Subdivision and the Sabag Act

The two routes for dividing land outside the urban limit

Every plot located outside the urban limit is governed by Decree Law 3,516. The rule is simple to state and strict to meet: no resulting lot may measure less than 5,000 square metres, half a hectare, and all of them must keep their agricultural, livestock or forestry use. The rule expressly forbids forming urban clusters outside territorial planning, and that is the criterion projects are reviewed against.

The general route now has an intermediate step that did not exist before. The plans and survey records are first reviewed by an authorised third party, a company or professional accredited before the State, and only then does the SAG issue its certification. Only after that are the tax roll numbers requested from the SII and the registration made. If a project enters with red flags, the rejection arrives after the full survey has been paid for, which is the most expensive way to discover a mistake. We explain it in detail in our guide on why the SAG is rejecting subdivisions.

The second route is the exception. Article 1 of Decree Law 3,516 lists situations in which the minimum area does not apply, and paragraph (j), added by Law 19,807, is the one known as the Sabag Act. It is not a separate statute nor a special permit: it is an exception inside the same decree, with its own requirements and a procedure that looks nothing like the general one.

The five requirements of the Sabag Act

Being an exception, the provision does not admit broad readings. All five requirements must be met or the transaction is exposed to the nullity of article 3 of Decree Law 3,516, and since no public body reviews the file before signing on this route, the error surfaces late, usually when the Registry refuses to register.

Kinship. The transfer may only be made to a first degree ascendant or descendant, by blood or by affinity: parents, sons and daughters, and parents in law, sons in law and daughters in law. Grandparents and grandchildren are second degree and fall outside, and so, all the more, do siblings, uncles, nephews and friends.

Assessment. The parent plot must have a current fiscal assessment with the SII below 1,000 UF at the time of the application. Area. The lot being separated must measure between 500 and 1,000 square metres, with no margin either way. Use. The relative receiving it must use it to build their own home. Restriction. The Registry records a prohibition on transferring the lot to anyone outside the family for five years from registration.

If you want to check your case before talking to us, our complete guide to the Sabag Act explains each requirement against the legal text, and the Sabag Act test tells you in a minute whether you qualify.

What does not go through the SAG, and why that matters

The idea that every rural subdivision needs SAG certification and review by an authorised third party circulates insistently. For the general route that is true. For the Sabag Act it is not.

Exempt Resolution No. 4788 of 2024 of the Agricultural and Livestock Service, in section V, expressly excluded paragraph (j) of article 1 of Decree Law 3,516 from the certification of article 46 of Law 18,755, giving effect to opinion No. E258993 of 2022 of the Office of the Comptroller General. That certification, and the authorised third party that comes with it, apply to subdivisions of half a hectare or more.

The practical consequence is financial. If a quote for a subdivision under the Sabag Act includes an SAG fee or an external review fee, you are being charged for a stage the rules do not contemplate for that case. It is also why this route is resolved in considerably less time than the general one.

The survey and the subdivision plan

The plan is the document filed with the Registry and the one that defines, permanently, where one lot ends and the next begins. Our team of surveyors and architects carries out the survey with high precision GPS equipment and prepares the plan signed by a qualified professional, ready to be submitted to a notary, the Registry, the SAG, the Municipal Works Department or the Ministry of National Assets.

The old plan attached to the deed rarely serves. Plans predating georeferencing describe boundaries by physical references that have usually disappeared, and their areas were calculated with less precise methods. Institutions today require a current survey tied to official coordinates, and a difference in area between the title and the ground is one of the most frequent grounds for rejection.

The same work resolves other matters that are not subdivisions: rectifying boundaries when the fence does not match what is registered, expert reports for partition or area disputes, and plans for land developments. If your case is a boundary dispute with a neighbour, a georeferenced survey contrasted with the registry history of both plots is the evidence that decides the matter, not the argument. To move between hectares and square metres, or to convert the old units that appear in a deed, the area converter does it in a second.

When the plot is urban, the route changes

Decree Law 3,516 governs land outside the urban limit. If the plot lies inside it, the subdivision is not processed by the SAG but by the Municipal Works Department, the project is signed by an architect, and the minimum areas are set by that municipality's territorial planning instrument, not by the half hectare of the decree.

The first thing we do, then, is establish which regime the land falls under, because everything else follows from it: who approves, which professional signs, what minimum area applies and how long it takes. It is a short review and it avoids the most expensive mistake in this procedure, which is commissioning plans for the wrong route.