Short answer. Yes, for immovable property. The Civil Code's provisions on sales are expressly made subject to the rules laid down by the Mortgage Law and the Land Registration Law with regard to immovable property, so those special registration rules govern where they apply to real estate transactions.
What the law says
The provisions of this Title are subject to the rules laid down by the Mortgage Law and the Land Registration Law with regard to immovable property.
Civil Code, Article 1637 — Sales of Immovables Remain Subject to Registration Law. Read the full provision →
The Civil Code defers to registration law for immovables
This article states plainly that the Civil Code's own provisions on sales are subject to the rules laid down by the Mortgage Law and the Land Registration Law, specifically with regard to immovable property. This is the Civil Code expressly acknowledging that, for real estate transactions, the specialized registration framework takes precedence over what the general sales provisions would otherwise dictate.
Why this deference exists
Land ownership and encumbrances in the Philippines are tracked through a registration system built to give the public reliable, searchable notice of who owns what and what liens attach to a given property. The Civil Code's general sales rules were not designed with that registration machinery in mind, so this article resolves the potential friction by having the Civil Code yield on matters the specialized registration laws are built to handle for immovables specifically.
This deference is limited to immovable property
The article's language ties this subordination specifically to immovable property — real estate. Sales of movable property are not brought within this deference to the Mortgage Law and Land Registration Law; those transactions continue to be governed by the Civil Code's own sales provisions without this particular carve-out. The distinction between movable and immovable property is therefore central to whether this article's deference applies at all.
What this article does not itself supply
This provision announces the deference — it does not itself restate the substantive rules of the Mortgage Law or the Land Registration Law, nor does it resolve any specific conflict between a Civil Code sales provision and a particular registration rule. Working out how a specific transaction is actually governed requires consulting those specialized laws directly; this article's role is simply to establish that, for immovable property, they are the ones that control.
Why this matters when buying or selling real estate
For anyone buying, selling, or mortgaging land, this article is a reminder that the Civil Code's rules on sales are not the whole picture once real property and its registered title are involved. Questions about how a sale affects a registered title, how competing claims over the same land are resolved, or how a mortgage over land must be constituted and enforced are areas where the specialized registration and mortgage statutes carry more weight than the general Civil Code provisions on sales, precisely because this article tells the Civil Code to give way on those points.