I have watched a lot of foreign buyers purchase property in this bay. The ones who end up happy and the ones who end up regretful are usually separated not by budget or by luck, but by a handful of decisions made early — often in the first two weeks, often while still on vacation.
Here are the ten I see most.
This is general information based on what I see as an agent in this market, not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures are approximations and they change. Confirm anything that affects your money with a notario, an attorney or an accountant before you act on it.
1. Buying the vacation instead of the property
The most expensive mistake, and the most common.
You have had an extraordinary week. The weather was perfect, the restaurants were wonderful, someone handed you a margarita on a terrace at sunset, and somewhere around day five it occurred to you that you could live like this.
That feeling is real. It is also not information about a property.
February in Zona Romántica is not August in Zona Romántica. A neighborhood on a Tuesday morning is not that neighborhood on a Friday night. The commute you did once at 11 a.m. is not the commute in high-season traffic.
The fix, and it is the piece of advice I give that costs me a commission: rent for a season before you buy. Not a week — a season. In the neighborhood you think you want, in the month you think you would hate, on the street you are actually considering. It costs a few thousand dollars and it routinely changes people’s minds about a purchase that costs a few hundred thousand.
I have never once had a client regret doing this. I have had several regret not doing it. The cheapest way to stop buying the vacation is to pay someone to look at the building instead of the view: what a pre-purchase inspection actually checks here, and what it costs.
2. Assuming Zona Romántica by default
It is the neighborhood everyone arrives wanting, and it is a completely legitimate purchase. It is a terrible default.
You pay the highest price per square meter of any non-luxury zone, you get the least space per dollar in the city, and you get it in genuinely the loudest place in the city — live music until 2 a.m., garbage trucks at 6, construction somewhere within earshot most of the year.
For a buyer who wants to live without a car and eat out constantly, that trade is worth it. For a buyer who wanted quiet and square footage and did not realize there was a choice, it is an expensive surprise.
Read neighborhoods by return if you are investing, or where should I move in Puerto Vallarta if you are moving here. Versalles, Fluvial, 5 de Diciembre and Marina Vallarta all deserve a look before you commit.
3. Not knowing what you are buying, legally
A “condo” in Puerto Vallarta can be several different assets, and they are not equivalent:
- A unit in a formally constituted régimen de condominio, registered in the Public Registry, with defined private area, an assigned share of common areas, and a real HOA. This is what you want.
- A unit in a building that functions like a condominium but was never formally constituted — the developer sold units on private contracts and never finished the regime paperwork. These exist here. They are cheaper for a reason.
- Pre-construction, where you are buying a contractual right to something that does not exist yet.
- A house on land originally held as ejido (communal agrarian land) that may or may not have been properly regularized into private property. Most common on the fringes.
Your agent should be able to tell you which of these you are looking at, in one sentence, without hedging. If they cannot, that tells you something about the agent.
4. Wiring money directly to the seller
Never. Not the deposit, not the balance, not “just to show good faith.”
Every foreign buyer who has lost a deposit in this bay lost it after hearing a reasonable-sounding explanation for why escrow was not necessary this one time. The seller is in Canada. It will delay us two weeks. We have done it this way before.
Escrow in Puerto Vallarta runs roughly 450 to 800 USD and puts your money inside a legal system you can actually litigate in. It is the cheapest insurance in the transaction. The company I use is AlianzEscrow, which holds funds in FDIC-insured accounts at U.S. banks — but whoever you use, the specific thing to verify is where the money actually sits. More in escrow in Puerto Vallarta.
5. Letting someone else pick the notario
By custom in Puerto Vallarta, the buyer chooses the notario, because the buyer pays for it. Notary offices here vary enormously in speed and thoroughness, and this is one of the few levers in the transaction you actually control.
Also: the notario is a state-appointed attorney with public faith, not your advocate. For a complicated purchase — ejido history, unconstituted regime, estate sale, contested title — hire a private attorney separately. Details in choosing your notario.
6. Not reading the condominium bylaws until after closing
If you plan to rent short-term, the reglamento determines whether you can — and buildings here vary from full aparthotel operations to outright prohibition, with 30-day minimums common in between. A 30-day minimum eliminates the nightly rental model entirely.
Read the bylaws before you are emotionally committed to the property, not after. Make it a due diligence condition you can exit on. And understand that bylaws can be amended by owner vote — see the short-term rental rules post for why 2026 is a particularly important year to be thinking about this.
7. Not asking about special assessments
HOA fees are visible and get budgeted. Special assessments are not.
A building funding a façade repair, an elevator replacement or a roof rebuild can assess owners thousands of dollars in a single vote, and under Jalisco law there is no cap on an extraordinary assessment. The tell is the reserve fund, not the monthly fee. A building with a low fee and no reserves is not cheap — it is a special assessment that has not been scheduled yet.
Ask for reserve fund statements and the last three years of HOA minutes. A building about to assess owners 8,000 dollars each is not going to volunteer that during your showing. How condo fees actually work here goes through what to ask for.
Mistakes six and seven are really one mistake wearing two hats, and the same short stack of paperwork solves both. Here is what a Jalisco administrator is legally obliged to hand over, who can request it, and how to read the one document that names every owner who is not paying.
8. Agreeing to under-declare the sale price
Some sellers will ask you to record a price lower than the true one to reduce their capital gains tax. It gets framed as a small favor that everyone does.
Refuse. It is tax fraud, it exposes you personally, and — set the legal exposure aside entirely — it inflates your own capital gains when you eventually sell, because your cost basis is whatever the deed says.
You would be paying the seller’s tax bill for them, years later, with interest. That is not a favor. It is a transfer of liability disguised as a courtesy. How ISR is calculated on a sale shows you exactly what the recorded price does to the math.
9. Not keeping receipts from day one
The single most-ignored piece of advice I give, and it is worth thousands of dollars.
Every renovation, every improvement, every contractor — get a proper CFDI factura with your name and RFC on it. Not a receipt. Not a bank transfer screenshot. Not a handwritten note.
When you sell, those invoices are what reduce your capital gains tax. Undocumented spending is not disputed by the notario — it is invisible. A 40,000 dollar kitchen paid in cash without a factura is money you spent that the tax authority will never know about, and you will be taxed as though you never spent it.
This requires an RFC before the work is done, and asking the contractor for a factura at the time — while you still have leverage, because you have not paid yet. See finding a reliable contractor.
10. Assuming the U.S. or Canadian timeline
“In the States this would have closed by now.” Correct. It would have.
Realistic here: 45 to 90 days for a foreign buyer establishing a new fideicomiso. The trust and the SRE permit alone run four to eight weeks, and they should start the day the promissory agreement is signed, not later.
The instinct to push — skip a step, wire early, take somebody’s word instead of getting the document — is where the real damage happens. Full timeline in from accepted offer to keys, and the money side in what buying actually costs and financing as a foreigner.
Assume 60 days, not 30. Buy your flights accordingly.
The pattern underneath all ten
Eight of these ten are the same mistake wearing different clothes: acting on what someone told you instead of getting the document.
The regime is constituted — get the registry record. The HOA is current — get the clearance letter. Everyone here rents short-term — get the reglamento. The seller owns it free and clear — get the certificate of no liens. The parking space comes with it — get it named in the deed.
Mexican property transactions are well protected. Title transfer here is, in some ways, more rigorous than in the U.S. The protections simply sit at different points along the timeline than you are used to, and none of them protect you from a fact you accepted verbally.
Get the document. Every time. That single habit prevents most of this list.
Message me on WhatsApp — whether you are ready to buy or a year out from it. The conversations that go best are usually the early ones.
Want this as a checklist you can carry with you?
I put the ten things worth verifying before you sign anything in Puerto Vallarta into a two-page PDF, together with the rental-night exercise. Leave your email below and it opens immediately — you are not waiting on anything.
Fair warning, since you are handing me your address: I will see that you downloaded it, and I may write to you once. That is the trade. If a property or a neighbourhood is already on your mind, put it in the note and I will answer that instead of sending you anything generic.
Message me on WhatsApp and I will send you the checklist — or reply with the building or the neighbourhood you are looking at, and I will run the list against that one instead.
— Neft Román, Legacy Vallarta Realty
Affiliate of AMPI Puerto Vallarta y Compostela
Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice, and none of it replaces a notario, an attorney or an accountant looking at your specific transaction. Costs, rates and timelines quoted are approximations current as of September 2026 and change without notice.
📐 Full written guide: legacyvallartarealty.com
📅 Book a 30-minute call: meetings.hubspot.com/neft
💬 Or message me on WhatsApp: wa.me/523227797718
🏠 More guides on living in Puerto Vallarta: legacyvallartarealty.com/blog
Legacy Vallarta Realty — Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
— Neft Román, Legacy Vallarta Realty
Affiliate of AMPI Puerto Vallarta y Compostela
Join The Discussion