Citizen initiative · No investors
We are an independent civic platform documenting the inventory of properties in the public nuisance process across the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico. The law already said that information is public. We gather it and publish it.
What we do
Estorbos.com is the civic platform that documents and publishes, in one place, information on properties in the public nuisance process across all 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico. We operate in service of Article 4.011 of the Municipal Code, which establishes that the inventory of properties declared as public nuisances is public information.
The platform serves two purposes: providing citizens with access to information the law requires to be public, and offering municipalities a modern digital infrastructure to administer their public nuisance program without developing technology in-house.
Public access to the inventory of properties in the public nuisance process, tools to report abandoned properties in their communities, and a digital mechanism to submit the letter of intent established by Article 4.012 of the Municipal Code.
Digital infrastructure to publish, maintain and update the public nuisance inventory pursuant to Law 114-2024, receive citizen reports enriched with CRIM data, and manage the flow of letters of intent from acquirers.
How this started
Estorbos.com began with a personal experience. Trying to acquire an abandoned property in Puerto Rico under the procedure established by Article 4.012 of the Municipal Code turned out to be a process that in practice nobody could explain. Municipalities didn't publish digital inventories. There was no official form to submit a letter of intent. There was no way to demonstrate when a notification had been submitted, or to know if someone with connections had gotten there first.
Meanwhile, private companies were operating in more than twenty municipalities with privileged access to property lists, charging thousands of dollars per property, sharing inventories with investors before the public, and subjecting the public nuisance process to a layer of intermediation the law never contemplated.
The problem wasn't the law. The law is good. The problem was that the digital infrastructure didn't exist for citizens to exercise the rights the law guarantees them, or for municipalities to fulfill the transparency obligations the law imposes on them.
Estorbos.com is the infrastructure that was missing.
The team
Founder
Héctor Garcia Torres is a Puerto Rican software engineer, originally from Aguada. He studied Computer Science at Santa Monica College and Woodbury University, and also works in communications strategy, reputation management, and business operations.
On estorbos.com he does all four: the technical architecture, the legal research on the regulatory framework, the institutional communications with municipalities, and the platform's editorial content.
The platform operates without outside investors and without depending on public funds. That is a practical decision: nobody else has to agree with what gets published here.
LinkedInThe legal framework
Article 4.011 of the Puerto Rico Municipal Code (Law 107-2020, amended by Laws 114-2024 and 97-2026) requires each municipality to maintain a public inventory of properties declared as public nuisances, including their location, registry data, cadastral number, owner, and appraised value.
Law 114-2024 added the requirement to update this inventory quarterly and publish it on digital platforms or high-reach public social media. That same law amended Article 4.012, which establishes the procedure by which any citizen may notify the municipality of their intent to acquire a property from the inventory, and created Article 4.012A, a summary expropriation procedure that prioritizes individuals with limited access to the traditional housing market.
Estorbos.com operates entirely within this framework. We document information that is public by law, and provide digital infrastructure so municipalities can fulfill the transparency and publication obligations the legislation establishes.
Transparency
Information on estorbos.com comes from public sources: notices published in newspapers, official announcements on municipal Facebook pages, data from the Municipal Revenue Collection Center (CRIM), municipal ordinances, and citizen reports. In some cases we also receive information directly from municipal officials who share updates on their public nuisance program.
Because municipalities update their information at different times and through different channels, the data on the platform may have variations relative to the current status of any specific property.
For official information current as of today on any property, always confirm directly with the corresponding office of the municipality where the property is located. Municipalities are the official source on the public nuisance process.
Found information that needs correcting? Write to us with the cadastral number or address. We handle corrections promptly.
Report a correctionThe boundaries
Estorbos.com publishes information and organizes requests. Nothing beyond that.
We have no legal authority to declare properties as public nuisances or initiate expropriation proceedings. Those decisions belong exclusively to the municipalities.
We don't buy or sell properties. We don't handle buyer or seller funds. We don't do appraisals. We don't represent anyone in court.
The municipality makes all administrative and legal decisions. We organize and publish the information.
The money
Anyone involved in the management of public nuisances has an obligation to explain exactly where their money comes from.
The platform is free for citizens. Searching your town, accessing the inventory, reading the guides, reporting a property, following up, and generating your timestamped letter of intent all cost nothing. Always.
Municipalities that integrate don't pay either: not for publishing their inventory, not for receiving citizen reports, not for platform maintenance.
We charge nothing to access the inventory, to be first in line, to be notified ahead of anyone else, or to submit a letter of intent.
The platform is sustained by the advertising you see on the site. Anything else is agreed case by case and put in writing, and none of it changes a word of the above.
We have no investors. We don't buy or sell properties. We have no economic interest in any particular property, and no incentive to inflate values, push sales, or prioritize one person over another.
Who acquires a property is decided by the legal process and the order requests arrive in. Never by what anyone pays us.
Here's ours.
We read every message. If you are a municipal official, there is a page with a form built for that.