Mexico is the refuge of thousands of Americans, who avoid the stress of high inflation and interest rates experienced in the United States by buying cheap houses in front of the sea and white sand from the beach of Cancun, Tulum, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos and other cities.
“High inflation and interest rates in the United States, the Covid-19 pandemic, digital nomads and the fact that a Netflix or several technology companies institutionalized the home office helped make the Mexican market increasingly attractive to the US and Canadian market,” says Romain Benenatti, Director of Operations of Clikalia Mexico.
Each tourist destination in Mexico has its role within the American macroeconomics, since Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende are cities for retirees and retirees, while Tijuana is becoming a health and dental tourism corridor for Californians, adds the manager.
Tijuana, a city that is not strictly a holiday, has registered a high sale of apartments for people who work in San Diego: “They have realized that living and acquiring an apartment in Tijuana costs a fifth of an apartment in San Diego,” says Eugene Towle, managing partner of Softec.
Americans have also seen that living in any Mexican tourist destination costs a third of what it costs to live in New York, says Forbes Mexico.
“At first the people who were arriving said: ‘look, I’m going to come to Mexico for a month and see what’s up,'” says the director of the company specializing in real estate consulting and research. Then, he adds, they realized that from Mexico they can work by connecting through Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or any other video call application.
Today, a 100-square-meter apartment is worth $200,000 in Tijuana, but that same apartment in San Diego costs between one million dollars and a million and a half dollars, Towle emphasizes.
According to Softec figures, the Covid-19 pandemic plummeted 34% of the sale of apartments and luxury homes in different tourist cities such as Los Cabos, Tulum, Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Vallarta, San Carlos, Puerto Peñasco, Mazatlán, Acapulco, Huatulco, Ixtapa Zihuatanejo and Riviera Nayarit.
In 2020, Americans only bought 8,000 luxury homes in Mexico, when a year earlier they acquired more than 12,270 apartments a few meters from the beach, explains Softec.
After a massive vaccination in Mexico and the United States against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, luxury housing sales totaled more than 11,000 units in different tourist destinations in the Mexican Republic during 2021.
And by 2022, sales of luxury beachfront apartments in Mexico will increase by more than 32.08%, since more than 15,605 units are expected to be sold, adds Softec.
In 2020 and 2021, Mexico broke the inertia of attracting innovators, because now the early adapters arrived: “it is a market 10 times larger than innovators,” says Softec’s managing partner.
Most foreigners who buy houses and apartments in Mexico do so on account, since there are no loans or mortgages for customers from the United States, Canada and other parts of the world, says Towle.
Suddenly, banks offer credit to foreigners, but it is a very entangled process; there are a couple of companies that offer loans to foreigners to buy properties in Mexico, but they have limited access, he adds.
Americans saw that they could acquire an apartment not with a beachfront in Mexico, but with access to the sea and its white sand at a price of between $100,000 and $200,000, he says.
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