Originally Posted by
RFNJ
As for investment, I would concur with what others are saying. Residential property/income property is pretty straight forward. Commercial development is a whole different kettle of fish. Also keep in mind your investment needs to outperform dollar strength. This year was fine, but the peso has a long history of slides, eating up a lot of peso denominated appreciation. If you are looking towards income property, I would say Cancun/Puerto Vallarta/Los Cabos - where given the high influx of NOTB visitors, both income and selling property can be done in Dollars. I would consider those areas overvalued from a cost perspective.
Some of the hottest real estate use to be San Miguel de Allende. Prices in the historic centro of homes and haciendas use to match those of San Francisco USA. Our home which we bought 12 years ago, because of the rise of pesos to the dollar, on paper, is worth almost twice as much as we paid for it in pesos. While many properties in SMA can be bought and sold in US Dollars
the actual transaction is done in pesos which can result in a HUGE Mexican capital gains tax. ( having a temporary or permanente visa can help offset that). Our home,which is now for sale, had we sold it 3 years ago would have gotten 1.5 million US easily..... today because of the crime in Mexico and the infiltration of cartel violence in the state of Guanajato, our home has lost about 400K in value.....with no buyer in site. I look forward to the day we are done with our Mexican " investment".