PROPERTY BUYING GUIDE
THE STEPS OF A PURCHASE
IN MEXICO, IN ORDER.
What to verify at each step, and who is supposed to hand it to you.
THE EIGHT STEPS
Eight steps, and what each one asks of you.
They run in sequence. The one you skip is the one that surfaces later, when it costs more to fix than it did to check.
DEFINE YOUR GOAL
Rental income, appreciation, personal use, or mixed? Vague goals produce bad decisions. Write it down before you look at a single listing. Your goal is your filter.
VERIFY YOUR CAPITAL
Know exactly what you can move: cash, credit, or both. Pre-qualify before you browse. Discovering your real ceiling after falling in love with a property is an avoidable mistake.
CHOOSE YOUR LEGAL STRUCTURE
Individual, fideicomiso (bank trust), or Mexican entity. Each has fiscal and operational implications. The wrong structure costs more to unwind than it costs to get right from the start.
FILTER THE ZONE
Do not pick a city. Pick a microzone that matches your specific goal. Tulum is not one market. Neither is Playa del Carmen, or Mérida, or CDMX. Microzones behave differently in every metric that matters.
RUN DUE DILIGENCE
Title deed, construction permits, zoning certificate, environmental impact manifest. All of them. Not most of them. The one document you skipped is the one that surfaces three years later.
UNDERSTAND THE PAYMENT PLAN
Read the fine print on preventa contracts. Delivery delays, penalty clauses, and force majeure language are common, and almost always drafted in favor of the developer. Know what you are signing. Where the seller is a proveedor, a developer, a builder or a promoter, NOM-247-SE-2021 obliges the contract to give you five business days from its signature to cancel, with a refund of everything you handed over. Look for that clause in the draft before you sign: coming from a developer, a contract without it is already non-compliance with the norm.
HIRE YOUR OWN LAWYER
A Mexican notario is not a US notary public. He is a lawyer holding public faith who drafts the deed, rules on the legality of the act, and calculates, withholds and remits your taxes under his own responsibility within 15 days, LISR article 126. He is neutral by design, and neutral is not the same as being on your side: he does not value the property and does not tell you whether the deal makes sense. Hire your own lawyer, paid by you, to read the contract and the title before you sign.
CLOSE WITH CLARITY
Escrituración, notary fees, RFC, closing costs typically run 6–10% of purchase price. Budget for it before you sign the offer, because by the closing table the number is already fixed.
THE STANDARD BEHIND THE LIST
NOM-247-SE-2021 is the Mexican standard that governs commercial information, advertising, and contract requirements for housing sold by developers and brokers. It is a consumer-information rule, not a buyer-representation mandate, and it is the reference these eight steps are written against: what has to be disclosed to you, what has to be in the contract, and the five business days to cancel in step 06. FEUDO Group aligns its own practices to NOM-247, from the documents requested at each step to the way an agreement is formalized when your case reaches one.
NEXT STEP
Need help with any
of these steps?
FEUDO Group runs these eight steps for its clients: criteria written first, and every document verified at its source. Tell us which step you are on.