Pre-Construction & PROFECO
Buying before it’s built — read the contract, not the brochure
The promise is only as good as the contract behind it.
A lot of coastal property is sold before it exists: a rendering, a model unit, a promised completion date. The brochure is the easy part. Whether the developer actually has to deliver — on time, as shown, with your deposit protected — comes down to the contract.
And most pre-construction contracts are written for the developer, not the buyer. Mexico’s consumer protection authority, PROFECO, has a real say over these deals — but mostly when your contract and your position are set up to use it.
What we do
- Read it before you sign. We review the contract for what it actually commits the developer to — a real delivery date, consequences for delay, the unit as shown — and what it quietly doesn’t.
- Check what’s behind the project. Before any money moves, we look at whether the developer holds the permits and the land, and has a record of finishing what it starts — not just a rendering and a sales office.
- Protect the deposit. We look at how and where your money is held — genuinely protected, or sitting in the developer’s own account — and what becomes of it if the project slips or stops.
- Fix the one-sided terms. Where the contract is written only for the developer, we negotiate the changes that put real obligations, and real consequences, on the other side.
- Hold them to it. If the developer doesn’t deliver, we pursue it — through PROFECO and, where needed, the courts.
Why us
Here’s what stings in pre-construction: when a project slips, stops, or comes back different from the brochure, the contract is all the buyer has — and by then it’s already signed. Whatever the deposit, the timeline, and the recourse turned out to be, the loss falls on the buyer, not on whoever sold the dream. That’s the case for having the contract read by someone with no tie to the project: one set of eyes on what the developer is actually bound to do, while there’s still room to ask for more.
Learn more. Read our publication “PROFECO and Pre-Construction Contracts”.
Before the deposit, not after.
Have the contract read while you can still change it. The cheapest time to fix a pre-construction deal is before you sign it.
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