Awareness of rural property georeferencing deadlines

Rural properties with an area between 25 and 100 hectares will be required to obtain a georeferenced description certified by Brazil’s National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (“INCRA”) as of November 20, 2023. Federal Law No. 10,267/2001, regulated by Decree No. 4,449/2002, established that rural properties in Brazil must be georeferenced, and the deadlines established by Decree No. 9,311/2018 are currently in force.

Presently, rural properties with an area of 100 hectares or more are required to have a georeferenced description certified by INCRA. Thus, landowners who hold legal ownership or right to use and enjoy properties with an area equal to or greater than 100 hectares, and who wish to make notarial changes such as dismemberment, subdivision, remapping, any type of transfer or even use the property for guarantee purposes, must have a georeferenced description of their property.

It is worth highlighting that, in order to verify the georeferencing requirement, the area described in the rural property’s record with the Real Estate Registry Office must be taken into account, instead of the area described in its city government registration, which can include more than one record. We also point out that georeferencing is a description method for identifying rural properties by using georeferenced coordinates as a means to establish its metes and bounds based on the coordinates of the vertices defined by the Brazilian geodetic system, through positional accuracy set by the INCRA, in accordance with the 3rd Edition of its Technical Standard, which has been in force since 2013. 

Assuming the current regulation is maintained, as of November 20, 2025, rural properties of up to 25 hectares will also be required to obtain certified georeferenced descriptions. The requirement will, then, be extended to all rural properties in Brazil, and the restrictions above will be enforced unless the property is duly georeferenced.

Below is an illustrative spreadsheet for a clearer view of the regulations:

Demarest’s Real Estate team is available to provide any further clarifications that may be necessary.