Buying land in Argentina: the limits on foreign ownership were repealed, and a court put them back

Most English-language writing about buying land in Argentina states the 2011 limits as settled law, and some states confidently that they were abolished. Both were true at different points in the last six weeks.

The short answer, as of 9 November 2026: Ley 26.737 — the regime protecting national ownership of rural land — was repealed by article 154 of DNU 70/2023 in December 2023. That repeal is currently suspended. The Supreme Court removed an earlier suspension on 29 September 2026 for want of standing in one case, and then, on 9 October 2026, in *Asociación Civil Árbol de Pie y otros c/ Poder Ejecutivo Nacional* (FGR 20213/2023/CS1), suspended the effects of article 154 and returned the matter to the federal court of San Carlos de Bariloche to decide standing and the precautionary request. The Court has not ruled on whether the repeal is constitutional. So the 2011 limits bind today because of an interim measure that one federal judge may lift.

What those limits say, and what a purchase has to carry while they apply, is below, read from the law's own text on 9 November 2026.

Where the rule stands today, and why that sentence needs a date on it

Three dates decide the answer, and they are close together:

• 21 December 2023 — DNU 70/2023 is published. Its own recitals say the intention plainly: "es menester derogar la Ley N° 26.737 que limita el derecho de propiedad sobre la tierra rural." The repealing provision is reported as article 154.
• 29 September 2026 — the Supreme Court decides the CECIM case (Centro de Ex Combatientes Islas Malvinas, La Plata). It revokes the lower-court decision that had found the repeal unconstitutional, holding that the plaintiff lacked standing, and expressly does not rule on the decree's constitutionality. The effect: the repeal operates again.
• 9 October 2026 — the Supreme Court decides *Árbol de Pie*. It provisionally suspends the effects of article 154 and sends the case back to the federal court in Bariloche to rule first on the plaintiffs' standing and then on the precautionary measure. The Court states this is in no way a departure from its CECIM reasoning, because the circumstances and the rights invoked — environmental protection among them — are different.

So the position is interim in the strict sense. The limits are in force because an order says the repeal cannot operate while the question is decided, not because the repeal was struck down. The next move belongs to a single federal judge, and after that the constitutional question is still open. Congress could also legislate, and had not done so when we read this.

Our reading, stated as a reading: nothing we read tells us what happens to transactions completed during the window when the repeal was operating. Two Supreme Court orders six weeks apart have changed which rule applies, and a purchase closed in that window is exactly the case nobody has adjudicated. If you bought rural land in Argentina while the repeal was in effect, that is a question for an Argentine lawyer about your own deed, not something this page can answer.

What Ley 26.737 restricts when it applies: 15 per cent, 30 per cent of that, and 1,000 hectares

The caps are three, and they stack:

• Article 8 — the national ceiling: "Se establece en el quince por ciento (15%) el límite a toda titularidad de dominio o posesión de tierras rurales". The 15% is also computed over the territory of the province, municipality or equivalent administrative unit in which the land sits, so a province that has already reached the ceiling is closed even if the national figure has room.
• Article 9 — the nationality ceiling: no single nationality may hold more than 30% of that 15%.
• Article 10 — the individual ceiling: a foreign owner may not hold more than 1,000 hectares in the zona núcleo, or the equivalent surface elsewhere, with the equivalence set by the Consejo Interministerial de Tierras Rurales (article 16) according to location and the land's capacity and quality.

Two things follow that listings never mention. The first is that the ceiling is not about the buyer's wealth or intentions; a perfectly ordinary purchase can be refused because of what other foreign owners already hold in that province. The second is that the hectare limit is not a flat number across the country: 1,000 hectares is the core-zone figure, and anywhere else the number is whatever the Consejo's equivalence makes it.

Who counts as a foreign buyer, and the residence exceptions that take you out of the regime

Article 1 applies the law to all natural and legal persons holding rural land, directly or through an intermediary, and defines tierras rurales as any property outside the urban ejido. So this is not a rule about farms; it is a rule about everything beyond the town boundary.

Article 3 then defines who is foreign for these purposes:

• (a) individuals of foreign nationality, whether or not domiciled in Argentina, subject to article 4;
• (b) companies in which foreign shareholders hold more than 51% of the capital, or enough to form the majority will — extended to entities controlled by foreign interests above 25%, and to certain trusts and joint ventures;
• (c)–(d) foreign public-law legal persons, and simple or de facto companies on the same terms.

Article 4 is the way out, and it is about residence rather than paperwork: ten years of continuous, verified residence; or five years of residence with Argentine children; or five years of marriage to an Argentine citizen with equivalent residence. Someone inside article 4 is outside the regime.

The certificate that has to exist before the deed, and the nullity if it does not

Article 14(c) puts the Registro Nacional de Tierras Rurales in charge of issuing certificados de habilitación for acts transferring ownership or possession in the cases the law covers, and those certificates are processed through the notary or judicial authority handling the act. Article 10 also requires the enforcement authority to check what the acquirer already holds before issuing one.

Article 7 supplies the sanction, and it is as hard as this kind of provision gets: acts performed in violation of the law are "de nulidad total, absoluta e insanable" — totally, absolutely and incurably void — and those involved have no right to any compensation whatsoever ("sin derecho a reclamo indemnizatorio alguno"). The parties who hand over the land or sign the instruments are jointly and severally liable.

Read that next to the usual advice to "check the title". A deed signed without the certificate is not a defective purchase to be regularised later; on the face of article 7 it is nothing, and the price paid is not a claim.

Land with water on it, and land in a border security zone

Article 10, inciso 1 prohibits the foreign persons defined in article 3 from owning or possessing land that contains or borders permanent and significant bodies of water. The same article also bars such ownership in border security zones, subject to the exceptions under decree-law 15.385/44 as amended by Ley 23.554.

For a buyer, this is the provision that turns an attractive feature into a disqualifying one: lake frontage, a river boundary or a plot in Patagonia near a border is precisely where this rule bites, and it operates independently of the 1,000-hectare figure. We have not read decree-law 15.385/44 itself, so this page does not describe the security-zone procedure or its exceptions, and we name it as the instrument to read rather than summarising it.

Using an Argentine nominee is named in the statute and prohibited

Article 6 prohibits using Argentine nationals or Argentine-incorporated companies as nominees to disguise foreign ownership, and treats the arrangement as an unlawful, fraudulent simulation.

That matters because the workaround is the first thing a buyer is usually offered: an Argentine company, an Argentine partner on the title. Article 3(b) already reaches companies by shareholding, and article 6 reaches the pretence directly.

What a buyer should actually do while the measure holds

1. Date every piece of advice you are given. An article, a broker's note or a lawyer's memo written between December 2023 and late September 2026 described a country with no rural-land limits. One written before that, or after 9 October 2026, describes a country with them.
2. Ask whether the land is rural in the statutory sense — outside the urban ejido — rather than whether it looks agricultural.
3. Ask the notary, in writing, whether a certificado de habilitación is being requested and from which authority, because article 14(c) routes it through the notary and article 7 makes its absence fatal.
4. Check the province, not just the country. Article 8's 15% is computed provincially and municipally as well as nationally.
5. Treat water frontage and border proximity as separate questions, under article 10's prohibitions rather than its hectare cap.
6. Expect the position to move. The next step is a standing decision in Bariloche, then the precautionary measure, then the merits — and Congress may act in parallel.

What we could not establish about Argentine rural land

• The texts of the two Supreme Court rulings. The judiciary serves them through a session-based viewer that an automated reader cannot open, so the case name, docket, date, suspended article and vote composition here rest on legal and press reporting rather than on the rulings themselves. We have labelled that source as a reproduction on our sources page.
• The article number in the official text of DNU 70/2023. The government's own text of the decree, as published on its normativa portal, carries the recital quoted above but the copy we could read ends partway through article 100, so we have not seen article 154 in the official text and report the number as reported.
• Whether the Registro Nacional de Tierras Rurales is operating today. The repeal was in force for most of two years; whether the registry is issuing certificates again, and how quickly, is not something we could establish, and it is the practical question a purchase turns on.
• The zona núcleo equivalences. Article 10 makes the hectare limit depend on determinations by the Consejo Interministerial that we have not read, so this page gives the 1,000-hectare figure for the core zone and no figure for anywhere else.
• Decree-law 15.385/44 on security zones, named in article 10 and not read.

Frequently asked questions about buying land in Argentina as a foreigner

More on Argentina

What the two-year citizenship route actually requires, and what the courts did to the decree behind it, is in Argentine citizenship. The retirement and rentista routes are in retiring in Argentina, and the digital nomad route in the Argentine digital nomad visa. Whether property buys residence across this set of countries is in property and residence. Every instrument named here, with the date we read it, is on the sources page: the statute at Ley 26.737, the decree that repealed it at DNU 70/2023 and the two 2026 rulings at the Supreme Court land cases.