Before you sue your developer, before you hire anyone, before you do anything at all, there is a single question you have to answer, and almost no one asks it first. It is not “how do I win.” It is quieter and more personal than that.
Do you still want the apartment? Or do you just want your money back and your life untangled from this project?
If you are deciding your path for a specific development, there may be a guide for it. See our project pages for buyers at Atlántida Punta Cana and River Island Punta Cana.
Everything downstream depends on that answer. The two paths lead in opposite directions, ask for different proof, and end in different places. Choose the right one and the law gives you a clear road. Choose the wrong one and you can spend a year walking toward a destination you did not actually want. So before the legal machinery starts, sit with the human question. Which outcome would actually make you whole? This decision is the heart of the larger guide to when a Dominican developer doesn’t deliver, and it deserves its own close look.
The Law Hands You the Choice on Purpose
Dominican law does not force a single remedy on a buyer whose developer has breached. It does something more respectful than that. Under Article 1184 of the Civil Code, when one party to a two-sided contract fails to perform, the other party gets to choose. You may compel performance, forcing the developer to deliver what they promised. Or you may ask the court to rescind the contract and award damages. The wronged party is, in the language of the code, the one who decides.
That word matters. You decide. Not the developer, not the contract’s fine print, you. The law puts the steering wheel in the hands of the party who kept their promises. The only thing it asks is that you understand where each road leads before you turn onto it.
Road One: Force Them to Deliver
This is the path for the buyer who still wants the home. The project may be late, the developer may have gone silent, but you believe in the apartment, or you have too much invested to walk, and what you want is the keys.
On this road, you ask the court to order the developer to perform, to finish, to hand over the property and the title. Dominican courts do this. They have ordered developers to deliver the apartment to buyers who waited years past the promised date. If you held up your side, kept your payments in reasonable balance with the work done, and put the developer on notice, the court can compel them to give you what you paid for.
But here is the part buyers do not expect, and you should hear it now rather than in a courtroom. If the court orders the developer to deliver, it will, in the same decision, order you to pay whatever balance remains on the price. Forcing performance means the whole contract performs, both sides of it. You get the apartment. You also pay what is still owed. This road ends with you owning the home, not with you owning it for free.
For the buyer who wants the property, that is a fair trade and usually a good outcome. Just go in knowing the balance comes due when the keys do.
Road Two: Get Out and Get Your Money Back
This is the path for the buyer who is done. The trust is gone. The project frightens you now, or your circumstances changed, or you simply cannot wait any longer on a developer who has shown you who they are. You do not want the apartment. You want out, and you want your money.
On this road, you ask the court to rescind the contract, to unwind it, to put both sides back where they stood before the deal. Rescission must be granted by a court; it does not happen automatically just because the developer breached. But when it is granted for the developer’s failure to perform, it dissolves the contract and opens the door to recovering what you put in.
What you can recover on this road has a specific shape. The capital you paid comes back to you. Judicial interest can be added, compensating you for the time your money spent in someone else’s hands. And moral and material damages are available on top of that, if they exist and if you can prove them. That last condition is not a formality. Courts return the money and award interest as a matter of course when rescission is granted, but they award damages only where the harm is real and documented. A buyer who proves genuine loss recovers it. A buyer who merely claims a large number, with nothing behind it, walks away with the capital and interest but not the damages they imagined.
This road ends with you free of the project and your money returned, plus what you can prove you lost. It does not end with you owning the apartment. That is the trade. Out, and made whole, in exchange for letting the property go.
Why Choosing Wrong Is So Costly
Now you can see why the first question is the only question that matters at the start. The two roads contradict each other.
The buyer who sues for performance expecting to keep the apartment without paying the balance is in for a surprise: the balance comes due. The buyer who sues for rescission still secretly hoping to end up with the property has asked for the opposite of what they want: rescission gives back money, not keys. And the buyer who files down one road, then realizes halfway that they wanted the other, has lost months and momentum reorienting a case that should have started pointed the right way.
The contract’s own penalty clauses can also tilt the math, sometimes capping what you can claim, sometimes vulnerable to being struck down as one-sided. That analysis, too, depends on which road you are on. Reading those clauses correctly before you choose is part of choosing well.
This is the work that happens before a single document is filed. Not “can we win,” but “what do you actually want, and which road delivers it.” A Dominican attorney who maps your goal against the state of the project, your payment history, and the contract’s clauses can point you down the road that ends where you meant to go.
Answer the Human Question First
The legal strategy is real, and it is detailed, and it matters. But it sits on top of a decision only you can make. Do you want the apartment, or do you want your money and your freedom from this project. Be honest with yourself about that, because the law will give you whichever you genuinely ask for, but it cannot give you both.
If a Dominican developer has broken its promises and you are not sure which road is yours, Caribbean Counsel can help you weigh the two against your real goal, and then carry the chosen one, usually without you needing to travel.
This article is general legal information, not legal advice for any specific situation. The right remedy depends on your goal and the specific facts of your contract and project. Caribbean Counsel was founded by an attorney trained at the Dominican Republic’s #1 ranked law firm (Legal 500 / Chambers Global).