My building was tagged yellow: what it means and what happens next

A team turned up, looked the building over for somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour, stuck a yellow sticker on the front and left. Ever since, the conversation in the residents’ group has been swinging between two extremes: the ones who read yellow as «it passed» and the ones already looking for somewhere to rent.

Neither reading is right, and the distance between them costs money and peace of mind. Here is what the official documents actually say, what you can do today with each colour, who signs what comes next, and what to ask when somebody hands you a report.

The three colours, in city hall’s own words

They are worth reading slowly, because each one says less than people make it say.

Notice three words that appear in all three definitions and that change everything: «during the inspection», «apparent» and «localised». The sticker describes what a team saw, with the naked eye, on one particular day. It is not a forecast and it is not a ruling.

What yellow does say, and what it does not

Yellow is the colour of the word localised. It means the team saw damage or a hazardous condition at an identifiable point — a staircase, a cantilever, a wall, a common area — and that entry to or use of that part has to be restricted. Not the whole building, and not indefinitely.

These four things are what yellow does not mean, and every one of them gets said daily:

• —It does not mean the building has been signed off. It is exactly the opposite: a yellow opens the obligation to commission a specialist technical assessment. Green is the one that closes the matter, and only for now.
• —It does not mean you have to move out. Restricted habitability is still habitability. What gets restricted are the areas the team marked, not the whole flat, unless they said otherwise.
• —It does not mean the damage is structural. The sticker draws no line between a cracked partition wall and a compromised column. That distinction is precisely what only appears in the assessment that follows.
• —It is not an answer about the future of the property. The sticker orders no demolition, orders no strengthening and authorises nothing. It describes an observed state.

And one point about red, because it is the one that causes most distress: city hall itself has insisted that red is not a demolition order. A red building may end up demolished, strengthened or repaired. What decides that is the study that comes afterwards, not the sticker.

What you can do with your building today

Two rules hold for all three colours. First: the sticker can only be changed as the result of a fresh assessment process, and only authorised staff may alter it. Taking it off, covering it up or replacing it yourself does not change the state of the building; it only erases information other people need.

Second: the studies and the remedial work are at the expense of the owner or of the owners’ association. The Secretaría inspects, classifies and reassesses; it does not design or carry out the repair of a privately owned building.

Who signs what, and how far each signature reaches

Here is the misunderstanding that costs most, and it is worth saying plainly even — especially — from an architecture practice. The visit that left the sticker and the study you now have to commission are not the same thing, are not done by the same people, and do not cost anything like the same.

The first phase in Cali was a mainly visual inspection, carried out by teams accompanied by architects and engineers. For the specialist phases, city hall specifically called for civil engineers with experience in structures, geotechnics and building pathology. That is not a bureaucratic detail: it is the difference between looking and measuring.

Put shortly, and it is the sentence this blog repeats without tiring: an architect can look at your crack, tell you what caused it and whether to worry; the verdict on structural safety is signed by a structural engineer or a building pathologist. If somebody offers you the second without being one, they are selling you something they cannot deliver.

If what you have is a crack and you want to understand what you are looking at before calling anybody, how to read a crack explains it with the official thresholds. And when a building needs a pathology study goes into what that study contains and what it costs.

The national rule, and what we could not read

Some context, because it explains why the procedure looks similar from one city to another. Decreto 1171 de 2026, issued on 11 August, declared a national disaster situation on account of the earthquake, for an initial twelve months that may be extended, and placed coordination in the hands of the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres, the UNGRD, Colombia’s national disaster risk management agency.

Ten days later, that agency issued a circular to unify the assessment method across the country. According to the summary published by the Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá, Bogotá city hall, it is Circular n.º 73 de 2026, dated 20 August, and it sets out two phases: a rapid assessment by visual inspection, with the three-colour system, and a detailed assessment aimed above all at buildings marked yellow and red, plus vital infrastructure — hospitals, schools, essential services — which goes to detailed assessment from the start.

What happens after the diagnosis

The guidance city hall published at the beginning of September sets the route out in an order worth respecting, because skipping it is the commonest way of paying twice.

1. 1A structural safety assessment before anything is touched. No informal repairs. If there is an insurance policy, the insurer’s loss adjuster comes in; if not, you engage a structural engineer or a building pathologist.
2. 2Supplementary studies where the case calls for them. A soil investigation and a review of the site’s risk conditions, which in Cali are not the same across the whole city.
3. 3Filing the report with the Secretaría de Gestión del Riesgo, which reviews it and reassesses the case. It is the only route to getting the colour of the sticker changed.
4. 4A planning opinion and a building licence from a curaduría urbana — the private licensing office that issues building permits in Colombia — where the work requires one. Structural strengthening, rebuilding and demolition are licence categories, not works that can be started on trust.

That last step is the one most people skip, and it is the one that later blocks a sale, a mortgage or an insurance claim. What the code requires for strengthening explains the category and the procedure; how a curaduría works explains what paperwork they will ask you for.

Time limits: what exists and what does not

This is the most asked question and the one with the least satisfying answer. We found no official time limit obliging an owner with a yellow sticker to commission the assessment by any given date. City hall sets none in the documents it has published, and the disaster decree sets none. If somebody tells you that you have thirty days, ask them which rule says so.

What does have dates attached is the city’s own calendar, and it is useful for calibrating expectations:

• —City hall set out a horizon of six months of planning and three years of works for the reconstruction, announced at the end of August 2026.
• —The first demolitions of buildings beyond saving were announced for the week of 9 September 2026, starting with a small group of properties already approved.
• —Assessment of buildings is still under way and is moving far more slowly than demand: at the end of August there were of the order of twelve thousand properties queuing for technical review.

And a practical warning that is not a deadline but works like one: the diaries of the region’s structural engineers and building pathologists are full. Whoever rings first gets seen first.

The figures, and why they do not match the ones you read yesterday

City hall’s running total is updated every few days, and the figures in circulation almost never carry their cut-off date. Two cut-offs, so you can see the speed:

If it is a block of flats

Almost every yellow sticker in Cali is stuck on a block of flats, so the question comes straight away: who commissions the work and who pays. Ley 675 de 2001, the statute governing propiedad horizontal — Colombia’s regime for buildings in shared ownership — settles it better than people tend to think. You can read it here.

Its article 3 defines as essential common property the land, the foundations, the structure, the façades and the slabs that roof any level. Which is to say: a column, a beam, a structural wall or the façade remain common property even when they are inside your flat. Damage there belongs to the owners’ association. The cracked skim coat in your living room is yours.

• —The technical assessment of the building is commissioned by the owners’ association, not by each owner separately. Five different reports on the same building do not add up: they contradict one another.
• —The contingency fund comes first. An extraordinary levy is only in order once the fund’s resources prove insufficient.
• —Earthquake cover on the common property is compulsory, and the payout is earmarked in the first instance for rebuilding. Activate the policy before commissioning anything: insurers usually require their adjuster to see the damage untouched.

The detail on majorities, levies and what has to be decided in general meeting is in altering a flat in a shared-ownership building.

Nine questions for whoever hands you the report

A two-page report with photographs and a conclusion is no use for filing with the Secretaría, nor for an insurer, nor for a curaduría. These nine questions separate a technical document from a quotation in disguise.

1. 1Who signs it, under what professional registration and in which speciality? Ask for the number and check it. Structures, geotechnics and pathology are different specialities.
2. 2What exactly is the scope of this? Is it a damage assessment, a pathology study or a seismic vulnerability assessment? Let the report say so, not the cover.
3. 3What could be seen and what could not? A serious report states what stayed hidden behind finishes, what could not be tested and what remains to be verified.
4. 4What testing was done, or why none? Rebound hammer, core sampling, reinforcement detection, trial pits. If none was done, let the reason be explained.
5. 5What is the cause, and what supports that? Describing the damage is not enough. Without a cause, the repair is a gamble.
6. 6Is this earthquake damage or did it predate the earthquake? It is the question that decides the insurance claim, and the one an honest report answers with qualifications rather than with a yes.
7. 7What has to be done, in what order, and what happens if it is not? Priorities, not a flat list.
8. 8What does it recommend regarding the current classification? The report has to be fileable so that the Secretaría can reassess the case. Ask whether it comes in the form they require.
9. 9Who is going to design the solution, and is it the same person who will carry it out? If the one diagnosing is the one selling the works, the diagnosis has an interest inside it.

What a serious technical report must contain develops each of these points and sets out the full structure the document ought to have.

In short

Yellow means restricted habitability on account of localised damage, according to what a team saw with the naked eye on one day. It is not an approval, it is not a sentence and it is not a structural ruling. What it opens is one concrete obligation: to commission the specialist assessment, file it, and obtain the licence if the work calls for one.

In the meantime, respect the restricted areas, leave the sticker alone, and if it is a block of flats, activate the policy before commissioning anything. What there is not is a deadline forcing your hand — what there is, is an engineer’s diary filling up.