Leased Santa Isabel farm on Carretera 1 takes a $9.36 million mortgage for the US Department of Energy's Federal Financing Bank
A mortgage of $9,356,543.89 was recorded on August 4, 2026 on Lot A, Carretera 1 Km 106.4, Boca Velázquez, Santa Isabel, a 75-cuerda farm of 294,780 m2. The lender is Citibank, N.A., as collateral agent for the Federal Financing Bank, which the deed describes as an instrumentality of the United States Department of Energy. It is the only mortgage recorded in Puerto Rico that names the Federal Financing Bank.
It is a leasehold mortgage. The security is the lease of the farm, which the deed dates to June 17, 2011, not the land itself. A leasehold mortgage pledges the tenant's right to occupy the property for the life of the lease rather than the owner's title. Two weeks earlier, on July 22, 2026, a sublease of the same property for transmission lines was recorded. On the day of the mortgage an amendment to a 2011 leasehold mortgage over several Santa Isabel properties, this one among them, was entered together with a financing statement, and another financing statement followed on August 27, 2026. The deeds put that 2011 mortgage at an original principal of $209 million, of which this property secures $21 million.
Protected farmland
The Puerto Rico Land Use Plan classes 99% of the lot as specially protected rural land of agricultural value, and its zoning is A-P, agricultural-productive, on the same 99%. The property last sold on February 27, 2008 for $850,000, about $2.88 per m2.
Its permit file describes a farm. A Permiso Único for a fruit-and-vegetable farm was filed on January 22, 2024 and has since been archived, a request to raise the farm's electric service load was approved on May 13, 2022, and one filing approved on February 4, 2026 has no description on record. No construction permit has been filed for the property.
Farm sales in Santa Isabel
Farm-zoned land in the municipality trades in small pieces. Two A-P lots sold in the 12 months to October 22, 2026: a 4,545 m2 lot on Carretera 1 Km 97.9 in Jauca I for $95,000 on April 1, 2026, and a 2,095 m2 lot on Carretera 542 Km 2.0 in Jauca II for $50,000 on March 13, 2026, or $20.90 and $23.87 per m2.
