Fact: Interest in Mexican Properties among Americans is 3 times bigger than 2015

Interest in Mexican properties among Americans looking for real estate abroad was three times greater last year than in 2015. Data released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows that 13% of prospective buyers of properties outside the United States wanted to buy in Mexico, the newspaper El Financiero reported yesterday.

In 2015 that figure was just 4%.

Florida realtor Margarita Sanclemente said buyers want to spend their winters in locations with a better climate, such as the Riviera Maya. Buying a beach house in Florida is much more costly, particularly in terms of taxes and maintenance, than it is in Mexico, said the CEO of Sanclemente Group.

The NAR data showed that 87% of U.S. citizens look for property abroad for use as a vacation home and as a rental.Sanclemente said the annual cost of maintaining a property in the U.S. is 1.8% of the property’s value. In Mexico the figure is just 0.2%, she said.

The areas in which Americans are most interested, such as the Riviera Maya and San Miguel de Allende, the realtor said, are beginning to price properties in American dollars, meaning greater profits for developers and realtors in light of the peso’s decline in value.

Sources: National Association of Realtors (NAR), El Financiero, Mexico News Daily