September 2026

You can live in Puerto Vallarta for ten years without learning Spanish — which is exactly why so many people do. What the schools here actually look like, what to ask before you pay, and the household vocabulary that saves a foreign owner the most money.

I tell buyers to rent a season before they buy. Almost nobody can. So here is the version people actually do — why one month is the threshold, why it should be September rather than February, and why the month is the one thing the rental market here does not sell.

A home inspection covers the building. It says nothing about the condominium’s money or its rules. Here are the documents a Jalisco administrator is legally obliged to hand over, who can request them, and how to read the one that matters most — the list of owners who are not paying.

I train at six in the morning, because that is what the heat here decides for you. Where to work out in Puerto Vallarta, what a Mexican gym contract actually says — including the five-business-day cancellation window and the 2025 rules on automatic renewals — and why the gym inside the building is usually not worth the premium.

A two-bedroom condo inspection here runs about $350 USD — the cheapest line item in the transaction, and the one foreign buyers skip most. What it checks in a concrete coastal building, the four things it does not check, and why nobody licenses home inspectors in Mexico.

Sayulita gets the designation on November 2 during Day of the Dead. It is real news, and it is about to appear in a lot of sales pitches. Here is what it changes, what it does not, and the constraint nobody mentions while selling you a condo.

The peso is at its strongest since May 2024. Run the numbers in pesos instead of dollars and last year's Puerto Vallarta price gains mostly disappear — which explains the 45% drop in closed transactions better than anything else.

There is no Zillow for Puerto Vallarta, and the asking prices you see online are not what properties sell for. Here is how a real valuation works, and why the first 30 days on the market decide everything.

The power in Puerto Vallarta is reliable and outages are uncommon — but the voltage swing around a rare one is what kills compressors. The difference between a regulador and a no-break, and how to claim from CFE if something burns out.

Ten mistakes I watch foreign buyers make in Puerto Vallarta — from buying the vacation instead of the property, to the paperwork oversight that costs thousands at resale.