Los Cabos

If you have bought property in the United States, you already know how to judge an agent. You look at recent sales in your price band, you check they know the neighborhood, and you form a view on whether you trust them. All of that still applies in Los Cabos. What changes is everything sitting

The tax a foreign seller pays in Mexico is calculated by the notario, recorded in the deed, and paid over shortly after signing. By the time it appears, it is arithmetic rather than a decision. It does not have to work that way. The rules sit in one article of the income tax law, Article

These three get talked about as though they were points on a single scale, with beachfront at the top and an ocean view further down. They are not. They are three different purchases, each with its own question attached, and the question is different in each case. Answering the wrong one is how a property

Property tax in Mexico is called predial, it is charged annually by the municipality, and it is low by American or Canadian standards, and at the bottom of that range very low indeed. What gets published less often is why it is low, what it is actually calculated on, and how to find out what

A picture is easier to arrive with than a category. A terrace above the water. A garden with room for family. A lot on a hillside with a house they have not drawn yet. The three lead to genuinely different ownership, and not only in the obvious ways. One of the differences is how each

The usual way this choice gets framed is finish against character, or warranty against maturity. New means nothing to fix and nothing grown in yet. Resale means established gardens, known neighbors and somebody else’s taste in bathrooms. All true, and all of it is the part you can see on a viewing. There is a

Buying pre-construction means committing to something that does not exist yet, on a contract written entirely by the person selling it to you. That is not an argument against it. A great deal of new inventory in Los Cabos is sold this way, and buying early is how some buyers secure a unit or a

If you have bought a home in the United States or Canada, you had someone on your side at closing. A real estate attorney, or a title company acting under rules written to protect you. In Mexico you will meet a notario público instead, and you will be told, correctly, that the notario is a

It is easy to assume the acquisition tax on a Los Cabos purchase is a percentage of the purchase price. It is a reasonable assumption and it is not what the law says. The municipal revenue law sets the tax base at Article 37 as the highest of three different figures, and the price you

If you are buying property in Los Cabos as a foreign national, you will almost certainly hold it through a fideicomiso: a trust in which a Mexican bank holds the title and you hold the rights to use, rent, renovate and sell the property. It is a normal, well established route, and it is not