Almost every seller I meet starts the conversation the same way: “My neighbor listed his unit for $650,000, so mine should be worth about the same.”
Then I ask the question that changes the tone of the meeting. Did his unit sell?
Usually the answer is no. Sometimes it has been sitting for fourteen months. And that number — the one anchoring the whole conversation — was never a real number to begin with. It was somebody’s hope.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Puerto Vallarta real estate, and it costs sellers more than commission, closing costs, and capital gains tax combined.
This is general information about how property is valued in this market, not a formal appraisal and not financial advice. Figures are approximations and they change. A written avalúo from a licensed valuador is the only number a notario or a lender will act on.
There is no Zillow here, and that matters more than you think
In the U.S. or Canada, you type your address into a website and get an estimate within a few percent. That estimate works because it is fed by a complete, public, mandatory record of every sale.
Mexico does not have that. Here is what we actually have instead:
Sale prices are not public. When a property closes, the price is recorded in the escritura at the notaría. That record is not published, not aggregated, and not searchable by the public. There is no database you or I can look up.
The MLS is fragmented. We have real MLS coverage through AMPI and Vallarta Nayarit MLS, and it is genuinely useful — but participation is voluntary, not every agent enters closed prices, and a meaningful share of transactions happen entirely outside it, especially in direct sales between foreigners.
Asking prices are freely available and mostly noise. Every listing portal shows you what sellers want. None of them show you what buyers paid. Those two numbers can sit 15–20% apart, and in a slow quarter, further.
So when an online tool offers you an “instant valuation” for a Puerto Vallarta property, it is doing one of two things: pulling from asking prices, or guessing. Neither is worth pricing your largest asset on.
What a real valuation actually involves
When I value a property here, I am doing something closer to detective work than data entry. It takes a few days, not a few seconds.
Walking the property. Not the photos — the property. Two condos in the same building, same square meters, same floor plan, can differ by $80,000 USD in real value. One has morning light and a wall of glass onto the ocean. The other looks into the neighboring tower’s elevator shaft. No algorithm on earth catches that. I have seen buyers walk out of a unit in under ninety seconds because of a view they could not see in the listing photos.
Pulling genuine comparables. Closed sales, not listings. This means calling agents I have worked with for years and asking directly what a unit actually closed at. That is a relationship business, and it is the part of the job that cannot be automated. I want three to five true comps from the last six months, in your building or your immediate area.
Adjusting for the things that move money here. Some of these are specific to this market and surprise foreign sellers:
- Fideicomiso status. Is the trust current? Which bank? Is it transferable, or does the buyer need a fresh one? A clean, transferable trust removes friction and cost from the buyer’s side, and buyers pay for the absence of friction.
- HOA health. Buyers and their agents now ask for the HOA’s financials. A building with a funded reserve and no pending special assessment is worth measurably more than an identical building facing a $30,000 USD façade repair.
- Legal cleanliness. Liens, unpaid predial, a boundary that does not match the escritura, construction done without a permit. Every one of these either kills a deal late or gets discounted hard once discovered.
- Rental performance. If your unit has a documented rental history, that is not a footnote — for investor buyers it is the entire thesis. Real occupancy and revenue numbers, with statements to back them, can add real value. Vague claims about what it “could” earn add nothing.
Reading the current market honestly. Which brings us to the part most sellers do not want to hear.
The 2026 market is not the 2022 market
I wrote about this in more detail in the mid-2026 market update, but the short version matters here.
Closed transactions dropped roughly 45% year over year as of May 2026. At the same time, median sale prices have kept climbing — roughly 6% year over year as of May 2026, with the premium neighborhoods sitting at the top of that range. Those two facts sound contradictory until you understand what they mean together:
Fewer properties are selling, and the ones that sell are the ones priced correctly.
Inventory has genuinely expanded — I covered that in more inventory, more negotiating power for buyers. Buyers today have options they did not have three years ago, they are taking their time, and they are comparing your property against eleven others before they book a second showing.
In 2021 and 2022 you could overprice by 15%, wait, and the market would eventually rise to meet you. That is not the market we are in. Overprice today and you do not wait — you rot.
What overpricing actually costs you
Sellers tend to think of an aggressive asking price as a free option. Start high, see what happens, drop later if needed. Nothing lost.
That is wrong, and here is the mechanism.
Your first thirty days are your only real thirty days. When a property hits the MLS, every buyer already working with an agent in your price range sees it within a week or two. That is your warm audience — people already looking, already qualified, already deciding. If your price makes them scroll past, you do not get them back. Cutting the price two months later does not re-summon that audience; they have already bought something else or mentally filed your unit as “the overpriced one.”
Days on market becomes the story. Buyers’ agents see the listing history. A property sitting nine months with two price reductions tells a story before anyone walks through the door: something is wrong with it, and the seller is getting desperate. Offers arrive shaped by that story. They come in lower than they would have if you had simply priced it right on day one.
The chase-down. The most painful pattern I see is the seller who is always three months behind the market. Lists at $700K. No activity. Drops to $650K four months later — but by then correct value has drifted to $620K. Drops to $620K. Still behind. Eighteen months and four reductions later, they accept $560K. A realistic $640K on day one would have sold in four months and netted them more, with a year and a half of carrying costs, predial, HOA, and stress avoided.
I would rather have an uncomfortable conversation with you in month one than a much worse one in month fourteen.
What I will not do
I will not give you an inflated number to win your listing.
It is a known tactic in this industry and it works, because when three agents give you a valuation, the highest number feels like the one who believes in your property most. It is not. It is the one who wants your signature and plans to talk you down in ninety days once the listing agreement is signed and you are locked in.
I would rather lose the listing than take one I know is priced to fail. A listing that does not sell wastes your year and my reputation.
What you should have ready
If you want a valuation that is worth something, having these on hand makes it substantially more accurate:
- Your escritura (deed)
- Fideicomiso contract, if the property is held in trust
- Current predial and water (SEAPAL) receipts
- Most recent HOA statement, and any notice of special assessments
- Invoices for improvements you have made — these matter twice, once for value and once for your tax bill
- Rental income records, if you have rented it
That last point deserves emphasis. Those improvement invoices are also what reduces your capital gains tax at closing. If you renovated the kitchen for $40,000 USD and paid cash without a factura, that money is invisible to the notario, and you will pay tax as though you never spent it. I go through this in detail in what it really costs to sell.
Get a real number
I will walk your property, pull genuine comparables, and give you an honest range — including what I think it will actually close at, not just what we could list it for. Free, no obligation, and no pressure to sign anything. Most valuations are ready within 24 hours of the walkthrough.
If the number is lower than you hoped, I will tell you why, and I will tell you what would move it. Sometimes the right answer is to wait a season. Sometimes it is to spend $8,000 fixing the two things every buyer will notice. Sometimes it is that your property is worth more than you thought, which is a good day for both of us.
Send me your address on WhatsApp and we will set up a time.
If you are buying as well as selling, the ten mistakes first-time foreign buyers make in Puerto Vallarta is the other half of this conversation.
— Neft Román, Legacy Vallarta Realty
Affiliate of AMPI Puerto Vallarta y Compostela
📐 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
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