Foreign land ownership and title security

Yes. A foreigner can own real estate in Guatemala with the same guarantees as a Guatemalan (Foreign Investment Law, Decree 9-98, art. 5), except within two strips: the 15 km border strip (Art. 123 of the Constitution, reserved for Guatemalans by birth) and the state territorial reserves under Art. 122 (3 km of coastline, 200 m from lake shores, 100 m from the banks of navigable rivers, 50 m around springs), where no one holds private title and only a lease from OCRET is possible. The security of title depends almost entirely on the property being recorded at the General Property Registry (RGP) under the folio real system: as of June 2024 the cadastre had advanced in only 21 of 340 municipalities, there is no local title-insurance market, and the real risk lies in unrecorded possessory rights, communal land and usurpations.

The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.