Building & Compliance
Developing in Mexico — the compliance that lets you build and sell
The build is the visible part. What lets you sell it is the compliance behind it.
Developing residential real estate in Mexico runs on two tracks at once — the build, and the compliance that lets you sell it. Land-use and construction permits, environmental authorization, the condominium regime, the anti-money-laundering reporting a developer is required to make, and a body of consumer-protection rules that now govern how new housing is advertised, contracted, and delivered. Each runs on its own clock, and several must be cleared before the first peso is taken or the first wall goes up.
The developers who end up sealed shut, sued, or unable to title their units are rarely the ones who couldn’t build. They are the ones who advertised off a render they later changed, took deposits on a contract that was never registered, or broke ground on land whose use was never confirmed. The obligations are the developer’s — and handled in the right order, they are what makes a project financeable, saleable, and clean on the way out.
What we do
- Permits and land-use, in the right order. We advise on the sequence — confirming the land’s permitted use before a design is committed, then the construction licence, density, and the state and municipal approvals — because building in a zone that doesn’t allow it invites fines, closure, even demolition, however good the project.
- Environmental authorization. Our counsel covers the authorization the project needs, and how to hold it in standing through the build — because the coastal and large-scale projects that draw buyers are the ones the environmental review watches closest, and breaking ground before it is granted can stop a project cold.
- Contracts the consumer authority will register — and that hold. We advise on how new-housing pre-sale and purchase contracts must be drafted and registered before they are used — with the terms the law requires and none of the clauses it forbids — so your pre-sales stand up, and you are not the developer shut down for selling on a contract that was never filed.
- Advertising that won’t be called misleading. We guide you in keeping the marketing and the contract aligned — location, areas, total price, materials, finishes — so a brochure or a render doesn’t turn into a sanction or a buyer’s claim.
- The condominium regime and project documentation, set up to sell. We advise on constituting the regime, the bylaws, the unit division, and the executive-project record a serious buyer and their lawyer now expect to see — so each unit is titleable and what you sell is what the buyer can register.
- Anti-money-laundering compliance. Selling real estate makes a developer a reporting party under Mexican law; our counsel covers the registration, the reports, and the records the obligation requires, so it isn’t a liability waiting at an audit.
Why us
On a project, the obligations are the developer’s — not the architect’s, not the broker’s, not the sales office’s. The contract that wasn’t registered, the permit that was missing, the render that didn’t match the unit, the authorization that lapsed — each one surfaces later, at a sale that won’t close, an inspection, an audit, or a buyer’s complaint, long after it could have been put right cheaply. The developers who make headlines for sealed offices and stalled pre-sales rarely set out to cut corners; they trusted that whoever was closest to the sale would also watch the compliance. That is the ground independent counsel is there to cover: with no stake in the project but the client’s, reading only whether it is clean enough to finance, to sell, and to leave.
Learn more. Read our publications “Development & Regulatory Compliance”, “Environmental Authorization” and “PROFECO and Pre-Construction Contracts”.
Building, or about to?
The compliance is cheapest to get right before the first permit, not after the first inspection. Start with counsel whose only interest is the project’s.
Schedule a Consultation