Argentina (AR) — civil law.

Nothing on this page describes United States practice. There is no certificate sold to an investor, no administrative sale, and no post-sale redemption window in Argentina. If you arrived carrying US assumptions, read falsos-amigos first.

Citación de acreedores — citing registered creditors before the sale

Before an inmueble goes to `subasta judicial`, the court must (a) communicate the sale to every judge who ordered an embargo or inhibición on the property, and (b) cite the acreedores hipotecarios themselves — CPCCN art. 575 in the national courts, art. 569 CPCC-BA in Buenos Aires Province. This step, fed by a fresh informe de dominio, is what makes the sale extinguish the registered gravámenes: CCyC art. 2203 conditions extinction on the holders having been “debidamente citados”. The citación is therefore the mechanism that manufactures the encumbrance-free title bidders expect — and its omission is the mechanism by which a hipoteca survives the auction in the buyer’s hands.

The duty — two distinct acts

CPCCN art. 575 (verbatim): “Decretada la subasta se comunicará a los jueces embargantes e inhibientes. Se citará a los acreedores hipotecarios para que dentro de tercero día presenten sus títulos. Los de grado preferente, dentro del mismo plazo, podrán solicitar el aumento de la base hasta cubrir el importe de sus créditos.”

That is two different acts:

1. Comunicación — judge-to-judge, by oficio, to the courts that decreed embargos and inhibiciones on the property.
2. Citación — by cédula to the acreedores hipotecarios, who have 3 days to present their títulos. Senior-ranked hypothec holders (“los de grado preferente”) may, in the same window, demand the `base` be raised to cover their credits — the only pre-sale defensive move the code gives them beyond presenting titles.

The judge learns who to cite from the pre-sale reports of CPCCN art. 576: informes on tax debt, on expensas if the unit is under propiedad horizontal, and on “las condiciones de dominio, embargo e inhibiciones” from the Registro de la Propiedad Inmueble. In the national code those informes have a 60-day vigencia and must be refreshed on expiry; the debtor must also deposit the título de propiedad within 3 days, and “no se realizará la subasta mientras no se haya agregado el título”. A parallel rule exists for registrable movables: CPCCN art. 573 incs. 4–5 (registry report; acreedores prendarios notified by cédula, 3 days to be heard).

The article numbers above are national-court numbers.

Procedure is provincial — 24 codes. Arts. 575–576 bind national and federal courts only; each province re-words and renumbers the same duty (Buenos Aires: arts. 568–569, below). Never quote a CPCCN number as Argentine law generally. See cpccn-subasta.

These articles sit in the common juicio ejecutivo track and so apply to any judicial sale of an inmueble — an `ejecución hipotecaria`, an ejecución de expensas, a fiscal `apremio`, or an ordinary unsecured execution.

Why it exists — gravámenes shift onto the price

CCyC art. 2203 (Ley 26.994, in force 1 August 2015), verbatim:

“Los derechos reales de garantía se extinguen por efecto de la subasta pública del bien gravado, si sus titulares fueron debidamente citados a la ejecución, sin perjuicio del derecho y preferencias que les correspondan sobre el producido para la satisfacción de sus créditos.”

The duly cited creditor loses the derecho real on the asset but keeps his rank on the producido — the price. The substantive engine is subrogación real: CCyC art. 2584 shifts a privilegio especial “de pleno derecho” onto the sums that replace the asset. For embargos the procedural code says it directly — CPCCN art. 588: “Los embargos quedarán transferidos al importe del precio”, the measures being lifted “al solo efecto de escriturar, con citación de los jueces que los decretaron”. The Registro de la Propiedad of Buenos Aires Province publishes CCyC art. 2203 as its standalone practice rule for cancelling gravámenes after a subasta — see Ley 17.801 art. 36 on cancellation.

Who collects what from the fund is the waterfall of `prioridad de créditos` and the CCyC privilege articles: reserva de gastos off the top (CCyC 2585), then the privilegio especial of hypothec/prenda credits (CCyC 2582 inc. e, extending to capital plus 2 years of pre-execution interest, suit interest and costas — CCyC 2583), rank between hypothecs by registration priority (Ley 17.801 art. 19). CPCCN art. 590 protects the fund accordingly: deposited sums cannot be diverted while the ejecutante is unpaid except for execution costs or “el pago de otro acreedor preferente o privilegiado” — a duly cited senior hipotecario collects ahead of the very creditor who forced the sale.

For sales conducted before 1 August 2015, the anchor is the old Código Civil art. 3196 (Ley 340): extinction of the hypothec keyed to a remate público ordered “con citación de los acreedores” plus consignation of the price to the order of the judge. CCyC 2203 dropped the consignation element and keys extinction to due citación alone.

The uncited creditor — what survives

From the statute itself (a contrario, safe from the text): if a hipotecario was not duly cited, CCyC 2203’s condition fails and the subasta does not extinguish his hypothec. Since the hipoteca confers “las facultades de persecución y preferencia” (CCyC art. 2205), the uncited creditor’s gravamen remains opposable — including against the auction buyer. The registry has no legal basis to cancel his asiento, and the buyer takes subject to it, even though the price already went to junior creditors. Similarly, an embargo whose ordering judge was never cited is not validly lifted — art. 588 requires “citación de los jueces que los decretaron”.

Cited but silent is a different case entirely.

A hipotecario who was cited under art. 575 and stayed silent loses only his preference on the price, not his credit: CNCiv Sala G, “B. I. B. A. SA c/ K. C. G. y otro s/ejecución hipotecaria”, 5/6/2017 — “las vicisitudes de la garantía no afectan a la obligación principal”; the credit survives as unsecured against the debtor. (Holding read only through a secondary report, not the sentencia itself — treat the precise scope as needs_verification.)

Does the omission void the sale? Not automatically. Party-requested `nulidad del remate` runs on a 5-day window from the sale under CPCCN art. 592, dismissed in limine without a showing of plausible prejudice, with a 5–10% fine for a failed appeal; nullity de oficio (art. 593) is reserved for irregularities that gravely compromise the court’s function and is barred once the judge has treated the remate as valid. The structure funnels the uncited creditor toward inoponibilidad — his gravamen simply survives — rather than unwinding the sale. Whether an uncited creditor, as a third party never notified, can attack the sale outside the 5-day window, and whether (as reported for Córdoba) a nullity-seeker must simultaneously deposit to desinteresar the buyer, is needs_verification.

The jurisprudential split on the uncited hipotecario’s exact remedy — re-execute the property in the buyer’s hands, collect from the price while it sits in the cuenta judicial, or an option for the buyer to rescind versus take subject to the gravamen — is real but attested here only through index entries and secondary reports. Candidate holdings whose citations were verified against the official RPBA jurisprudence index but whose texts were not read (all needs_verification; do not build on them): CNCiv Sala C, “Montoto, Rafael Fernando c/ Ascensores Reis S.R.L.”, 28/6/2001; C1aCivCom Bahía Blanca Sala II, “Weingart, Luis Alberto”, 7/6/2007; CCivCom Necochea, “Consorcio Prop. Edificio Mediterráneo c/ Robla, Luis F.”, 6/9/2005; SC Mendoza Sala I, “Recursos S.R.L. c/ Volpe América”, 11/11/2009.

Buenos Aires Province — verified equivalents

The CPCC-BA (Decreto-Ley 7425/68, texto actualizado oficial) does not mirror the national numbering:

Función	CPCCN	CPCC-BA
Informes previos (recaudos)	576	568
Comunicación a jueces embargantes + citación de hipotecarios	575	569
Levantamiento de medidas; embargos → precio	588	584
Perfeccionamiento de la venta	586	586
Nulidad de subasta	592–593	587
Ejecución hipotecaria (excepciones / informe / tercer poseedor)	597/598/599	595/596/597

Art. 569 CPCC-BA tracks art. 575 but with two wording differences: it omits “e inhibientes”, and says “Aquellos” (all cited hypothec creditors) where the national text limits the base-increase request to “los de grado preferente”. Art. 568 CPCC-BA requires the same three informes but has no 60-day validity clause — the freshness period is CPCCN-specific; how BA practice imposes freshness (acordadas of the SCBA on subasta electrónica, or judicial discretion) is needs_verification. Art. 596 CPCC-BA goes further than the national hypothec track: already at the intimación de pago the judge orders an embargo and an oficio to the Registro reporting cautelares, gravámenes, their amounts, holders and domiciles, and the debtor must denounce his privileged creditors, embargantes and terceros poseedores.

Elsewhere the rule is re-worded and renumbered again. Córdoba additionally has a registrable comunicación de subasta that flags the folio itself (doctrine: Moisset de Espanés & Fuster, 2009). Exact article numbers for Córdoba (Ley 8465), Santa Fe, Mendoza (CPCCyT) and the other provincial codes were not fetched from official sources and are needs_verification — only Nación and Buenos Aires are verified on this page.

The special hypothec track — art. 598 CPCCN

In the accelerated ejecución hipotecaria regime introduced by Ley 24.441 (art. 79, B.O. 16/1/1995, rewriting CPCCN art. 598), the creditor is empowered to request the registry report directly — “un informe sobre el estado y gravámenes que afectaren el inmueble hipotecado, con indicación del importe de los créditos, sus titulares y domicilios” (inc. 2). The sale perfects on payment plus tradición; the price may be paid directly to the executing creditor, who must deposit the `remanente` within 5 days of collecting (inc. 4) — applied by CNCiv Sala M, “Vainstein, Teresa c/ Folcini Castaño, Gabriela Victoria s/ejecución hipotecaria”, expte. 92919/2022, 6/8/2024 (full text retrieved from CIJ). If the informe shows the debtor transferred the property, the tercer poseedor is intimated to pay within 5 days or abandon it (art. 599).

What the bidder should check

The judge only cites the creditors the registry report shows. A stale informe → an unreported, uncited hipotecario → a gravamen that survives the sale in the buyer’s hands. Before bidding (see diligencia-previa-a-la-subasta and `estudio de títulos`), read the expediente for:

1. Date of the informe de dominio against the date of the order for subasta — ≤ 60 days in the national courts (art. 576). Example: an informe issued 1/5/2026 is 121 days old at an auto of 30/8/2026 — expired, must be refreshed.
2. Constancias of a cédula to every hipotecario on the folio and an oficio to every juez embargante (and, in Nación, inhibiente — see inhibicion-general-de-bienes).
3. Whether any senior creditor asked for a base increase (art. 575, 2nd para.) — silence after citación suggests the senior credit is small or inactive.
4. The título de propiedad agregado — no title on file, no valid subasta (art. 576).

The buyer’s own title (see titulo-del-adquirente-en-subasta) is not automatically void for a citación defect — nullity runs only through arts. 592–593 within days — but a surviving hypothec is a charge the buyer must pay off, litigate, or absorb.

Worked distribution — what citación protects

Price at auction ARS 100,000,000. (1) Reserva de gastos (CCyC 2585): ARS 8,000,000 off the top. (2) First-grade hypothec (earlier registration, Ley 17.801 art. 19): capital ARS 45,000,000 + 2 years’ covered interest (CCyC 2583 inc. b) ARS 12,000,000 + costas ARS 3,000,000 = ARS 60,000,000, paid in full. (3) Second-grade hypothec, credit ARS 40,000,000: receives the remaining ARS 32,000,000; the unpaid ARS 8,000,000 survives as an unsecured claim against the debtor (the garantía is extinguished by 2203, the credit is not). (4) Unsecured embargante and ejecutado: ARS 0 — no `remanente`. Totals check: 8M + 60M + 32M = 100M. Note also the 2583 ceiling: an old defaulted first hypothec may absorb less of the price than its nominal accrued debt suggests, because only 2 years of pre-suit interest ride the privilege.

Precision limits

• The two on-point official SAIJ sumarios on falta de notificación al acreedor hipotecario and the Ministry’s commented CCyC (art. 2203 commentary) could not be retrieved (HTTP 403 from this network); everything sourced from them elsewhere is absent here, needs_verification.
• The remedy split for the uncited hipotecario (re-execution vs. the deposited price vs. a buyer’s option) rests on unread holdings — the four cases named above are citation-verified only, needs_verification.
• Whether the uncited creditor can seek nullity outside the 5-day window of CPCCN 592 / BA 587, and Córdoba’s deposit requirement (principio de trascendencia), are needs_verification.
• Provincial citación articles outside Nación and Buenos Aires are needs_verification.
• The exact procedural vehicle for registry cancellation of an extinguished hypothec after subasta (judicial oficio vs. testimonio de protocolización; how registries apply Ley 17.801 art. 36 “por sentencia judicial”) is practice, not statute — needs_verification against a model auto de aprobación or an RPBA technical disposition. CPCCN 588 expressly covers only embargos and inhibiciones.
• Whether BA practice imposes a freshness period on art. 568 informes is needs_verification against SCBA acordadas.
• The CNCiv Sala G 5/6/2017 holding was read only through a secondary report.

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Statutory quotations above were transcribed from InfoLEG (CPCCN texto actualizado, Ley 26.994, Ley 340, Ley 17.801) and from the official texto actualizado of the CPCC-BA at normas.gba.gob.ar; the Vainstein 2024 decision from CIJ. Independent of any citación, registration effects lapse by time: a hypothec inscription caduca at 20 years if not renewed (CCyC 2210; Ley 17.801 art. 37 inc. a), cautelares at 5 years (art. 37 inc. b) — a separate check in the estudio de títulos.