This page is written by the office, about the office, which is the least reliable arrangement in publishing. So it is built out of things you can go and look at without taking our word for any of it: an article number, a public register, and a document that turns up on a date. The office is GEMA Properties, and it works from Ciudad de México.
A trusted property manager in Mexico is a phrase that means nothing until somebody who is not in the country can test it. Most of the people who reach this page in English are looking for property management for Americans in Mexico, and what they are looking for underneath that is a way to be sure about a stranger they will not meet. So what follows is the testable part: what leaves this office in writing and on what date, what the law here already demands of anyone who stands in for a non-resident owner, what a company in Mexico cannot keep to itself, and what this office will not do.
Two documents leave this office on a schedule you can hold it to. The first is the written valuation of one house, which answers a first enquiry within 48 hours; the second is the monthly owner statement, which arrives whether the house earned anything that month or not.
How that statement is built, line by line, and how each voucher on it can be verified without asking us for anything at all, is written on the page for monthly owner statements. This page does not repeat it. That it can be repeated by you, alone, from a laptop in another country, is more of an answer to who we are than any sentence written here.
The trade files this under remote property management, and files you under absentee owner property management, expat property management, or simply a property manager for absentee owners. Those words describe a postcode rather than a service. What actually changes when the owner is elsewhere is the evidence, and only the evidence: an owner who can walk in on a Thursday needs little of it, and an owner who cannot needs all of it, in writing, on a date.
What the work itself consists of, and which parts of it a particular house actually needs, is set out on property management services for foreign owners, and the full-service arrangement in particular on luxury property management in Mexico.
Mexico does not leave the idea of a stand-in to good manners: it writes down what one has to be. Under article 174 of the income tax law, the representative of a resident abroad must live in Mexico or hold a permanent establishment there, must keep the documents supporting the tax paid on the taxpayer's behalf at the disposal of the tax authorities for five years counted from the day after the return was filed, must voluntarily assume joint liability for that tax, and must own enough to answer as a joint obligor.
Read it as a list of questions rather than as a rule you will ever file under, because that is the use it has for you. Is whoever holds the file resident where the house is? Will the paper still be there in five years? Is there anything behind the undertaking except the undertaking? It is the question a property manager for foreign owners has to answer before any of the rest of it means anything.
The reason the law troubles itself is article 158 of the same statute. Income from granting the temporary use of a property has its source in Mexican territory when the property is located there, and the tax is determined by applying a rate of 25 % to the income obtained, with no deduction of any kind. Who hands it over then depends on who is paying: where the payer is in the country, the payer withholds it; where the payer is himself a resident abroad, the article sends the tax in by declaration filed within fifteen days of the income being obtained. The address on the deed decides that the rule applies at all. Whom you appoint decides who is left holding the paperwork when it does.
Whether and how any of that reaches your house is a question for your accountant, and this page is not the place to answer it. What it settles is why an owner abroad cannot treat the identity of their counterpart in Mexico as a soft question.
A company here is a public record before it is a promise. Mercantile acts are entered in the Registro Público de Comercio, which describes itself as the institution that provides legal security and certainty through the publicity of the mercantile acts of traders that, under the law, require it in order to have effect against third parties — and a third party is what you are, right up until you sign.
So the ordinary thing to ask a Mexican counterpart is a plain trio: the full corporate name, the RFC, and the entry under which the company was constituted. Ask for those three before you hire a property manager in Mexico, and ask them of us. The name is GEMA Properties and the office is in Ciudad de México, which is where the looking starts; what it leads to is held by the register rather than by us, and the corporate form and the RFC belong beside the request you send rather than on a page that anyone can copy.
| The question to put to any counterpart in Mexico | The document or the article that settles it |
|---|---|
| The full corporate name and the RFC | Every voucher the counterpart issues carries both |
| The entry under which the company was constituted | The Registro Público de Comercio, where mercantile acts are recorded so as to have effect against third parties |
| Who is resident in Mexico, and for how long the file survives | Article 174: residence, five years, joint liability, assets enough to answer |
| Who hands over the tax on rental income | Article 158: 25 % of the income obtained, no deduction — withheld by a payer in the country, and otherwise paid in by the taxpayer's own declaration within fifteen days |
| Whether a voucher on a monthly statement is real | The SAT's public service, explained on monthly owner statements |
The office is in Ciudad de México and the houses are not, which is this entire page applied to ourselves. The places we work in are written up one at a time, and the one that matters is the one the deed falls in: property management in Tulum, Mexico and property management in Cancun, Mexico are written, and San Miguel de Allende, Los Cabos and Acapulco have theirs, behind the index of areas served that gathers them.
Not one of those is a promise about the future. They describe how the office is built, and each can be tested against the first document it sends you.
Ask for the full corporate name, the RFC and the entry under which it was constituted, and then confirm them where they are recorded rather than where they are claimed: mercantile acts go into the Registro Público de Comercio precisely so that they hold against third parties, and a third party is what you are until you sign. A counterpart that treats those three fields as an intrusion has already answered the question.
The income tax law takes a position before you do: income from granting the temporary use of a property located in Mexico has its source there, and what happens next follows the payer — a payer in the country withholds it, and where the payer is abroad the tax goes in on the taxpayer's own declaration within fifteen days. What the law does describe, in article 174, is the stand-in: resident in Mexico, five years of supporting documents, joint liability. Whether and how that reaches your house is a question for your accountant.
Because an office that puts one owner on display has shown you the treatment you would get, and discretion that applies only to strangers is not discretion. Judge it instead on a document written for your property, which is what the valuation is for.
No. This is an administration office: it looks after houses that already have owners, and nothing on this site is an offer to buy or to sell property. What the office is paid, and on what, is the last line of this page.
A written valuation of your property within 48 hours: what a year of looking after that house would involve, what would be taken over and on what terms. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and the request opens from the form at the foot of this page or from the contact page.
The written valuation is the first thing this office produces for a house it has never seen: what the year would require, what would be taken over, and the terms on which. It is the document the decision is meant to be made on.