What a foreigner is and is not allowed to buy
Chile is unusually open on this point. There is no general restriction on foreign ownership of real estate, no residency requirement, no visa requirement, and no need for a local partner or nominee. A non-resident foreigner buying an apartment in Santiago is, for almost every legal purpose, in the same position as a Chilean buying the same apartment.
The main exception is geographic. Under Decree Law 1.939, land situated in border zones cannot be acquired by nationals of the neighbouring country concerned — an Argentine national buying near the Argentine frontier, for instance — unless the President grants an exemption by reasoned decree on national-interest grounds. If the property you are looking at is rural and near a frontier, this is the first thing to check, not the last.
The practical point: the barrier to a foreigner buying in Chile is almost never permission. It is information. You are buying into a registry system you cannot read, in a language you may not speak, on the word of people who are paid when the deal closes.
Why the registry is the transfer, not the contract
This is the single most important thing to understand, and it is different from how property works in much of the common-law world.
In Chile, signing the purchase deed does not make you the owner. Under article 686 of the Civil Code, ownership of real property is transferred by registration of the deed in the Conservador de Bienes Raíces — the property registry for the district where the land sits. Until that registration is made and accepted, the seller is still the owner and you are a person holding a signed document.
Two consequences follow, and both cost people money every year:
First, what the registry says is what exists. A mortgage that was paid off in 2014 but never formally released is still a live encumbrance. An inheritance three owners back that was never registered in the heirs' names is a genuine gap in the chain. Neither appears in a bank valuation, a broker's file or a photograph of the property.
Second, a filing can be rejected. The Conservador reviews what is submitted and issues observations where the deed has defects. The file comes back, has to be corrected, and goes in again — new fees, and weeks of delay during which you are not the owner of the property you have paid for.
Why a title search goes back ten years
The market standard in Chile is to review the chain of title for the previous ten years, and the reason is in the Civil Code rather than in custom. Articles 2508 and 2511 set extraordinary acquisitive prescription at ten years. Once a defect is older than that period, it can no longer mature into a competing ownership claim against you.
Anything shorter leaves a window open. A report that confirms the current registration is live and stops there is not a title search — it is a registry extract, and it tells you nothing about how the seller came to be registered or whether the person before them had the right to sell.
The sequence, step by step
1. Chilean tax number (RUT). Required to complete the purchase. Obtainable by a non-resident without residency and without being in the country. See our guide on the RUT.
2. Title search. Before money moves and before you sign anything binding. This is the step people skip because it feels like a delay, and it is the only step whose whole purpose is to stop you making an irreversible mistake.
3. Promise of sale (promesa de compraventa). Usual where there is a mortgage to discharge or a condition to clear before closing. Drafted properly it is what protects a deposit; drafted carelessly it is a document that makes a deposit very hard to recover.
4. Purchase deed (escritura pública de compraventa). Drafted by a lawyer and signed before a Chilean notary.
5. Registration at the Conservador. The step that actually transfers ownership. Expect weeks rather than days, and longer if the filing is observed.
6. Handover and ongoing obligations. Utilities, property tax (contribuciones), and — in a building — common expenses, which in Chile attach to the unit rather than to the person who ran them up. Buy an apartment with two years of unpaid common expenses and you have bought the debt.
What turns up, and how serious each thing is
Not everything a title search finds is a reason to walk away. The distinction that matters is between what can be cleared before signing and what cannot be cleared at all.
Usually fixable, by making the sale conditional on it: a live mortgage securing a loan that has in fact been repaid; a contractual prohibition on selling that the beneficiary will lift; unpaid property tax or common expenses, which can be settled out of the price at closing.
Serious, and sometimes fatal: a break in the chain of ownership; an inheritance in the chain that was never registered in the heirs' names, so that the person who sold had no registered title to sell; a discrepancy between the area or boundaries in the deed and what the registry and the municipality record; an extension built without a permit and without final municipal approval, which is both a regularisation cost and, occasionally, an order to demolish.
On unpermitted works: this is the most common expensive surprise for a foreign buyer. A terrace, an extra room or a converted attic that never received municipal approval can cost several million pesos to regularise, and the cost lands silently on the buyer. It does not show in the deed. It shows when you compare the municipal record with what is actually standing on the site.
What it costs beyond the price
Budget for notary fees, registry fees calculated on the value of the transaction, the title search, and — if you are financing — the bank's own operating costs, which are a separate line from the loan itself. As a working figure, a cash purchase tends to land in the region of 1% to 1.5% of the price in costs; a financed purchase runs higher because the mortgage deed and its registration are additional instruments with their own fees.
These are general orders of magnitude, not a quotation. The registry tariff is regulated and calculated on value, so the percentage falls as the price rises.
Doing all of it without being in Chile
Almost every step above can be done under a power of attorney. Since the Apostille Convention entered into force for Chile on 30 August 2016 — implemented by Law 20.711 — a document signed before a notary in another member state and apostilled there is accepted in Chile without the old chain of consular legalisation. The alternative is to sign before a Chilean consulate in your country.
The thing that goes wrong is not the apostille. It is the drafting. A Chilean notary will reject a power that does not identify the specific property and the specific acts authorised with the precision Chilean practice expects. A generic "power to buy real estate" drafted by a lawyer abroad, with no knowledge of that expectation, is the most common reason a closing date gets missed — and the discovery happens on the day, when the buyer is 10,000 kilometres away.
By Felipe Andrés Solar Rojas, partner · Published 21 September 2026 · Last reviewed 21 September 2026
Heads the real estate, wealth structuring and company advisory practice at Iriarte & Solar. His work runs through Chilean notaries, the Conservadores de Bienes Raíces, the Internal Revenue Service and municipal works departments. Full profile (in Spanish).
Sources: Chilean Civil Code, articles 686, 2508 and 2511, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Decree Law 1.939 of 1977 on the acquisition, administration and disposal of State property, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Law 20.711, implementing the Hague Apostille Convention, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile.
This guide states the general rule in force at the date of last review. It is not legal advice for a specific matter, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own documents. Amounts expressed in UF move daily. Every transaction has features that can change the conclusions set out here.