For about a decade, the short-term rental math in Puerto Vallarta was refreshingly simple. Buy a condo in a good zone, list it, rent it as many nights as you could fill, and the regulatory question barely came up.
That era is closing. Not dramatically, and not overnight — but if you are buying an investment property in Puerto Vallarta right now and you have not looked at what is moving through the state legislature, you are underwriting your returns on rules that may not exist in a year.
Here is where things actually stand, separated carefully into what is already required, what is being proposed, and what you should verify before you sign anything.
Let me say where this lands before you read the rest, because it is not where most people assume. This is not an argument against buying in Puerto Vallarta. It is an argument for pricing a rental property the way you would in 2026 instead of the way you would have in 2021. Every number below is something you can verify before you make an offer, and verifying it is the whole difference between an investment and a hope. The reader I am writing for is not the one who walks away. It is the one who buys with the numbers already stress-tested.
A note on what this is: general information, accurate as of publication, about a situation still moving through the Jalisco legislature. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it should not be the last thing you read before you sign. Confirm the current status with the municipality and a Mexican attorney — and if you are working with me, I will confirm it with you.
What is already required today
These are not new and not controversial. They are simply the things a meaningful number of foreign owners have never done.
PUI registration (national). Mexico now runs a national registry for lodging establishments. Hosts register through the official PUI portal using their RFC and a valid SAT e.firma, register the property as a lodging establishment, and receive an establishment key. This applies to vacation rentals and temporary lodging, not just hotels.
If you do not have an RFC, you cannot do this — which is one more reason to sort your tax ID early. I covered which document does what in RFC, CURP, INE, IMSS: which document do you actually need.
Municipal operating license. A short-stay lodging operation is a commercial activity, and the municipality expects it to be licensed as one.
Land use compatible with commercial activity. Your property’s uso de suelo has to permit it. This is checkable in advance and almost nobody checks it in advance.
Compliance with the condominium bylaws. More on this below, because it is the one that actually kills deals.
Basic safety conditions. Smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, functioning basics.
Civil liability insurance. A valid policy is required. If the host does not carry one, the platform where the property is listed is obligated to provide it — but relying on the platform’s coverage instead of your own is a thin position to be in when something happens.
State lodging tax (impuesto sobre hospedaje). Jalisco levies it. Platforms generally withhold and remit, but you should understand what is being taken out rather than being surprised by the net.
What is being proposed — and why investors should care
In May 2026, a commission of the Jalisco Congress approved a package of reforms to the Civil Code, the Urban Code, and the Tourism Law aimed at short-stay lodging platforms. The initiative was driven by Deputy Mariana Casillas of Futuro, and the housing-pressure conversation around the 2026 World Cup gave it momentum.
The three provisions that matter to you:
A 180-night annual cap. The proposal cuts the number of days a property can be dedicated to lodging from 365 to 180 per year in high-tourism zones — explicitly including Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.
A 90-night cap in saturated zones. In areas designated “high impact” for short-term rental saturation, the limit drops further, to 90 nights a year.
A five-year hold on new construction. Newly built houses and apartments would be barred from platform listing for their first five years.
Separately, at the municipal level, Puerto Vallarta’s administration has floated a new contribution on platform lodging — the treasury has been evaluating something in the range of 1% to 3% of rents.
The status matters as much as the content
As of September 2026, the state package has cleared commission but has not been voted by the full Congress. It is a serious proposal that advanced meaningfully, not a finished law. Notably, Airbnb and Expedia have publicly signaled they are open to being regulated in Jalisco, which historically makes passage more likely rather than less.
I am not going to tell you this is definitely coming, and I am not going to tell you to ignore it. What I will tell you is what a careful investor does with a proposal at this stage: underwrite the downside.
Run your numbers at 180 nights
Here is the practical exercise, and it takes ten minutes.
Puerto Vallarta short-term occupancy runs in the neighborhood of 63% on an annual basis in the strongest zones — roughly 230 nights. That is the number most investment pro formas are quietly built on.
Now rerun the same property at 180 nights. That is roughly a 20–25% cut to gross rental revenue, against unchanged HOA fees, unchanged predial, unchanged fideicomiso fees, and unchanged mortgage payment if you have one.
Does the investment still work?
If yes, buy with confidence — you have priced the risk.
If the deal only works at 230+ nights, you are not making a real estate investment. You are making a bet on a specific legislative outcome, and you should at least know that is what you are doing.
Note that a 180-night cap does not hurt every property equally. A unit in a zone with strong high-season rates can concentrate its 180 nights into the most valuable part of the calendar and lose proportionally less revenue than the raw math suggests. A property that depends on grinding out mediocre shoulder-season nights to pencil out gets hit much harder. If you are buying now, that difference is worth real money.
The bylaws check that kills more deals than the law will
Before any of the above, there is a document that already governs whether you can rent short-term, and it has nothing to do with the state or the municipality: *the condominium’s reglamento.*
Puerto Vallarta buildings vary enormously. Some are effectively aparthotels where every unit is a rental. Others prohibit short-term rental outright. Many sit in between with minimum stay requirements — 30 days is common, and a 30-day minimum eliminates the Airbnb model entirely.
Read the bylaws before you are emotionally committed to the property, not after. This is a due diligence item, and it should be in your promissory agreement as a condition you can exit on.
In practice, the fastest way to get a straight answer is to go to whoever administers the building. Professional administrators here — Administradora San Pablo and BIDA Conservadora S.C. are two that operate here — keep the reglamento, the assembly minutes and the reserve fund statements in one place and will produce them for a serious buyer. A building with no professional administration, where the documents live in a filing cabinet at somebody’s house, is itself a data point.
Two things to watch specifically:
Bylaws can be amended. A building that permits short-term rental today can vote to restrict it. If you are buying a unit whose entire investment thesis is nightly rental, understand the ownership composition — a building that is majority full-time residents is a building where that vote can happen.
What the seller or the listing agent tells you is not the document. “Everyone here rents” is not the same as “the reglamento permits it.” Get the reglamento. Read the reglamento.
The pre-purchase checklist
Before you make an offer on a Puerto Vallarta property you intend to rent short-term:
- Read the condominium reglamento. Confirm short-term rental is permitted and note any minimum stay.
- Ask about pending bylaw amendments and the owner-occupancy mix in the building.
- *Verify land use (uso de suelo)* permits commercial lodging activity.
- Confirm you can get an RFC and complete PUI registration — non-negotiable, and it takes time.
- Ask what the municipal license actually requires for that specific property.
- Get real rental history, with statements. Not projections. Not “it could earn.” Actual booking and revenue records.
- Rerun the pro forma at 180 nights, and again at 90 if the property is in a zone likely to be designated high-impact.
- Price in a 1–3% municipal platform tax as a live possibility.
- Check the HOA reserve fund and any pending special assessment. A $20,000 USD assessment erases a year of net income.
- Budget for civil liability insurance in your own name.
What I actually think
I do not read this as bad news for Puerto Vallarta real estate, and I want to be straight about why.
Cities across Mexico and the world are converging on the same regulatory posture — register, license, tax, cap. Puerto Vallarta arriving there is normal, not a crisis. Regulation of this kind tends to compress returns for the most casual operators while professionalizing the market for the ones who prepared. If a 180-night cap arrives, some unlicensed inventory exits, and the well-run properties that remain generally face less competition on the nights they can rent.
What genuinely worries me is different: buyers underwriting 2021 assumptions in a 2026 market. Inventory has expanded — I wrote about that in more inventory, more negotiating power for buyers — occupancy is competitive, and now the regulatory floor is moving. A pro forma built on 365 available nights, 70% occupancy, no municipal tax, and no license cost is not optimistic. It is wrong.
Build the conservative model. If the property still returns what you need, you have a good investment and a margin for whatever the Congress decides. That is the whole point.
Message me on WhatsApp and we will go through the bylaws and the real numbers on any property you are considering — before you make an offer.
— Neft Román, Legacy Vallarta Realty
Member of AMPI Puerto Vallarta y Compostela
Regulations described here were accurate as of publication and are actively changing. The state reform discussed had not completed its legislative process at the time of writing. Confirm current requirements with the municipality and a Mexican attorney before making an investment decision.
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