Yes, Americans, Canadians and other non-Mexican citizens may purchase property in Mexico. However, under Mexican law, foreigners cannot own property outright within the restricted zone (See What is the Restricted Zone). Instead, a real estate trust called a Fideicomiso must be set up to hold title by the foreigner.

As a non-Mexican citizen you own property through a bank trust called a fideicomiso. This trust has a 50 year lifespan. At the end of the 50 years, the trust is renewed automatically year-to-year in perpetuity.

The restricted zone is 50 km (31 miles) from the coast line and 100 km (62 miles) from the boarders.
You can in fact own property within this zone through a Fideicomiso or bank trust.

You can absolutely negotiate with the seller on the price of their property. You can review the market trends and statistics page to see what the average price off list price is.

Typically Puerto Vallarta is about a 95% all cash-only market, banks are beginning to lend to foreigners to purchase property in Mexico. While U.S. and Canadian banks do not currently offer loans to purchase property in Mexico, there is a company that will help get you pre-qualified for a loan to buy property in Puerto Vallarta. Visit the Cross Border Investment page to pre-qualify for a mortgage loan today!

Yes. We set up escrow accounts to ensure that your money is protected when buying property.

Closing costs are usually around 7% of the actual purchase price.

This cost covers:

• Transfer tax
• Trust permit
• Foreign investment registry
• Trustee bank acceptance fee
• Trustee bank first year’s trust fee
• Appraisal for future tax assessment
• non-encumbrance certificate
• Preventative notice advice
• Land registry fee
• notary fee

The commission is paid for by the seller. Commission is an industry standard 8% plus IVA.

The average closing takes between 30 and 90 days from the acceptance of the offer.

Property taxes are around 0.08% of your assessed value each year.

For those who are unfamiliar with what is and how an MLS works; MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service. Flex MLS in Puerto Vallarta is a tool that all of the major agencies and agents use to list and sell their client’s properties.

In 2019, 52% of sales were deals made between agencies, which means one agency represented the seller of a property, and another agency represented the buyer of that property. The concept of working together to share properties and clients is one of the most important reasons why buying property in Puerto Vallarta is so easy. A buyer does not have to go from agency to agency to find the perfect property for them, instead they can go to one agency, and an agent from that agency can provide them access to every other agent’s listings across Banderas Bay.

Another extremely important benefit of buying property through Flex MLS is that all of the properties uploaded into the system have been vetted by an MLS administrator. This is a unique service that only AMPI Vallarta, Nayarit, and Compostela provide as part of AMPI membership in our region. For a buyer, this means, that the property has been reviewed to identify that the seller of the property has the legal capacity to do so. This oversight includes a review of the deed, the property tax situation, if the property has been manifested to represent the actual construction that has been built, and more.

Currently Flex MLS covers the Banderas Bay region, but it also extends as far east as Guadalajara, as far south as Barra de Navidad, and as far north as San Blas in Nayarit. As the three AMPI chapters expand service areas of the MLS, we are able to provide even more benefits to buyers and sellers.

FBS is the creator of Flex MLS, and provides services not only in Mexico, but also in Canada, Honduras, the United States, Ireland, and Venezuela, which makes our system internationally reaching, and that much more powerful as a tool to sell property.