Lomas de Mismaloya is one of the last gated communities on Puerto Vallarta’s south side where you can still buy a homesite with both an ocean and a mountain view. Lot 78 is exactly that: 306.79 m² (3,301 sq ft), fully titled, residential, gentle slope, ready to build, at $155,000 USD ($505 per m²).
Photos of the lot
Want the paperwork? Download the full Lot 78 spec sheet (PDF) and the buildability analysis (PDF) — zoning coefficients, measurements and everything above, in one document you can save or forward.
That is the listing. Before the listing, here is the part I would rather you heard from me than found out eighteen months into a build.
Start with the sentence that costs me the sale
Buying land and building in Puerto Vallarta is not the cheap way in. It is the specific way in. It makes sense when you already know exactly what you want, you have a builder you trust, and you are going to live in the result long enough for the difference to matter. If you are hoping land plus construction comes out under the price of a finished home with the same finishes, it usually does not — and the gap almost always shows up in the last twenty percent of the job, which is the part nobody budgets.
If that is you, buy a finished condo and skip the next fourteen months. I will help you do that, and I will not be offended.
If you want the view from your terrace at your ceiling height, keep reading, because this is a good piece of land and I can tell you exactly why.
What you are actually buying
- Price: $155,000 USD · $2,635,000 MXN · $505.23 USD per m²
- Lot size: 306.79 m² (3,301.06 sq ft)
- Land use: Residential, single-family
- Building density: 40% ground coverage (C.O.S. 0.4) · 1.8 floor-area ratio (C.U.S.) — up to 552 m² total buildable, per official Visor Urbano Jalisco coefficients
- Topography: Gentle, buildable slope — no demolition, no remediation
- Community: Private, gated, controlled access off Ruta 200 Sur
- HOA: $500 USD per year at the vacant-lot rate
And the three lines that matter more than any of the above, because they are the ones a foreign buyer does not yet know to ask for: the lot is publicly deeded, the 2026 property tax is paid, and it is free of liens.
That sounds like paperwork. It is actually the whole ballgame. In Mexico, unpaid property tax follows the property, not the person who owed it. A deal that dies at the notary usually dies over one of those three lines, and it dies after you have already paid for an appraisal, an escrow setup and a trust application. Starting from clean title is worth real money before you have spent a peso.
What you can build on it
Thirty-five percent density on 306.79 m² gives you a ground footprint of roughly 107 m². That is the footprint, not the finished house, and the community’s internal regulations and municipal zoning are the first two documents your architect should read.
Ask for both before you write an offer, not after. The community reglamento is a private document that binds you the moment you sign, and it can be stricter than the municipality on setbacks, roof materials, rental use and how long a construction site can sit open. I have watched buyers design a house against the wrong rulebook.
Yes, you need a fideicomiso — and it is the longest pole
Mismaloya sits inside Mexico’s restricted zone, the coastal strip where a foreign national cannot hold residential land directly. You hold it through a fideicomiso, a bank trust: you get every right an owner has — sell it, build on it, rent it, will it to your heirs — with a Mexican bank holding legal title as trustee.
It works. It is normal. It is also the slowest moving part of your closing, because the trust and the accompanying foreign-ministry permit take roughly four to eight weeks, and nothing else can finish until they do. Start that clock the day your offer is accepted, not the week you would like to sign. I wrote the whole mechanism out here, including what it costs to set up and what it costs to keep.
One detail specific to land: the trust goes on the lot now, and the house you build later is simply an improvement to the asset already inside it. You do not redo the trust when you break ground.
Utilities — including the line most land listings leave out
- Electricity: CFE service runs to the edge of the lot. That is a genuine advantage and it is not universal on this coast; extending a line is a real number and a real delay.
- Water: quarterly billing by consumption, through the community administration.
- Drainage: there is no municipal sewer at this lot. You will build an individual septic system.
I am putting that third line in bold on purpose, because it is the one that tends to appear in a construction budget as a surprise rather than as a plan. A septic system is not exotic and it is not a dealbreaker — most of the south side lives on one. But it is a cost, it is a permit, and it is a design constraint on where the house sits. Have your builder price it in the first estimate, not the third.
Your $500 a year while the lot is vacant covers trash collection three times a week, maintenance of the community’s concrete-and-stone roads, street lighting, and chlorination of the community water tanks.
What it costs to buy, on top of the price
Closing costs for a buyer in Puerto Vallarta generally land in the 4% to 6% range, and on a restricted-zone purchase you are at the higher end, because the trust setup and the permit are line items a domestic buyer never sees. Here is the full breakdown of what buying actually costs here — it applies to raw land the same way it applies to a house.
What it costs to build, as of September 2026
Published contractor ranges for Puerto Vallarta this year put mid-level residential construction around MXN 14,000 to 18,000 per built square meter, and high-end work in premium zones at MXN 35,000 to 40,000. At an exchange rate near 17 pesos to the dollar in September 2026, that is roughly $825 to $1,060 USD per m² at the mid level, and $2,060 to $2,350 at the top.
That spread is not noise. It is the entire conversation. The difference between those two numbers is finish level, and foreign buyers almost always drift toward the top of it, because the reference in their head is the condo they toured last week with the imported stone and the German fittings. Decide which number you are actually building to before you fall in love with a floor plan.
And treat those as a market range with a date on it, not a quote. Coastal logistics, imported materials and the geotechnical work a sloped site needs all move the figure, and only a builder standing on this lot can give you a real one. In the south zone, one of the builders I would point you to is COMACO. If you want an introduction to them, or to other builders who work in this community, message me and I will make it.
Who this lot is right for
It is right for someone who wants a view that a finished-home search will not produce at this price, who is not in a hurry, and who is comfortable managing a build from a distance or spending a season here while it happens. Two hundred thousand dollars of construction on a one-hundred-and-fifty-five-thousand-dollar lot buys you a house nobody else has, on a south-side hillside that is not making more lots.
It is the wrong lot for someone who needs to be in a home this year, and for someone who wants rental income starting immediately — if income is the goal, the neighborhood math is a different conversation entirely.
And if you are early enough in this that you are still deciding whether Puerto Vallarta is the place at all: do not buy land first. Rent here for a month, drive the highway south a few times at different hours, and see how you feel about the distance. Land is the least reversible thing you can buy, and it deserves to be the second decision, never the first. The mistakes first-time foreign buyers make start almost every time with doing this in the wrong order.
If you want to see it
I will walk it with you, bring the survey and the regulations, and put you in front of the people who can price the build. No pressure either way — if you stand on it and it is not your lot, I would rather know that on a Tuesday afternoon than in escrow.
— Neft Román, Hogar Realtors / Legacy Vallarta Realty
Affiliate of AMPI Puerto Vallarta y Compostela
Mobile / WhatsApp: +52 322 779 7718
This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm current zoning, community regulations, utility connection costs and legal status with the corresponding authorities and with your notario before purchasing.
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