We sold land through a private, unnotarized document instead of a public one — is the sale still valid between the buyer and me?

Form for Convenience, Not Validity

Article 1358 requires certain acts and contracts, including sales of real rights over immovable property, to appear in a public document. Article 1356 makes clear this requirement is generally directory rather than mandatory for validity: it makes the transaction easier to prove, register, and enforce against outsiders, but a private writing that meets the essential requisites of a contract is not void merely for lacking that form. This distinction between formalities required for validity and formalities required merely for convenience or proof runs throughout the chapter on contract form, and Article 1358 falls squarely in the second category for most of the transactions it lists.

What Remains Enforceable

Between the seller and the buyer themselves, a private deed of sale can still be sued upon, and either party may be compelled to execute the corresponding public document under the article that precedes this one. The obligation to transfer the property and to pay the price exists independently of whether the document was ever brought before a notary. A court asked to enforce the private sale will look at whether the essential elements of consent, object, and cause are present, not at whether a notary was ever involved.

Where the Gap Actually Hurts

The real cost of skipping the public document shows up with the Registry of Deeds and with third persons. Property titles cannot be transferred or annotated on a private writing, so the buyer cannot register the sale, obtain a new title, or reliably defeat a subsequent buyer or lienholder who registers first. A private sale can also be harder to prove years later without a notarized, dated record to point to.

Fixing It Later

Because the underlying sale is valid, the remedy is not to redo the transaction but to formalize it, either party can ask the other, or ultimately the court, to execute the proper public instrument so the transfer can be registered and protected against the world, not just enforced between the two original parties. If a party refuses to cooperate, the other may file suit to compel execution of the deed, and the resulting judgment itself can be registered in place of a notarized instrument.

Why This Matters Most for Resale or Financing

This matters most for buyers who plan to mortgage, subdivide, or resell the property, since a bank or a subsequent purchaser will almost always insist on a registered title traceable to a notarized deed, even though the underlying private sale was never void to begin with. Waiting to formalize the transfer only compounds these practical obstacles, since witnesses become harder to locate and the seller may become unavailable or uncooperative as years pass.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1358 — What Must Be in a Public Document
• Civil Code, Article 1356 — Form of Contracts
• Civil Code, Article 1357 — Right to Compel Execution of Form