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.
Contrast — United States vs Argentina
Containment page.
This is the only page on this wiki that discusses United States law, and it exists precisely so that the comparison is quarantined here rather than seeping into 600 other pages. Use it to unlearn, not to reason. Never derive an Argentine rule from a US rule stated here, and never derive a US rule from the Argentine column — the sibling wiki at wiki.auctionblock.org is the authority for that side, and this page does not attempt to restate it accurately in detail.
Why the two systems are not comparable at the level of rules
They diverge at the root, not at the edges:
- The United States is a common-law federation in which foreclosure and tax-sale law is overwhelmingly state law, with a large body of judge-made doctrine and a private title-assurance industry underwriting outcomes.
- Argentina is a civil-law federation with a single national code of substantive
law and twenty-four separate procedural codes, no title-insurance market, and a
notarial profession (
escribano público) performing the assurance function.
That difference cascades. Because the United States has title insurers, it has doctrines
built for them — marketability, seasoning, quiet-title practice. Argentina has none of
those because it has no insurers to serve; it has estudio de títulos and
bloqueo registral instead. Neither system is a variant of the other.
Structural contrast
| Dimension | United States | Argentina |
|---|---|---|
| Legal tradition | Common law | Civil law, codified |
| Substantive law of security interests | State law, 50+ variants | National — Código Civil y Comercial |
| Procedure | State law | Provincial — 24 codes |
| Local operational unit | County (~3,143) | Departamento judicial / circunscripción — no county tier exists |
| Unpaid property tax → | Varies: lien certificate sale, tax deed sale, or judicial foreclosure | Always judicial: juicio de apremio → subasta judicial |
| Investor buys the tax claim? | In lien states, yes | Never |
| Mortgage enforcement | Judicial or non-judicial depending on state | Judicial (ejecución hipotecaria); Ley 24.441 arts. 52–67 is narrow and rare |
| Security instrument | Mortgage or deed of trust | Hipoteca, by escritura pública, registered |
| Post-sale owner buy-back | Statutory redemption in many states | None |
| Who conducts the sale | Sheriff, trustee, or platform | Martillero público, court-appointed |
| Excess above the debt | Excess proceeds; county-held; escheat regimes; constitutional litigation | Remanente; cuenta judicial; released by the judge; never controversial |
| Title assurance | Title insurance | Escribano + estudio de títulos + bloqueo registral |
| Curing title | Quiet title action | Usucapión |
| Association dues at sale | Often extinguished, subject to super-priority rules | Expensas follow the buyer (CCyC 2050) |
| Prior taxes at sale | Generally must be paid | Relieved where price does not cover (plenario 1999) |
| How title passes at sale | Deed from officer/trustee | Judicial instruments + oficio judicial; no deed |
| Currency | USD throughout | $ = pesos; property customarily transacted in USD |
The two inversions worth memorising
Most of the table is “different.” Two rows are backwards, which is worse, because a confident reader will get them exactly wrong:
- Association dues vs. taxes. The intuition that a forced sale clears the
association’s claim while the taxes must be paid is reversed in Argentina.
Expensassurvive; pre-possession taxes are relieved where the price does not cover them. See expensas-y-el-adquirente-en-subasta. - Where the surplus lives. There is no agency holding unclaimed auction surplus in Argentina, so there is nothing to search, nothing to escheat, and no recovery industry built on it. The money is in the court file. See remanente.
What does not transfer
Nothing on the US side of this table is authority for anything in Argentina. Not by analogy, not as a default, not as a starting presumption. Where this wiki does not state an Argentine rule, the correct answer is that it is not documented here — see agent-guardrails.
The United States system is covered by a separate wiki. The two are deliberately kept apart, and this page is the only bridge between them.