98 Strangers Now Co-Own Your Decision
A foreign buyer looking at a condo in the Riviera Maya studies the unit. The layout, the floor, the view, the finishes, the amenities, the price per square meter. The whole evaluation points inward, at the four walls being purchased. What almost no one studies is the thing they are actually joining the day they sign, which is not really a property. It is a small government, and the unit comes with a permanent seat in it.
A condo in Mexico is held under a régimen de condominio, a condominium regime. Owning a unit means owning a vote in a body of owners who decide, together, the rules that govern your asset. The monthly fees. The reserve fund. The renovations. And, in the clause that matters most to a foreign buyer counting on income, whether short-term rental is allowed, restricted, or banned. In a building of a hundred units, that is roughly a hundred owners, almost all of whom you will never meet, each holding a vote that can reach into the value and the use of what you bought.
Governance is a term, even when no one shows it to you
This is not a fraud risk, and it is not despojo. It is governance, and governance is structural. The decisions get made whether you are in the assembly or asleep in another country. That is the whole point of the thing, and it is also the blind spot.
A buyer whose plan depends on vacation rental income can have that income legislated away by a majority of owners who would simply rather live somewhere quiet. A reserve fund that the previous owners chose to underfund becomes a special assessment that lands on your account the year after you close. A renovation you would never have voted for becomes a bill you have to pay. None of this requires bad faith from anyone. It requires only that other people, with their own interests and their own lives, hold a standing vote over your investment, and that you signed up for that the day you bought the unit without reading it as a term.
Because that is what it is. The bylaws are a term. The minutes of the last few assemblies are a term. The state of the reserve fund is a term. The render is not a term. The amenities list is not a term. The view, as much as it cost, is not a term. The terms are the documents that say what the other owners can decide about your asset, and most buyers never ask to see them.
Read the rules before the finishes
FEUDO® does not start by asking whether this is a good building. It starts one step earlier, by asking whether this particular buyer can tolerate not being in control of the decisions that move their own asset. That is a criterion of execution, not a fear. Some buyers can live comfortably inside collective governance. Some cannot, and should know it before they sign, not after.
For the buyer whose entire plan rests on renting the unit, a regime that can vote rental rights away is filtered out before it ever reaches a shortlist, no matter how good the unit is, because the structure defeats the plan and the finishes cannot fix that. For the buyer who can absorb collective governance, the regime stays in play, but it gets read for what it is. Before the finishes do the talking, read the bylaws, read the recent assembly minutes, and read the financial state of the reserve. You can see what a regime actually grants the other owners, and what to ask for before you sign, in the property buying guide.
The deed to the unit is real. You will own it. But owning the unit and owning the decisions about the unit are two different things, and the second one was never on offer. You hold the deed. You do not hold the rules. Knowing the difference before you sign is the part the brochure was never going to mention.