If you are refurbishing, this tells you whether you need a permit
Tick what you are planning to do and out comes the regime, with the article that supports it. The line is not where most people put it: replacing water, waste, electrical or gas services counts as minor repair and needs no permit. Taking down a wall that holds nothing up does.
Whether your works need a permit
Tick what you are going to do
The answer depends on what you touch, not on what you spend or how many square metres it covers.
Where it comes from
What reparación locativa means
Decreto 1077 de 2015, art. 2.2.6.1.1.10: work that keeps the property in sound and decent condition without affecting its load-bearing structure, its internal layout or its functional, formal or volumetric features. The same article lists what is included, among it replacing, improving or extending water, drainage, electrical, telephone or gas services.
Where it stops being that
At the load-bearing structure, the internal layout and the massing. Almost everything written on this in Colombia puts the boundary at «if it touches the services», and the article says the exact opposite. Taking down a wall changes the internal layout even if the wall holds nothing up.
What counts as a wall that holds nothing up
NSR-10, Title E: «Partition walls — walls that carry no more load than their own weight and perform no structural function». And A.10.1.3.1: the structural system is not deemed modified by repairs and minor changes that affect neither the seismic-resisting system nor structural integrity.
The categories
Decreto 1077 de 2015, art. 2.2.6.1.1.7. An alteration changes the design without increasing the floor area; an extension increases it; a change of use changes what the building is for. Three separate applications, and the difference is not a matter of nuance.
What this tool does not claim
A tool that answers what its source does not say is worse than no tool at all. This is what is deliberately left unanswered here, and why.
- It does not replace asking the curador or the planning office. It says which category what you described falls into, with the article behind it, so the conversation starts in the right place.
- It does not know what is load-bearing in your building. That is a question for the site, and in a building with no drawings it is answered with a measured survey, not a form. It is also the most expensive mistake on this list: you find out by demolishing.
- It does not say what the application costs or how long it takes. The fees are worked out in the other tool in this section; the timing depends on the office.
- It does not cover every kind of work. Building a pool, putting up a boundary enclosure, demolishing and changing windows or a façade are among those left out: they were not checked against Decreto 1077, so this tool does not say which category they fall into.
- It does not cover your municipality’s own planning rules, which may ask for more. Work that needs no building permit is not work with no planning rules over it.
- Treating «alteration» as «transformation» for VAT purposes is our reading, not a quotation. The DIAN opinion speaks of extension and transformation; that a change of design is a transformation is a reasonable inference, and it is worth knowing that it is one.
I already have the house and I want to change it.
We start from what is actually there: what can come down, whether another floor is viable (with a civil engineer’s structural opinion), and what costs more than it looks. Design, works planning and finishes, with no surprises halfway through.