The real estate team at Rodrigo, Elías & Medrano Abogados shares its fourth newsletter, featuring the most notable real estate regulations, resolutions, and opinions for the month of June.
The deadline for formalizing rural properties and lands designated by regional governments is extended.
On June 7, 2025, Law No. 32371 was published in the Official Gazette «El Peruano.» This law allows holders of rural properties owned by the State, used entirely for agricultural activities, or uncultivated lands owned by the State for the same purpose, to regularize their status with regional governments, provided that said possession began before December 31, 2020.
In the case of rural properties, possession must have been public, peaceful, and continuous. Regularization is not subject to any payment, except for the payment of the corresponding fees. For its part, the regularization of the designated vacant lands will be carried out through the direct allocation procedure, upon payment of the tariff value of the land.
The law also establishes that the existence of pending or concluded judicial proceedings does not constitute an impediment to regional governments assuming ownership for operational reasons and formalizing the property in favor of the possessors.
The Social Interest Housing Law is enacted.
On June 12, 2025, Law No. 32379, which enacts the Social Interest Housing Law (VIS), was published in the Official Gazette «El Peruano.» VIS is the type of housing promoted by the State to reduce the qualitative and quantitative deficit. The Ministry of Housing, Construction, and Sanitation (MVCS) establishes its characteristics and technical components, as well as the maximum values for housing units.
The new law replicates some of the provisions established in Supreme Decree No. 005-2025-VIVIENDA, assigns sanctioning authority to the MVCS (Ministry of Housing and Urban Development) and establishes the conditions for the acquisition of these homes by consumers. The law addresses the conditions of the projects, the various modalities and promotion of VIS (Visual Housing and Urban Development), and the conditions for accessing VIS. Among the latter, the interested party must not be the owner or holder of a real right to the surface of a home, land, or independent residential space, nor must have been a beneficiary of any other state housing support.
Draft amendment to the Regulations of Law No. 29151 is published.
On June 20, 2025, Resolution No. 159-2025-VIVIENDA was published in the Official Gazette «El Peruano.» This regulation provides for the publication of the draft Supreme Decree amending the Regulations of Law No. 29151. The draft establishes the requirements for the SBN to assume ownership of state-owned properties of national character and scope, as well as certain requirements, clarifications, and deadline extensions for reservation procedures, assumption of ownership, appropriation for use, transfer for use, usufructs, among other administrative and disposition acts.
Likewise, the law regulates the possibility for the State and public entities that meet the requirements for acquisitive prescription of ownership, and the competent organizational unit of the entity, to prepare the supporting report and submit it to the Public Prosecutor for the corresponding procedural actions through notarial or judicial channels.
The Constitutional Court orders the reconstruction of files, including archived deeds, to guarantee the right of access to public information.
In its ruling in Case No. 02717-2015-PHD/TC, the Constitutional Court declared that the refusal of the Public Registries to deliver a document that should have been included in an administrative file, including an archived deed, violated the right of access to public information. Although the entity claimed that the document did not exist or that it should be requested through another means, it did not prove that it had sent it to the National Archives or exhausted all means to locate it.
The Court emphasized that, since this is a constitutional right, it is not appropriate to reject requests for purely procedural reasons. Consequently, it ordered the document to be located or, if its loss is confirmed, the file containing it to be reconstructed and a certified copy delivered.
This decision establishes a relevant criterion: Public Registries must reconstruct administrative files (including archived deeds) before denying access to information. This measure reinforces the duty to preserve documents and respect for citizens’ right to access public information, even when it involves old documents.
In this section, we will address the vertical extent of real estate ownership. We will observe how recent regulations have established new limits on the content of property, seeking to subject the extent of real estate ownership to more objective and uniform criteria. One aspect to consider is that the determination of these limits has been delegated to the State. While predictability is a positive value for society, intense state involvement in this task could represent a challenge to the promotion of private liberty and the sanctity of private property, forcing stakeholders to be vigilant about every government intervention.
Initially, the vertical extension of landed property was regulated in Article 954 of the Civil Code. This rule established that «[T]he ownership of the property extends to the subsoil and the above-ground level, within the vertical planes of the surface perimeter and to the extent that the owner finds useful in exercising his right.» This article indicates that ownership extends to the air and subsoil of the property, depending on the owner’s use; that is, the limit is set by the owner himself, specifically, the utility generated by the exercise of his right.
Along these lines, it could be understood that there were two possible parameters for defining the extension of the property:
The potential for building construction.– This concept includes an analysis of the property’s construction potential, taking into consideration safety, the state of science, industry, and building and/or urban planning parameters. This being the case, the extent of the property right will be equal to the construction development permitted by current techniques and/or authorized by the local government (e.g., the number of floors that can be built on the property).
Potential or actual exploitation of the property. – This concept evaluates the possible development of other interests—non-construction—in the subsoil and above ground, including the implementation of other activities that require the use of these spaces beyond common use (e.g., the installation of oil wells, underground facilities, cable cars, commercial hot air balloon flights, among others) or whose value lies in the conservation of open or intangible spaces (e.g., cemeteries, recreational clubs, landscape observatories, among others). In these cases, there is a utility in the subsoil and above ground of the property related to the activities that will be carried out within the property, without requiring the possibility of building or constructing on it.
This general regulation has changed in recent years with the enactment of (i) Legislative Decree No. 1192, the Framework Law on the Acquisition and Expropriation of Real Estate and Other Property, and (ii) Law No. 31313, the Sustainable Urban Development Law. These regulations have established that property boundaries are not only subject to the owner’s utility, but, more importantly, to the urban planning parameters approved by the respective local government. This means that the size of a property no longer depends solely on the owners, but now depends on criteria established by the State.
Indeed, Article 10, paragraph 10.2 of Legislative Decree No. 1192 provides, “[T]he ownership of the subsoil and above ground extends as far as it is useful for the owner of the real estate to exercise his or her right in accordance with the zoning, the enabling and subdivision processes, and the requirements and limitations established by the provisions in accordance with the Civil Code and sectoral regulations.” Likewise, Article 15, paragraph 15.1 of Law No. 31313 establishes that “The ownership of the property extends to the soil, subsoil, and above ground, within the vertical planes of the surface perimeter and as far as urban planning limitations allow. It does not include natural resources, archaeological sites and remains, or other assets governed by special laws.”
From these regulations, it can be seen that the extent of property ownership is currently subject to urban planning regulations provided by local governments, as well as to other limits determined by law, based on the common good and other constitutional considerations. The extent of ownership will no longer depend on the owner’s utility, as previously indicated in Article 954 of the Civil Code; instead, local regulations will need to be analyzed to establish the new limits.
The new regulation and its impact are currently being studied. For now, each specific case will need to be analyzed to determine whether it exceeds the applicable constitutional limits.
