart, No. 3.11.2. The Code allows them across the whole city, but subjects them to that chart, to environmental and licensing rules and to building rules. In Low Mix areas (1), the authority in charge of urban interpretation decides the suitability of the location case by case, and when a unit of use exceeds 500 m2 the Council for the Urban and Environmental Plan decides on the suitability of the location.

Informe Urbanístico: the document to request today

The official procedure for learning what a parcel allows is called Informe Urbanístico (urban report). The Code defines it as a document that reports the land uses, urban fabric and public burdens applicable to the parcel under the Code in force at the date of the request, and it states plainly that the document is not a certification and is not binding. It records a reading of the rules at a point in time, and that reading is what the project professionals then work with.

You file the request in the remote procedures system (TAD) with a miBA account at level 3. The mandatory documents include the request data and the owner's data, a morphological consultation form, the professional's details, the professional engagement for the person responsible for the preliminary design, a written statement of the reason for the request, an axonometry of the project with its immediate neighbors and street level renders. Among the additional documents sits a current title report, issued less than 90 days earlier. The procedure costs 150 Unidades Tarifarias under the current fee law, paid through the single smart bill system.

As a result, the urban morphology operations unit produces a technical report and the directorate issues a document stating the land uses, urban fabric and public burdens applicable to the parcel under the Code in force at the date of the request.

Conforming and non-conforming use

The same Code, in article 2.2, provides for the Constancia de Uso Conforme y No Conforme (certificate of conforming and non-conforming use). A conforming use is the use actually carried on at the parcel under the rules in force, and that status is recorded in every administrative act issued about the property and in its cadastral documentation. A non-conforming use is an activity that was authorized under older rules and does not meet the current land use rules. The difference is practical: the Code only allows non-conforming uses to expand in the cases it lists, and productive and industrial activities in that position can use the recovery route in article 3.11.1 only if they are not marked NPC (not permitted in the City) in Chart 3.11.2. That route requires Industrial Activities Registry inscription and the environmental fitness certificate procedure, with professional endorsement from a public university academic unit competent in industrial and/or urban planning matters.

Outside the city, the framework is Decree-Law 8912/77, which governs provincial land ordering and regulates the use, occupation, subdivision and servicing of land. The law defines land use as the purpose assigned to a territory in relation to the human activities carried on, or most likely to be carried on, in it, and it requires that use to be classified as urban, rural or specific.

Primary responsibility for land ordering sits with the municipality. Each district delimits its areas and zones through the instrument the law calls zoning by uses, which sets rules for land use, occupation and subdivision, basic infrastructure and built form. The corresponding ordinances are passed once the stages of the plan have been approved by the provincial executive, which checks their alignment with provincial policy and with neighboring districts. So the question is not what the law says about your lot. It is which zoning ordinance applies in that district, and when it was passed.

Every zone must be assigned determined uses, and doing so sets the restrictions on how those uses are exercised: type of use, extent of land occupation (site coverage), intensity of land occupation (floor area ratio) and density where relevant, subdivision, and infrastructure and community facilities. Within each zone, all mutually compatible uses are allowed, and uses that are a nuisance, harmful or dangerous are located in special districts with a minimum separation based on how dangerous or polluting they are.

Industry, parcels and dimensions

The law is explicit about industry. Locating an industrial zone means weighing its effects on the environment, its connections to the main road network, the supply of electricity, industrial drainage and drinking water. Nuisance, harmful or dangerous industries must be located in industrial zones in the complementary or rural area, surrounded by forest belts, and an industrial park is defined as the sector of that zone equipped with the infrastructure, facilities and public services needed to host grouped industries. If that is the direction of your search, industrial parks in Greater Buenos Aires explains what a grouping is under provincial law, where to check that one exists and what to review before signing.

The law also sets minimum parcel dimensions: municipal subdivision rules may not set smaller dimensions, and these apply where the municipality has no specific rules (art. 51):

The table reproduces the general rule of art. 52. On land facing the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic, up to 5 km inland, the law sets higher minima (15/400, 20/500, 25/750 and 30/900 m), and for extra-urban residential land, 20 m width and 600 m2.

The municipal certificate

Each municipality issues its own zoning or urban planning certificate, under its own name and scope. The one from the Municipality of San Miguel, for example, is defined as a transcription of the applicable rule as to zoning (area, sub-area, zone, restrictions and numeric and morphological indicators) and the other municipal land ordering and use rules that apply alongside it. The title holder or an attorney requests it, the cadastral office checks the data first and the planning office second, and the published processing time is 10 business days with a fee set by the current tax ordinance.

Two features of the San Miguel certificate. First, it expires: it is valid for one year, and the administration stands by what it certified until that date even if the rules change. Second, it is not an approval of your project: construction and licensing procedures run separately. The municipality itself recommends requesting it before deciding on an investment, which is exactly when you need it.

The planning rules tell you what the land allows. The registry and the cadastral record tell you who owns the property, which encumbrances sit on it, and what shape and area it has. These are separate checks and neither one replaces the other.

In the Province of Buenos Aires, the Informe de dominio (Acto 752) from the Property Registry is a certificate that publicizes the legal status of the property as at the date the request is filed. The registry itself states that the report has purely publicizing effects and creates no reservation of priority. It may be requested by the holder of a registered right, including an owner asking about their own property without a professional, and also by lawyers, notaries, attorneys, engineers, surveyors, auctioneers, architects and accountants. You file it through the virtual desk as a subscriber and the report is issued electronically with a digital signature, in standard, urgent and same-day modes.

In Buenos Aires City, registry publicity comes from the city Property Registry, and the additional documentation for the Informe Urbanístico lists a current title report (90 days from issue). Confirm which documents apply to your file. Keep that shelf life in mind: an old report describes a state that may have changed.

On the cadastral side, in the Province of Buenos Aires the ARBA Informe Catastral (cadastral report) states the data of a parcel: district, account number, cadastral key and areas. You request it online, for a fee, through a registered professional (a surveyor, a notary or an auctioneer, for instance) or the account holder or their representative; the system asks for a tax identification key and credited funds.

That report sets up the comparison that closes this stage: the area and cadastral key in the cadastral record against the meters in the ad and the area in the deed, and the property's registry number against the owner named in the title. Where the numbers disagree, that is the moment to ask for explanations, before any money is held. If the land is really agricultural ground, the checks are different and they are covered in buying a farm in Argentina.

An allowed use on land without infrastructure is a more expensive project, and in some cases an impossible one. The rules treat services as an input, not as a detail of construction.

In Buenos Aires City, article 2.3 of the Código Urbanístico covers utilities for new works: the service companies certify that the infrastructure they offer is enough to absorb the extra demand the work creates without degrading service quality, under the requirements of the building rules. That certificate joins the project file, and it pays to know who issues it and what capacity it offers before fixing the size of the building.

In the Province of Buenos Aires, Decree-Law 8912 defines the serviced urban sub-area by the presence of services: sectors served at minimum with electricity, paving, running water and sewers. Subdividing blocks or large parcels into new lots requires securing a supply of drinking water and ensuring that excreta disposal does not contaminate the water source. And where the intended use is industrial, the law directs attention to connections with the main road network, electricity supply, industrial drainage and drinking water as siting criteria.

• Electricity: the capacity available on the feeder and the capacity your activity needs, requested in writing from the relevant distributor.
• Water and sewers: the utility covering the area, and for industry, whether the system can receive the activity’s effluents.

Water is the constraint that reshapes a land project most in the metropolitan area, and the two jurisdictions regulate it separately.

In Buenos Aires City, flood risk sits inside the Código Urbanístico. The Code refers to a plan delimiting flood risk sectors and to another delimiting flood risk prevention areas, and the consequences are concrete: the Council for the Urban and Environmental Plan may authorize lowering ground floor level only on parcels that are not located in flood risk sectors. For any work, extension or change of use, flood risk prevention is met through environmental commitment tools the Code lists: slowing down rainwater, infiltration, collection and reuse, and absorbent or semi-absorbent surfaces over natural ground or a slab.

In the Province of Buenos Aires, the Autoridad del Agua (water authority) publishes hazard maps by basin. They show the probability that a zone floods and are classified in four categories: very high, high, medium and low or none. A map is published for each covered basin, with its GIS viewer and downloadable layer: confirm that the lot's basin is among them. The same body works on implementing the Water Code (Law 12.257).

On the environmental side, provincial Law 11.723 requires every project of works or activities that produce, or may produce, a negative effect on the environment or natural resources to obtain a Declaración de Impacto Ambiental (environmental impact declaration), issued by the provincial or municipal environmental authority under the categories set by regulation. The project holder submits an environmental impact assessment, and the declaration may approve the work, approve it with conditions, or oppose it. Declarations issued are copied to the provincial environmental information system and can be consulted at the office that issued them. If a project starts without the prior declaration, the law provides for its suspension.

In Buenos Aires City, the recovery route in article 3.11.1 excludes NPC activities in Chart 3.11.2. It requires industrial registration and the environmental fitness certificate procedure with professional endorsement from a public university academic unit competent in industrial and/or urban planning matters.

On PlataStar, a lot listing may show a land use field with one of four values: commercial, industrial, rural or mixed, when declared or inferable. Without evidence of use, the field stays absent: that does not mean every activity is allowed. The person publishing the property declares it; on listings that arrive from other sources, PlataStar deduces it from the property type and the text, so confirm it.

Next to the use, a listing may show a zoning designation, and that field is even stricter: it accepts only recognizable planning designations, such as zone codes or named industrial zones, and it drops marketing prose. In the lots for sale results table, lots compare by use, area, price per area, frontage and zoning.

The land use field is the right first filter when you are comparing ten lots, and the certificate is the right next step for the two or three that survive. Nothing shown in a listing replaces the city's urban report, the provincial municipal certificate or a notary's reading of the title.

Each step removes questions from the next one.

1. Location and jurisdiction

   Establish whether the lot is in the city or in a Greater Buenos Aires district, and which one. The applicable rules and the certifying body follow from that.

2. Rules and permitted use

   In the city, request the Informe Urbanístico with the documents the procedure requires. In the province, request the municipal zoning or urban planning certificate and note the ordinance and its date.

3. Title

   Request the title report from the relevant registry and review the owner, the encumbrances and the age of the report.

4. Cadastral record

   In the province, request the ARBA cadastral report and compare cadastral key, area and frontage with the listing and with the deed.

5. Hazards and environment

   Check the official hazard maps for the basin and, in the city, the parcel location relative to flood risk sectors. Where the activity may affect the environment, add the certificate or declaration that applies.

6. Services

   Request in writing the availability of electricity, water and sewers for the activity and the capacity you need.

7. Professional review

   With the reports in hand, the notary, lawyer or accountant involved reviews the deal together with the project professionals.