A buyer touring a resale unit on Ashford Avenue used to hear some version of the same answer when they asked to see the building's reglamento before writing an offer: that document typically arrives once you're under contract. The bylaws govern short-term rentals, renovation limits, and pet restrictions. That sequence changed in January 2026, and most people shopping in Condado right now do not know it.
Puerto Rico's governor signed Law No. 13-2026 into effect that month, amending the island's Condominium Act to give buyers and their brokers a legal right to see a building's reglamento before they write an offer, not after. The law puts a clock on it: five business days. For a neighborhood that runs the gamut from decades-old high-rises to towers that have only just reached the market on Ashford Avenue, that five-day window is the most useful new piece of leverage a Condado buyer has had in years.
What the five-day clock actually requires
Law No. 13-2026, authored by Representative José J. Pérez, amends Article 13 of the 2020 Condominium Act to add a specific delivery obligation. The property's administrator must hand over a copy of the reglamento to any real estate broker who has an accredited mandate to sell a unit in that building, or to a prospective buyer who requests it directly, within five business days of the request. If a building has no administrator, the obligation falls to the board president, or the secretary if there is no president. The broker requesting the document has to be properly licensed under Puerto Rico's real estate law, Law No. 10 of 1994, so the right runs through a verified professional channel rather than an anonymous inquiry.
The legislative reasoning behind the bill is straightforward: a buyer cannot make an informed decision about a condominium purchase without knowing the administrative rules that will govern their ownership, and the reglamento is where those rules live. Before this amendment, delivery timing was not subject to this five-business-day requirement. Now it is.
For anyone actively comparing units in Condado, this changes the order of operations. The reglamento can be requested the same week you tour a unit, before you decide whether to make an offer at all, rather than waiting until a due diligence period.
Why the reglamento, specifically, is the document that matters
Puerto Rico's Condominium Act already establishes a baseline rule that makes the reglamento the single most consequential document a Condado investor can read: short-term rentals cannot be prohibited in a condominium unless the master deed or the reglamento contains an explicit restriction, such as a minimum lease term. A council of owners can amend that reglamento at any point to establish, change, or remove a short-term rental prohibition. That means the rules governing whether a unit can generate nightly rental income are not fixed at the moment of construction. They can shift with a vote, and the only way to know where a specific building currently stands is to read the current version of that document.
For a buyer weighing a Condado purchase partly as an income property, that is not a background detail. It is the variable that determines whether the unit behaves like a beachfront home or a licensed short-term rental asset. Requesting the reglamento before an offer, rather than during a due diligence window after the price is already negotiated, means finding out the answer before it affects your leverage at the table.
The reglamento tells you what the unit is allowed to be. The listing sheet only tells you what it looks like.
New towers and old towers ask different questions
Condado's current inventory splits cleanly into two categories, and the five-day rule serves each one differently.
On one end, new towers have recently reached the market along Ashford Avenue. Vanderbilt Residences, at 1149 Ashford Avenue, is marketed as one of the tallest residential towers in the San Juan metro area, with a sales timeline that had it delivering earlier this year. A few blocks inland on Wilson Street, CW Condado is a boutique new development that was still under construction as of last year. Buildings like these have almost no operating history. Their reglamentos are typically the developer's original governing document, and the open question is less about deferred maintenance and more about what the developer chose to lock in around rental use and owner governance before the first unit closed.
On the other end sits Condado's older stock, the high-rises that went up during the neighborhood's 1950s and 1960s tourism boom along the same corridor. These buildings have decades of amended bylaws, board votes, and maintenance history behind them.
The five-day rule does not change what is inside either kind of building. It changes when you get to read the answer.
The dispute forum is also about to change
A second piece of legislation, signed in August 2026, adds a separate wrinkle worth knowing about if a unit you are considering has any open dispute attached to it. Law No. 157-2026 restructures how condominium disputes get resolved in Puerto Rico, shifting primary and exclusive jurisdiction from the Department of Consumer Affairs, known as DACO, to new specialized divisions inside the Court of First Instance, created in each judicial region specifically to handle condominium controversies. The reasoning cited in the legislation is that DACO's caseload and adjudication timelines had become difficult to manage for disputes that are, in substance, civil matters better suited to the courts.
The law includes a transition rule: complaints already filed with DACO continue there unless one of the parties requests a transfer to the Court of First Instance within a 30 day window, and DACO has 15 days to rule on that request. The law takes effect 90 days after its August 1 signing, putting the change into force around late October or early November 2026.
If a Condado building you are evaluating has an active DACO complaint on record, that complaint is either about to continue under the old forum or shift to a new one, depending on what the parties choose to do in the coming weeks. It is a detail worth asking about specifically, not because it should scare a buyer off a building, but because it affects how long any outstanding issue might take to resolve and which venue will be handling it if it does not settle quietly.
What to actually request before you write an offer
A short list of documents, requested through your broker in the same week you tour a Condado unit, can help you assess the building:
- The current reglamento, including any amendments since the master deed was recorded
- Confirmation of who currently serves as administrator, or who signs in that role's absence
- Minutes from the two most recent council of owners meetings
- Whether any DACO complaint or court filing is currently open against the association
- The building's stated position on short-term rentals, since this can change by vote
Under Law No. 13-2026, a licensed broker can request the reglamento directly, and the administrator has five business days to produce it.
FAQ
Does the five-day rule apply to new construction like Vanderbilt Residences or CW Condado? In practice, a pre-construction or newly delivered building's reglamento is usually the developer's original document rather than one with years of amendments, so it has a shorter history to review.
What if the building doesn't have a designated administrator? The obligation shifts to the president of the board of directors, or the secretary if there is no president. The five-day window still applies.
What should a buyer check if a building has a pending DACO complaint? What matters for a buyer is knowing it exists and understanding which forum, DACO or the new specialized court divisions taking effect this fall, will ultimately resolve it.
Before this change, there was no five-business-day deadline for getting a Condado building's bylaws before you write an offer. It is now a right you can exercise through a licensed broker on a five-day clock. If you are comparing a specific unit on Ashford Avenue against a newer tower a few blocks over and want help requesting the right documents before you commit to an offer, Coldwell Banker Puerto Rico can walk you through exactly what to ask for and when.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
