Prioridad de Créditos — the Distribution Waterfall

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.

Prioridad de créditos — the waterfall

Auction proceeds are not paid to whoever forced the sale. They are distributed in order, each layer in full before the next receives anything, and what survives the bottom is the `remanente`.

The order

1. Costs of the sale and the execution — including the `comisión del martillero`, publication of the edictos, and court charges. These come off the top.
2. Privileged credits (créditos privilegiados) — categories to which the law gives precedence, which in the ordinary case can include certain tax and labour claims. The substantive privilege rules are in the Código Civil y Comercial, and in a `quiebra` the insolvency statute’s own privilege scheme governs instead.
3. The executing creditor — the hipoteca holder, or the fisco in an `apremio`, to the extent of the judgment.
4. Junior registered creditors, in registration order. Priority under Ley 17.801 runs from registration, so the dates on the informe de dominio are the ranking.
5. Remanente to the ejecutado.

The forcing creditor is not automatically first.

Sale costs and privileged credits can outrank the very creditor who brought the execution. A junior lienholder who forces a sale over a large senior hipoteca may recover nothing at all.

Why the buyer should read the waterfall

Because it determines which encumbrances get paid off out of the price and therefore cease to trouble the property, and which do not.

• Registered hipotecas and embargos are dealt with in the distribution.
• Pre-possession impuestos and tasas are relieved to the buyer where the price does not cover them — servicios-eficientes-c-yabra-1999.
• Expensas are not — they follow the unit regardless of what the waterfall paid. See expensas-y-el-adquirente-en-subasta.
• An `inhibición` is recorded against the person, not the parcel, and needs separate attention.

Precision limits

The detailed ranking among privileged categories, and the treatment of provincial tax claims against national ones, is genuinely intricate and litigated. This page states the architecture, not a resolution of every contest; specific rankings are needs_verification and should be checked against the CCyC’s privilege articles and, in insolvency, Ley 24.522.