Fideicomiso, company or your own name: choosing who holds the title to a Dominican condo

A fideicomiso is the Dominican trust created by Ley 189-11: property passes into a separate patrimony that an authorised Dominican legal entity, the fiduciary, administers for the beneficiaries its settlor names. A foreign buyer needs neither a trust nor a company to own a condo here, because title can be held in the buyer's own name, so both are choices, each with its own consequences for the annual property tax, the paperwork and inheritance. This page sets them out for a residence at Belara, one of 59 in Cap Cana with delivery planned for Q4 2029, as general information rather than legal advice.

Do you need a trust or a company to buy a condo here?

No. Foreign nationals can own Dominican real estate in their own name, on the same footing as Dominicans, with no approval to obtain and no residency condition to meet. For the transfer filing, the DGII, the tax authority, asks that buyer and seller both be registered in its taxpayer register, the RNC, and the Registro de Títulos identifies a foreign individual by passport plus a national identity document from the home country. Those are formalities of identity and tax registration, not conditions on the right to own.

A trust or a company therefore answers a different question: not whether you may own, but in whose name the residence should sit, and what follows from that for tax, management and inheritance. The word fideicomiso tends to reach a buyer from two directions. A seller may use it to explain how a project is held, and an adviser may suggest it as a way to hold the home itself. The two uses work differently, and the rest of this page takes them in turn, starting with the one that is your decision.

What a fideicomiso is, from the buyer's side of the table

Ley 189-11, the 2011 law that brought the trust into Dominican law, builds it around three parties. The fideicomitente (settlor) transfers property or rights; the fiduciario (fiduciary) holds them as a separate patrimony and administers them on the settlor's instructions; the fideicomisario (beneficiary) is the person they are administered for. The law names six kinds, from philanthropic trusts to trusts that back securities issues, and allows others. Three can touch a home purchase: the development trust a project may use, the guarantee trust, in which property secures a debt for a creditor, and the succession-planning trust an owner may set up. Four rules decide whether a trust of your own makes sense:

• You cannot be your own trustee. The fiduciary must be a Dominican legal entity of a type Article 25 lists, such as a company whose only business is acting as fiduciary, a multiple bank or a savings-and-loan association. An individual cannot hold the role, and in principle the fiduciary cannot also be the beneficiary (Articles 31 and 51).
• You can be the beneficiary. Under Article 22 one person may be settlor and beneficiary at once if the trust act says so, which is how an owner can place a home in trust and remain the person it is held for.
• It is irrevocable unless written otherwise. Article 5 presumes every trust irrevocable. Once the fiduciary has accepted, an act that does not expressly reserve revocation can be changed only with the unanimous consent of the fiduciaries and the beneficiaries.
• It is paid. A trust is presumed remunerated, and where the act sets no fee Article 35 applies one of 0.5% a year of the net value of the trust's assets, due once the fiduciary's accounts are approved.

Form matters as much as substance. The trust is made by notarial act or by private act with notarised signatures, registered at the Registro Mercantil of the fiduciary's Chamber of Commerce and given its own tax number by the DGII, and a residence becomes the trust's only when the change of holder is recorded at the Registro de Títulos.

Own name, company or trust: what each choice changes

The table sets the three possible holders side by side on the points the public record settles. Where a cell says to ask, it is because no source read for this page answers the question for every buyer, and the answer can turn on your own circumstances.

Can a trust hold your residence for your heirs?

The kind written for that purpose is the fideicomiso de planificación sucesoral, the succession-planning trust of Article 55. Its implementing regulation, Decreto 95-12, describes a trust in which the fiduciary administers and disposes of the assets and, after the settlor's death, distributes what they produce to the beneficiaries the settlor chose. Three features deserve attention before you build a plan on one.

The formality keeps it alive. Article 52 counts the settlor's death among the events that end a trust, unless the settlor signed the authentic act the law requires for succession planning. Instructions about what happens after death can be added once the trust exists only if it is revocable, because they count as an amendment to the act.

It moves the tax rather than removing it. Under Article 46, placing assets in a succession-planning trust is free of succession and gift tax but pays the transfer and registration taxes. When the fiduciary later hands the assets, or the proceeds of liquidating them, to the settlor's heirs after death, that handover is taxed at the rate the law sets for successions, on the value at that moment.

It works within inheritance law, not around it. Article 55 forbids such a trust to impair the share the Dominican Civil Code reserves for certain heirs. Whether that reserve reaches a given estate is a separate question: for an owner domiciled abroad, Ley 544-14 generally points a succession to the law of the domicile, so which rules apply to yours is for a Dominican attorney working with your adviser at home. A broad tax reform, Ley 30-26, was enacted in June 2026, and nothing read for this page shows whether it touched the trust articles, so confirm the current treatment before relying on it.

Holding the condo through a company instead

A company can also hold Dominican title. The SRL, the Dominican limited-liability company, is one form a holding company can take: it needs between 2 and 50 partners and a minimum share capital of RD$100,000, an amount the Ministry of Industry and Commerce may revise. Once the company owns the residence, what you hold is shares. They pass on your death, not the title, and the company keeps its own books and files its own returns for as long as it exists. When a company buys, the Registro de Títulos also asks for its representatives' identity documents, its Registro Mercantil where it habitually trades in the country, and the meeting minutes or bylaws, stamped by the Chamber of Commerce, that authorise the person signing.

Two cautions apply to companies and trusts alike. The first is timing. Moving a residence from your name into a company or a trust after the purchase is a registered transfer of its own, with its own tax to check, and the buyer benefits of CONFOTUR, tied to a classification Belara's developer plans to obtain but has not yet received, are written for first buyers from the developer. Decide the holder before you sign, not after. The second is motive. In a 2025 answer to a taxpayer, the DGII recalled that the legal forms people adopt do not bind it, and that where a form is manifestly out of step with the facts and lowers the tax owed, the law is applied without regard to it. A structure is worth choosing for reasons that stand on their own, such as shared ownership or succession, and your own Dominican attorney and accountant are the ones to confirm it suits you.

When the seller turns out to be a fiduciary

A trust can also sit on the seller's side of an off-plan purchase. Article 58 provides for a real-estate development trust, an independent patrimony that a fiduciary manages on behalf of its beneficiaries and at their risk, to take a project through design and construction to sale or rental. Where a project uses one, the fiduciary holds the land with full powers to administer and dispose of it for the trust's purpose and within the limits of the trust act, and where a unit buyer stands inside that structure is set by the trust's own contract, not by the statute.

Nothing in this site's records says whether Belara's land or project is held in a trust, and this page does not suggest that it is or that it is not. The project's documents answer that question, and they are what your attorney should read before you sign for one of its 59 residences. A residence in a new building also receives its own certificate of title only once the condominium regime is registered, which is one more reason to settle the holder's name at the contract stage.

Questions to settle before signing for a Belara residence

None of this is legal advice. A Dominican attorney who acts for you alone should review any trust or company structure before you commit to it, and these are the questions to put first.

1. Name the holder first
   Decide whether the title will be yours, a company's or a trust's before the contract is signed, since a later change is a registered transfer with its own tax.
2. Ask about CONFOTUR
   Belara's classification is planned, not granted. Ask whether its first-buyer benefits would reach a company or a trust buying from the developer; nothing read for this page settles that.
3. Get the trust's terms in writing
   If a trust is proposed, confirm the fiduciary's category and supervisor, its fee (the law's default is 0.5% a year when the act is silent) and whether the act is revocable.
4. Map the estate
   Establish which country's succession law will govern your estate, and whether the authentic act a succession-planning trust needs is part of the plan.
5. Check at home too
   Ask the adviser who prepares your tax return at home how a Dominican trust or company is treated there; the answer can change the cost of every option on this page.

Common questions

Can a foreigner set up a fideicomiso in the Dominican Republic?

Yes. Ley 189-11 defines the settlor as any natural or legal person with capacity to dispose of the assets, and the trust act records each individual settlor's nationality and passport or identity-card details. The fiduciary, however, must be an authorised Dominican legal entity.

Can I be the trustee of my own Dominican trust?

No. Article 25 of Ley 189-11 reserves the fiduciary role to authorised legal entities, so an individual cannot hold it. You can, though, be both settlor and beneficiary if the trust act provides for it.

Does a trust avoid Dominican inheritance tax on a condo?

Not under the rules read for this page. Assets placed in a succession-planning trust escape succession and gift tax on the way in but pay the transfer and registration taxes, and their later handover to your heirs is taxed at the rate the law sets for successions. Confirm the current position with a Dominican tax adviser.

Does a trust pay the annual property tax?

Yes. The DGII lists trusts, alongside individuals, as the taxpayers of the IPI, and charges a trust 1% on the whole taxable value of its property, without the threshold an individual owner deducts first.

Is Belara sold through a fideicomiso?

This page does not say, because nothing in this site's records establishes how the project is held. Ask for the project's documents and have your attorney read them; a trust, where one exists, is registered at the Registro Mercantil and holds its own tax number.