Five Things a High Net Worth Buyer Checks Before They Make an Offer in Los Cabos

A buyer with real money does not fall in love with a house in Los Cabos. They fall in love with a house and then spend two weeks quietly checking whether it is a problem. If you are selling at this level, the sale is decided in those two weeks, not on the tour.

Here is what they check. Every item on this list has cost somebody a sale in this market.

1. How the property is held

A foreign buyer cannot hold coastal land in Mexico directly. They hold it through a bank trust, which everyone here calls a fideicomiso. The bank holds the title, the buyer holds every right that matters: to live in it, rent it, renovate it, sell it and leave it to their children. It is not a lease and it is not a loophole. It is the normal way this is done, and it has been for decades.

What matters to the buyer is whether your trust is clean, who the trustee bank is, how many years are left on it and what it costs to keep every year. If your agent cannot answer those in the first meeting, the buyer starts wondering what else nobody checked.

2. What the sale is going to cost you, and what it costs them

A seller in Mexico pays a tax on the gain, called ISR. How much depends on the paperwork you have kept: the value on your original deed, the invoices for the construction and the renovations, whether you have your tax registration current. Owners who kept every receipt pay less than owners who did not. Nobody enjoys this conversation, but having it in month one is far better than having it two days before closing when the notary asks.

The buyer has their own set of costs: acquisition tax, notary fees, the trust setup. Sophisticated buyers already know the range. What unsettles them is a seller who seems surprised by any of it.

3. Whether the numbers on the listing are real

Square meters that match the deed. A homeowners association fee that matches the last statement, not the one from four years ago. Rental income, if you claim it, that matches what actually landed in an account. One number that does not hold up makes a buyer re-check all of them, and re-checking is where deals die.

4. Who else has seen it

This one surprises sellers. A buyer at this level almost always has an agent, and their agent wants to know the property is in the shared database that the serious agencies in Los Cabos work from. A home that exists only on one agency’s website reads as a home that is being kept quiet, and quiet means either a problem or a seller who is not serious.

We are a member firm of that database. When we list your home, agents at the other agencies can sell it too. We do not compete with them, we complement them.

5. How long it has been sitting

Days on market is public and buyers look at it first. A property that has been listed for a year is not read as desirable and underpriced. It is read as overpriced, and every offer that arrives afterward is shaped by that number. Which is why the price you choose in week one matters more than any negotiation you do in month nine.

What this means if you are about to list

Get the paperwork in order before the photographer arrives. Price from what has actually closed nearby, not from what your neighbor is asking. Put the property in front of the entire market on day one, not after the first quiet ninety days.

We will tell you what your property is worth today, and what it will take to sell it. If we do not think we can sell it, we will tell you that too.