Short answer. Yes. Under Article 1611, if the buyer of your undivided share later acquires the rest of the property too and becomes its sole owner, he may compel you to redeem the whole property, not merely your original fractional share, if you want to exercise your right of repurchase at all. You cannot insist on redeeming only your original portion.
What the law says
the vendee of a part of an undivided immovable who acquires the whole thereof
Civil Code, Article 1611 — Redemption of a Whole Undivided Immovable. Read the full provision →
What the law says
may compel the vendor to redeem the whole property, if the latter wishes to make use of the right of redemption.
Civil Code, Article 1611 — Redemption of a Whole Undivided Immovable. Read the full provision →
How this situation arises
A seller who owns only an undivided share of a lot may sell just that share with a right to repurchase. If the other co-owners' shares later end up with the same buyer, whether through separate purchases or through the kind of proceeding described in Article 498 for property that cannot be conveniently divided, that buyer ends up as sole owner of what used to be commonly owned property, holding both his own original purchase and everyone else's shares.
The vendor's choice: all or nothing
Once the buyer becomes sole owner this way, Article 1611 gives him the option to insist that the seller, if he wants to redeem anything, must redeem the whole property rather than reclaiming only his original fractional interest and leaving the buyer as a co-owner with the seller's other former co-owners' successors. The seller cannot force the buyer back into a fragmented, re-divided ownership he no longer holds.
Why the rule favors the buyer this way
The rule protects the buyer from being dragged back into a subdivided co-ownership that he consolidated, often at real cost and effort, into a single clean title. Letting the seller redeem only a sliver would undo that consolidation and hand the buyer an undivided interest again, precisely the arrangement Article 1611 lets him avoid once he already owns everything. The trade-off cuts both ways, though: the seller who cannot muster the full redemption price simply loses the right altogether rather than being allowed a token partial repurchase, and a buyer who has not actually consolidated full ownership — because a co-owner's share is still held by someone else — cannot invoke this rule at all.
If the seller cannot afford to redeem it all
If the price of redeeming the entire property is beyond what the seller can raise, his practical option is to forgo redemption altogether and let the buyer's ownership stand, or to negotiate directly with the buyer for a partial buy-back, since the law itself does not compel the buyer to accept anything less than a redemption of the whole once he holds it all.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1611 — Redemption of a Whole Undivided Immovable
- Civil Code, Article 1612 — Joint Sellers' Redemption Limited to Their Share