The building permit in Bogotá, step by step

Getting a building permit in Bogotá is not difficult because of the rules. It is difficult because of three things almost nobody tells you before you start: that the land-use plan has a court history that is still not over, that the clock on the deadlines does not start the day you file, and that there are at least ten different authorisations people confuse with the permit and that another body issues.

This is what the official texts say, read one by one. It includes a substantive correction about the POT — the Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial, the city’s land-use plan — that circulates wrongly across the whole press, and a phrase almost everybody uses that exists in no rule at all.

The POT in force, and the correction to make at the outset

The instrument in force is Decreto Distrital 555 de 2021, which adopted the general revision of the Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial. It was issued on 29 December 2021 and governs from the following day.

It was adopted by decree and not by an agreement of the city council, and that is the origin of the litigation. The draft was filed before the Concejo Distrital on 10 September 2021; article 12 of Ley 810 de 2003 lets the mayor adopt it by decree if the council does not approve it within ninety calendar days, and the city government held that this period had run out. The claim argued that suspensions for conflicts of interest and challenges to councillors were deducted from the period.

What matters in that story is not the litigation but its dates, because for two and a half months Bogotá granted permits under a different plan. The official pronouncement is categorical:

The mechanics explain why it was so fast and so real. An interim measure does not touch the validity of the decree, it only suspends its effects, and it runs from the day after notice is published on the court roll. An appeal against an order granting an interim measure is admitted with devolutive effect, so the suspension took hold without waiting for the order to become final. The effects were restored when the order revoking it became final.

It was not theoretical. The Secretaría Distrital de Planeación circulated instructions on 21 June and more on 2 September, and the Instituto Distrital de Patrimonio Cultural went as far as suspending time limits in its administrative proceedings while the measure lasted.

That the POT is in force today is not a reading of ours. The most recent district act developing it — from July 2026 — expressly invokes article 576 of Decreto 555 itself as the source of the power it exercises.

If you want to know what happens to a permit when the land-use plan changes underneath the project, that is dealt with in detail for another city in what happens to your permit if the POT of Cali changes. The mechanism is the same.

December 2025: why half the legal library went out of date

In December 2025 Bogotá carried out a large and little-remarked tidying-up of its rules. If you are reading a procedural guide written before that date, it very probably cites repealed decrees.

Five curadurías, and every one covers the whole city

Bogotá has five curadurías urbanas, numbered 1 to 5, and in the latest official directory none of the five offices was vacant. It is the number that appears in the Ventanilla Única de la Construcción, run by the Secretaría Distrital del Hábitat, and it matches the directory of curadores of the Superintendencia de Notariado y Registro.

On which one to choose, the short answer is that you choose. The rule is express: an application for a permit is not submitted to allocation among the district’s curadores, and each one’s jurisdiction covers the whole territory. There are no curadores by zone. The only two exceptions — applications by state entities and for individual social housing — do go to allocation, and in Bogotá the procedure now sits in the single decree of the Habitat sector.

The criteria for choosing, the tail that decision has and what documents any curaduría in the country asks for are in the curaduría urbana: what it is, which to choose, what it asks for. I do not repeat it here.

A change from August 2026 that has not reached the guides yet

Decreto Nacional 1107 of 6 August 2026 amended the regime of curadores urbanos on two points that matter in Bogotá:

• —Who sets how many curadurías there are. The number is now determined at the request of the territorial authority and with the favourable opinion of the Ministry of Housing, or on the Ministry’s own initiative.
• —What happens when a curador’s term expires. On completing their individual five-year term, the outgoing curador may continue provisionally in office until a new one is appointed by merit competition.

Planning ruling, land-use ruling, and the enquiry that does not exist

Before commissioning a design it is worth knowing what the plot allows. There are three ways of finding out and only two of them are a formal procedure.

Two practical rules that save money and are hardly ever used. The first: if the ruling is asked for inside the permit procedure, it is not charged separately. The charge only applies where the procedure is carried out independently. The second: the verbal enquiry is free, without exception, and it can rule a plot out in an afternoon.

"Consulta preliminar": the phrase everybody uses wrongly

It does not exist. Not as a figure in the permit procedure, at any rate. I searched for the phrase in Decreto 1077 de 2015, in Ley 388 de 1997, in Decreto 1203 de 2017, in Decreto 1783 de 2021 and in Decreto 1107 de 2026. Zero matches in all five.

The nearest thing in national rules is the free verbal enquiry, which is not a formal procedure and produces no document. In Bogotá something with that name did exist, but it was another thing: a stage in the planes de implantación, the siting plans for large developments, before the Secretaría Distrital de Planeación, not a curaduría procedure. The POT in force mentions it only in its transitional regime, to give enquiries issued under the previous plan a single six-month extension. That deadline ran out years ago.

If somebody offers to process "the consulta preliminar" for you, ask exactly what they mean. Almost always they mean the written ruling on the planning rules, which does exist, costs 8.34 UVT and binds nobody.

The deadlines: the clock does not start the day you file

This is where the weeks get lost, and it comes down to a single distinction. Filing is not the same as filing in legal and due form, and only the second sets the clock going.

Read it carefully, because it says more than it seems: the documents have to be all there, but they may be subject to later corrections. A document is missing and there is no legal and due form. The document is there with errors and there is. And the rule finishes the point off:

There is also a consequence worth money: the right to have the rules in force at the moment of filing applied to you, even if they change during the procedure, belongs only to whoever filed in legal and due form. In a city with a POT in litigation, that is not a procedural detail.

The last row is what most surprises anyone who has never taken out a permit. Being told the project is viable is not the permit. A procedural act is issued asking for the tax assessments, the procedure is suspended while you obtain them, and if you do not produce them within thirty working days the application is deemed withdrawn after having passed the whole review. Budget those taxes separately and with cash available.

The charges: Bogotá has the highest factor in the country

Curaduría charges are assessed with an equation into which a municipal factor enters. The one for Bogotá is 0.938, the highest in the national table, shared with Cali, Medellín, Chía, Funza, Mosquera and Sabaneta. For equal area and equal stratum, getting a permit in Bogotá costs more than in almost any other municipality in the country, and not by the curador’s judgement but by decree.

I am not going to copy the formula here: it is already worked out, with the rates and the factor for each municipality, in the curaduría charges calculator. Put in the area, the stratum and the modality and the figure comes out itemised, with what is paid on filing and what is paid afterwards.

And a rule that does not change: curadores cannot charge for items other than those the decree fixes, so long as no new charges are approved. If they assess you an item that is not in the table, ask for the rule that authorises it.

The Sabana: where there is a curaduría and where no charges are paid

This is the part that moves the most money and that hardly anybody publishes. Charges are only levied where there is an appointed curador urbano. Where there is none, the permit is issued by the municipal planning office and charging them is forbidden. On the edge of Bogotá, the map is split in three.

That no charges are payable does not mean the procedure is faster, or easier, or cheaper overall. It means one thing only: that this item does not exist. The legal time limits, the documents and the taxes are the same.

What is not the permit, even if they ask for it at the same time

In Bogotá there are at least ten different authorisations that get confused with the building permit. None of them replaces it and none of them is issued by the curador. Knowing whose job each one is saves months.

Three points of precision that avoid expensive errors:

1. 1The heritage authorisation comes first and blocks everything. A building permit on a listed property or in a listed sector, and in its area of influence, can only be issued once the already-approved intervention authorisation is produced. And that authorisation cannot be replaced by any planning permit: the statute says so expressly. If your plot adjoins listed cultural property, start there, not at the curaduría.
2. 2The DADEP does not issue the licence to intervene public space. It defends, inspects and inventories the District’s property estate and receives the land handed over in developments. The licence is granted by the IDU, the IDRD, the IDPC or IDARTES, depending on what is to be intervened. It is a very frequent mistake and it costs weeks.
3. 3The adjoining pavements go inside the building permit itself. The curador may authorise their reconstruction or rehabilitation when issuing it, with no separate procedure, where the plot sits in an urbanised sector.

What to do, in order

1. 1Make the verbal enquiry before commissioning the design. It is free by rule and it tells you in an afternoon whether the plot supports what you have in mind.
2. 2Ask for the written planning ruling only if you need it in writing, or ask for it inside the permit procedure, where it is not charged separately. Remember that it grants you no rights.
3. 3Check first whether heritage is involved, on your plot or the one next door. It is the longest procedure and the only one that blocks the rest.
4. 4File complete. The record of observations is drawn up once only, and the forty-five working days do not begin until the filing is in legal and due form.
5. 5Put the board up the next day and file the photograph within five working days. It is the silliest and commonest ground for withdrawal.
6. 6Budget the taxes separately and with cash. They turn up at the end, with thirty working days to pay, and an already viable project falls over if they are not paid.
7. 7If your project is in the Sabana, check the directory of curadores the same day. The difference between paying charges and not paying them hangs on an office being filled or vacant.

All of the above is transcribed from the articles and the decisions in force at the date of publication. The charges run in UVT because that is how the rule sets them, and their equivalent in pesos changes every year.