Chile Clears Decree 68, Cutting the Density Standard From Four Residents a Home to 1.4

Chile's Comptroller General cleared Supreme Decree 68 of 2026 on 1 October, approving a rewrite of the national building ordinance that cuts the demographic standard used to calculate residential density from an assumed four residents per home to 1.4. The decree, filed by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, takes effect on publication in the Diario Oficial, expected within the week.

What it means for a foreign buyer

Nothing in Decree 68 changes who may buy a home in Chile. What changes is what will be built and sold to you. The density ceiling in a given zone is expressed in residents per hectare, and the number of apartments a developer may fit under that ceiling is derived by dividing it by an assumed household size. Dropping that assumption from four people to 1.4 means the same zoning envelope now carries far more units. On the arithmetic alone that is close to three times as many apartments, and Rio Times puts the theoretical ceiling at about 2.9 times, though height limits, setbacks and other ordinance rules will cap the real gain well below that on most sites. If you are weighing an off-plan apartment in a Santiago commune with an active pipeline, the stock you will be competing against on resale in four or five years is being redrawn this month.

The second change is parking. The decree lowers minimum parking requirements for some housing and service projects, so a unit marketed in 2027 is less likely to come with a bundled space than an equivalent unit marketed in 2026. In a city where a parking title trades separately and carries its own resale value, treat its presence or absence as a line item to confirm in the promesa de compraventa rather than an assumption. There is also a timing split worth knowing: projects whose pre-project approval is already granted, or whose building permit application is already lodged, cannot claim Decree 68's allowances. Only new applications qualify.

So the buildings now being permitted will be denser and lighter on parking than the ones already in the queue.

What changed

The instrument modifies the Ordenanza General de Urbanismo y Construcciones, the general ordinance of urbanism and construction that sits beneath Chile's planning law and sets the technical standards every municipal permit is measured against. The original draft offered two replacement coefficients, 1.4 and 2, in place of the standing figure of four residents per home. After observations were filed, the ministry kept only the 1.4 figure, applicable under specified conditions.

Alongside the density coefficient, the decree permits greater effective buildability and a direct increase in built square metres, reduces minimum parking provision for certain housing and service projects, and, per Diario Financiero, is presented by the government as a measure to raise housing supply, lower prices and restart a construction sector that has been contracting.