Law 34-21 — what really changes in Morocco's subdivision law

It is no longer a bill. Law no. 34.21 amending and supplementing Law no. 25.90 was published in Official Gazette no. 7533 of 10 August 2026. Here is the article-by-article comparison with the 1992 text, what it means for schemes already under way, and how it reads from a valuer's desk — with the official text available to download.

What was published on 10 August 2026

Dahir no. 1.26.61 of 13 safar 1448 (28 July 2026), signed at Tétouan and countersigned by the Head of Government, gives effect to Law no. 34.21 amending and supplementing Law no. 25.90 on subdivisions, housing groups and land divisions, as adopted by both chambers of parliament. It occupies pages 5106 to 5113 of Official Gazette no. 7533 of 10 August 2026.

Law 25-90, promulgated by Dahir no. 1.92.7 of 15 hija 1412 (17 June 1992), has governed the manufacture of urban land in Morocco for thirty-four years. Law 34-21 does not repeal it. It reworks it on five registers and adds an entire title that had no equivalent before.

• Article 1 amends or supplements around thirty articles: 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, the heading of chapter III of title one, then 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 49, 59, 61, 62, 63, 68, 69 and 72.
• Article 2 inserts article 11 bis, a chapter IV bis in title one with article 42 bis, a title IV bis with articles 62-1 to 62-5, and article 74 bis.
• Article 3 repeals and replaces articles 11, 24, 50, 55, 58 and 74 in full.
• Article 4 substitutes the single word « commune » for the former distinction between urban and rural communes throughout.
• Article 5 sets the transitional regime for permits already granted and for schemes already time-barred.
• Article 6 brings the law into force on publication, save for provisions requiring implementing regulations, which must be issued within one year.

One reading note. As always in the Official Gazette, amended articles are not reprinted in full: unchanged passages are replaced by ellipses and some blocks close with « the remainder unchanged ». Reading the reform therefore means overlaying Gazette no. 7533 on the consolidated text of Law 25-90 — which is exactly what the comparison table below does.

1. A deadline that finally depends on the size of the scheme

Since 1992, article 11 applied the same rule to everyone: three years to complete the infrastructure works, on pain of the permit lapsing. Three years for an eight-hectare subdivision and three years for a four-hundred-hectare one. That uniform rule was the first cause of the accumulation of lapsed permits on schemes that were genuinely under construction.

Two details matter as much as the scale. Lapseremains the sanction where the period expires without the article 18 works being completed — but now « subject to article 11 bis ». And the starting point is clarified: the period runs from the date the permit is obtained.

For a valuer this is not administrative housekeeping. It fixes the statutory ceiling on holding time, and therefore the longest defensible horizon in a development appraisal or a residual land valuation. A 150-hectare site whose programme had to be squeezed into three years by legal constraint can now be modelled over seven — which changes the absorption rate, and therefore the land price the scheme can carry.

2. Article 11 bis: the clock can now be stopped

This is the most carefully drafted provision in the text. The 1992 law knew no cause of suspension: a site immobilised by a cause outside the developer's control consumed the period exactly as if work were advancing. The new article 11 bis allows suspension where the infrastructure works are forcibly halted by circumstances outside the developer's will and for which they are not responsible.

• Filing — the developer or the site coordinator files an application with the commune, with the documents evidencing the forced stoppage.
• 15 days — a special committee (commune, prefecture or province, urban agency, with the urban agency as secretariat, able to call in network operators and any useful party) issues a written opinion and fixes the length of suspension.
• 3 days — the opinion is recorded in minutes signed by the members and sent to the president of the communal council.
• 7 days — the president decides. Any refusal must be reasoned by the grounds recorded in the minutes and notified to the developer.

Add the new article 74 bis, which makes every period in the law a period of clear days, and computation becomes uniform — a technical point that ends a long-running divergence of practice at the counter.

The trade-off is plain: suspension is not automatic. It requires a file, evidence and reasons. A prudent developer therefore documents a stoppage when it happens, not two years later when the deadline looms.

3. Provisional acceptance becomes the real legal pivot

This is, on our reading, the change with the heaviest consequences and the least commentary. Under the 1992 law the chain ran: declaration of completion, provisional acceptance within 45 days, final acceptance a year later, then a certificate issued by the president of the communal council — and only that certificate triggered the handover of roads, networks and planted open spaces to the communal public domain (former article 29).

The rewritten article 24 collapses that sequence. Provisional acceptance now by itself transfers, by operation of law, the subdivision's roads, water, electricity and drainage networks and unbuilt planted spaces to the commune's public domain, with automatic incorporation. Better still, by way of derogation from the second paragraph of article 44 of Law 57.19 on local authority property, registration is entered by the land registrar automatically and free of charge, on the basis of the provisional acceptance minutes alone.

The text also settles a practical land-registry problem. Where, after the derived titles for the plots have been created, the original site contains nothing but roads, networks and planted spaces, incorporation is registered on the original land titlein the commune's name. Where the site still contains residual land, plots to be regularised, or where the permit was granted in phases, a new land title must be created for the roads, networks and planted spaces. Copies of the minutes go to the local administrative authority, the urban agency and the land registrar.

The consequence for valuation is direct: provisional acceptance is no longer only the trigger for marketing under article 33, it is also the moment the infrastructure land leaves the developer's estate. Any valuation of a residual subdivision site must now establish the acceptance position before reasoning about areas.

4. When the commune does not act, the governor can step in

The commonest blockage in practice was organisational rather than legal: the acceptance committee was not convened and the developer had no lever. Law 34-21 gives two, symmetrically. At provisional acceptance, if the convocation is not issued within the article 23 period — now 30 days — the developer may ask the governor to convene the committee, the governor exercising a power of substitution after exhausting the procedure of article 76 of Organic Law 113.14. At final acceptance, the convocation must issue within 30 days of the expiry of the full year following the provisional acceptance minutes, failing which the same remedy applies.

The counterpart is an effective civil sanction at article 28. Where the 1992 text merely « invited » the developer to remedy defects found at final acceptance, the committee now sets a period; on its expiry the commune carries out the remedial works itself or through a delegate and recovers the full cost by revenue order under Law 15.97. The same recovery route is extended by the rewritten article 55 to contributions due in subdivisions being restructured.

Upstream, article 26 changes logic. The old text led to demolition at the owner's expense. The new one notifies the finding to the developer and to the site coordinator, grants an additional period, and expressly forbids requiring a fresh permit application on the ground that the original permit has expired. If the additional period is missed, the matter goes to the urban planning controller within 30 days.

5. The site coordinator becomes a responsible signatory

Article 17 of the 1992 law already required the appointment of « an architect, a specialist engineer or a surveyor as coordinator responsible for overseeing proper execution of the works ». The wording was broad, the responsibility diffuse, and no document evidenced the role.

The new wording creates an identified function — the site coordinator — open in particular to the licensed land surveyor, with a precise mission: to ensure the works are carried out in accordance with the documents on which the permit was granted. Article 22 draws the documentary consequence: the declaration of completion filed with the commune must be accompanied by a certificate signed by the coordinator attesting to that conformity. Article 24 requires the acceptance committee to examine that certificate, the site logbook and the file, after a site visit.

For technical professionals — surveyors, architects, engineers, design offices — the cursor has moved: the signature now commits. See our note on the surveyor's role and missions in Morocco for the documentary chain involved.

6. Full comparison: Law 25-90 (1992) against Law 34-21 (2026)

The « before » column restates Law 25-90 as in force until 9 August 2026; the « after » column restates the wording published in Gazette no. 7533. Because the sanctions provisions of title five are published as extracts, the comparison there addresses the conduct caught, not the level of penalty.

7. Two regimes that did not exist before

Chapter IV bis — subdivisions built progressively (article 42 bis)

By way of derogation from articles 11, 18 and 44, a permit may be granted for subdivisions whose infrastructure works are carried out progressively. The regime is reserved for emergency operations — rehousing victims of natural disasters, tackling unfit housing — recognised as being in the public interest and carried by the State, local authorities, their groupings or bodies, or public establishments and enterprises. The scheme must still provide for water, electricity and drainage networks and internal roads, their connection to existing main networks, and a minimum of health, safety, security and decent-housing conditions. It runs to a programme setting conditions, planned public facilities, duration, funding sources and monitoring mechanisms. Building permits may be issued to beneficiaries before the infrastructure works are complete; provisional and final acceptance apply once they are. This is a distinct regime from the existing chapter IV on subdivisions built in phases, which remains open to private operators.

Title IV bis — large-scale public-interest development operations (articles 62-1 to 62-5)

This is the heaviest creation in the text, and the reason the title of Law 25-90 itself has lengthened. Such an operation requires the combined efforts of the State, local authorities, their groupings and bodies, public establishments and, where relevant, the private sector. It must cover at least 400 hectares — public bodies acting as project owner are exempt from the threshold — guarantee a diversity of uses and functions, notably within new urban poles, in an inclusive and sustainable development approach, and pursue a public-interest purpose.

• Qualification (art. 62-2) — the application goes to a central « committee for the qualification of large-scale public-interest development operations », chaired by the government authority responsible for the interior, with the planning authority as secretariat, supported by preliminary studies on the nature, location, and economic, financial and environmental feasibility of the scheme. The operation is then declared by decree on the proposal of the interior authority, fixing the perimeter, the delivery and development periods and the managing body, accompanied by a framework agreement.
• Special plan (art. 62-3) — a « large-scale public-interest development plan » is drawn up within the perimeter. Its provisions prevail over planning documents in force and over sector plans, save for plans on the prevention of and protection against disaster risk.
• Single window (art. 62-4) — a managing body, which may be the project owner or its delegate, receives investors' applications for planning permissions and forwards them to a provincial committee chaired by the governor, who then issues the permissions. Where the scheme spans more than one prefecture or province, a regional committee chaired by the wali intervenes and the wali issues the permissions.
• Transfer and 20-year upkeep (art. 62-5) — facilities, roads and networks pass in full, by operation of law and automatically, to the commune or communes concerned under article 24. The managing body nevertheless continues to maintain them and to ensure safety and environmental protection within the perimeter until delivery and development are complete, and in every case for at least twenty years from the declaration.

The practical consequence for anyone valuing land near such a perimeter is significant: the regulation that determines buildability — and therefore value — may no longer be the one usually consulted. Checking whether a declared perimeter exists becomes basic diligence, alongside reading the planning documents and permit circuit.

8. Schemes already under way: three situations

• Permit still valid on 10 August 2026 — the new article 11 scale applies directly, according to the area of the site. A 120-hectare scheme permitted under the three-year rule moves into the seven-year regime, without any formality.
• Period already expired, works unfinished — an additional period is granted, fixed by a technical committee taking account of the planning documents, the area of the subdivision and the corresponding period under article 11, and of the infrastructure works already carried out. The committee brings together the prefecture or province, the commune, the urban agency and the network operators.
• Additional period granted, works still unfinished — the State, local authorities or the public establishments concerned may take all necessary measures to complete the remaining works under a defined programme, within a committee comprising the prefecture or province, the commune, the urban agency and representatives of the administration whose list is set by regulation.

Because the additional period is calibrated on actual progress, having the state of the infrastructure works recorded by an independent technical party before appearing before the committee is a practical advantage, not a formality.

9. Where Law 34-21 touches value

A procedural reform always moves value, because it moves time and risk. Four valuation parameters are directly affected.

• Holding time becomes a legal parameter. Seven years on a 150-hectare scheme is no longer an expert's assumption; it is the statutory period, and the appraisal schedule can be defended on that basis.
• Lapse risk changes nature. It does not disappear, but it becomes mitigable through a documented suspension under article 11 bis. A scheme with an evidenced stoppage and one that has simply run late do not carry the same discount.
• The valuable site shrinks earlier. Because transfer occurs at provisional acceptance, the area remaining in the developer's estate falls a year sooner than before.
• Enforceable zoning may change source. Within a declared large-scale operation, the special plan prevails over ordinary planning documents.

On schemes of any size these checks are worth formalising in a reportable form. That is the purpose of our technical due diligence work, carried out by RICS-certified experts producing reports compliant with RICS / IVS standards.

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