What you can build on rural land in Colombia

Almost everybody arrives at rural land with an idea taken from urban land: more room, fewer neighbours, the same logic. It is exactly the other way round. Rural land has harder rules than urban land, and breaking them is punished in a way that has no equivalent in the city.

The limit that voids the deed

Before any ratio, any height and any use, there is this:

The Unidad Agrícola Familiar is the minimum extent considered necessary for a family to live off that property. It varies by municipality and by zone: there is no national figure, and anybody who gives you one is inventing it.

What is national is the consequence. Absolute nullity means the transaction never existed. It is not a fine, it is not cured by paying and it is not cured by the passing of time. It is the reason there are rural plots sold, paid for, fenced and even occupied whose buyer can neither convey them nor obtain a permit for them.

Three authorities, not one

In the city the municipality is enough. In the countryside it is not. Knowing who decides what is half the work:

Rural land is not one single thing

The national statutes divide rural land into two large blocks, and the difference between them decides almost everything:

• —Protection categories. Areas of environmental conservation, of agricultural and forestry production, of hazard and risk, of public service infrastructure and of heritage. Here the land is not developable, and no procedure makes it developable.
• —Categories of restricted development. The rural land where, on conditions, works may be authorised: suburban land, centros poblados rurales — the small clustered rural settlements — areas for country housing and areas for community facilities.

Suburban land: the two national rules

Suburban land is the rural belt where urban and rural uses mix, and it is where most of the country housing in Colombia has been built. It has two national rules worth knowing by heart.

The minimum development unit: two hectares

On suburban land, the minimum development unit cannot be smaller than two hectares, and that area is what entitles you to put forward a parcelación scheme, the rural counterpart of an urbanisation.

The 30% site coverage ratio

For commerce, services and industry on rural and suburban land, the site coverage ratio — the share of the property the building may occupy — may not exceed 30% of the area of the property. The rest goes to conserving or restoring the native vegetation.

It is a national limit, not a municipal one: a POT may be stricter, never more permissive. And it applies to the area of the property, which in the countryside is usually a considerable surface.

Density: the number that decides how many houses

On rural land nobody talks about a floor area ratio as they do in the city: they talk about maximum housing density, expressed in dwellings per hectare. It is the number that decides whether a stretch of ground takes two houses or twenty.

And here is the peculiarity that confuses a great many people: that density is set by the corporación autónoma regional, not by the municipality, even though the POT records it. Two neighbouring municipalities under different corporaciones can have very different regimes.

Country housing: it exists only if the POT creates it

"Casa campestre" is not an automatic national category. It is one of the restricted-development areas that the POT may delimit, with its own conditions of minimum plot area, density, setbacks and the percentage of land that has to be left open.

If your property does not sit inside an area delimited as such, what applies is the general regime of the rural or suburban land it is in. And if it is in a protection category, none applies: you do not build.

The environmental restrictions that do not appear in the deed

• —Watercourse buffer. Thirty metres on each side of channels and a hundred metres around springs. It is protection land: you do not build, and there is no offsetting it.
• —Protected areas. If the property lies inside one, the regime of uses is set by the management plan for the area, not by the POT.
• —Forest use. Felling trees on the property requires a permit from the corporación, and it is not always granted.
• —Water and discharges. With no public network, the water requires a concession and the waste water requires a discharge permit or an approved treatment system. They are environmental procedures with timescales of their own, not a line in the construction budget.

The permits you need

The seven questions, in order

1. 1What is the Unidad Agrícola Familiar for this zone? If the property falls below it and came out of a division, there is a problem at the root.
2. 2Which category of rural land is it in? Protection or restricted development. It is the question that decides whether there is a project at all.
3. 3Is it suburban? If it is, the minimum development unit and the densities set by the corporación apply.
4. 4Is there a delimited country housing area, and is this property inside it?
5. 5What is the maximum density, in writing and from the corporación?
6. 6Is there a watercourse buffer, a protected area or a risk zone over the property?
7. 7How are the water and the waste water resolved, and what permits does each solution require?

All seven are answered before you buy, and most of them with documents or with the verbal enquiry, which is free by law. The written ruling on the planning rules is not: it costs 8.34 UVT at a curaduría. Not one of them can be answered by looking at the plot, which is exactly what almost everybody does before signing.