This work addresses the problems of informality in rural property, its implications for sustainable local development in Samana, Caldas, and its impact on the living conditions of rural inhabitants. By informality of rural property it is understood the lack that it may have of a valid title, which can be a public deed, a judicial sentence or an adjudication resolution of INCODER; titles, any of which must be duly registered in the Office of the Registry and Public Instruments. According to Colombian legislation, there are 4 types of informality of the land: possession, occupation, false tradition, unregistered titles. Land tenure has been a long-standing problem in Colombia; During a good part of the 20th century, some governments have tried to advance agrarian reforms whose basic purpose was the redistribution of land. These reforms, which have been failed or incomplete, have had behind the demands of the rural inhabitants who require and aspire to conditions of equity in their territories. The most harmful effects of the informality of property are, in relation to the owners; in that they do not have access to credits, subsidies and other benefits that require formal ownership of a property; and in relation to the municipality, that it stops receiving taxes that could have different uses, including social investment. The phenomenon of informality of rural property has been addressed in studies and scientific articles in Latin America, which analyze the importance of rural spaces, the models of agrarian structure from the second half of the last century to the present, the insufficiency of policies properties in Colombia, agrarian property as a livelihood force, balance and factor of wealth, the current informality modalities of property and the policy that the current government created since 2011 to attack the phenomenon under study. To achieve the general objective, the following specific objectives are proposed: characterization of the problem of informality in rural property; the analysis of the implications derived from the informality of rural property in local development and the determination of the advantages that the formalization of rural property offers for local development. This research has a qualitative approach that used the case study as a way to understand the relationship between land formalization and rural development, studying the phenomenon in the municipality of Samana-Caldas, using research techniques such as semi-structured interviews, surveys and review of secondary information, which integrated and consolidated the final result. The basic sources of information for the investigation were landowners, representatives of public entities related to agriculture, and documentary information.