The Sea of Cortez, the desert, and one house
The sea deposits salt and the desert never rinses it off: 421.5 mm of rain against 2,131.5 mm of evaporation, and what that asks of a closed house.
These are guides for foreign homeowners in Mexico, and they are written for the months you spend somewhere else. What separates them from anything read before a purchase is the distance: the house keeps a working year of its own — a season, a list of dates, a queue of people who can and cannot reach it — and you are not standing there while it goes by.
Written in Mexico City · Every date carries the text it came from · Not legal or tax advice.
It is for the decision that reaches you late. Everything that happens to a house owned from another country arrives as a message about something that started weeks earlier, and reading beforehand is what lets you recognise it when it does.
The work on our side of that has a name in the trade — remote property management — and the name describes the arrangement, not the reader. On your side it is not a service but a condition: you are the one who has to decide about a room you cannot walk into. What a guide can do about that is narrow, and worth saying plainly: shorten the interval, by naming the few things that begin moving before anybody writes to you.
An absentee owner is not an inattentive one, and the length of the absence is what the several names are really about: snowbird property management is written for the owner who comes for a season, expat property management for the one whose life has moved. Absentee owner property management covers either, and a guide has to be good for all of them, because the house does not know which of the three you are. Distance simply removes the cheapest instrument there is, which is walking past the house and noticing something.
It changes who notices first, and how long it takes before you hear about it. A house abroad runs on a calendar written where it stands, and that calendar is not the one on your desk.
Part of that calendar is weather and part of it is statute. The legal part is short enough to print: the Ley Federal del Trabajo fixes the days of obligatory rest for the whole country, and it is not the list your own year is built on — the federal holidays where you are come from a different statute, 5 U.S.C. 6103.
| The date Mexican law fixes | What the article ties it to | A US federal holiday as well |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January | — | Yes — New Year's Day |
| The first Monday in February | 5 February | No |
| The third Monday in March | 21 March | No |
| 1 May | — | No |
| 16 September | — | No |
| The third Monday in November | 20 November | No |
| 1 October, every six years | the handover of the federal executive — a fraction the statute itself marks as reformed on 30 September 2024 | No |
| 25 December | — | Yes — Christmas Day |
Two dates in the year are a holiday in both countries — 1 January and 25 December — and the rest of that list is made of Mondays you have no reason to have marked. A ninth entry has no fixed date at all: the law adds the day of an ordinary election, whenever the electoral statutes call one. None of it stops work outright — the same law provides that whoever does work on one of those days is owed double pay for the service rendered, on top of the wage owed for the rest day itself. The question a date on that list raises is therefore not whether a thing can be done, but what it costs to do it then, and who agreed to that before the invoice existed.
That is a whole guide in miniature. An official text, opened once and quoted, becomes a sentence you can act on from another country.
All of it, and without asking us. The two texts behind the section above are public, each link opens where the claim is made, and the count of dates is one you can redo in an evening with two calendars in front of you.
That is also the reason these pages are signed by an office and not by a person. A name you have no way of meeting is not evidence; an article number is the same document read in Mexico City and read in another country's morning, and it is the only one of the two you can open from your side.
The method has a limit, and the limit is the useful part. Where a question has no public document behind it a guide says so and stops there, because the alternative is to fill the gap with this office's own authority — which, from where you are reading, is worth exactly what a byline is worth.
From the ones only an owner who is not there has to ask. They are set out below in the order in which they reach you: first what arrives while you are asleep, last what was settled once, years ago, and has been quiet since.
Each is a question here and nothing more. The answer is where the source is, and producing the source is what a guide is for.
Where a question is already settled elsewhere on this site, a guide sends you there instead of repeating it. What is contracted, as opposed to what is written about, is on property management services for foreign owners; what changes from one town to the next is on property management in Tulum and property management in Cancún. What one kind of arrangement involves, rather than one town, is on full-service management for luxury homes, on vacation rental management and on monthly owner statements.
By opening the document and quoting it, inside the sentence that makes the claim. There is no list of sources at the foot of these pages: a date or an article number carries its link where it stands, so that one line can be checked without reading the rest.
Two limits are worth naming, because they are the ones a reader abroad would most like us to break. The first is money: a guide will not say what a house should earn, because that is a promise, and this office publishes none — no price, no occupancy, no expected return. The second is advice: a guide can say which text governs a question and what that text says, and it stops there, because the text does not know your deed and neither do we.
There is also no calendar. Nothing on this page announces when the next guide arrives or how many are coming, because a guide appears when the reading behind it is finished, and reading does not keep to a date announced in advance.
No. These pages read public texts; they do not read your papers, and that difference is sharpest at a distance — nobody where you are can hold the deed of a house in Mexico up to the light. Where a question turns on the documents of one property it stops being a reading and becomes work for a professional who can see them.
Yes, and most of it. Letting a house can add obligations that an owner who never lets it does not have, but distance brings its own set and those do not wait for a guest: an empty house still has a year — dates, seasons and people holding keys — that goes on without you.
No, and the rule cuts the other way as well: they will not quote you what a job costs, because that price carries a date. Work done on one of the statutory rest days is owed double pay, so the same repair booked on the third Monday in November need not be the same invoice as the Tuesday after it.
Every claim carries the document it came from, and a Mexican statute prints the date of its last reform on its own first page — the labour law behind the table above reads 14 May 2026. A text can be reformed the week after a guide is written, and that printed date is how a reader catches it first.
The sea deposits salt and the desert never rinses it off: 421.5 mm of rain against 2,131.5 mm of evaporation, and what that asks of a closed house.
A UNESCO centre since 2008, a monument zone since 1982, a protected town since 1939. What that layering, the cantera and the water ask of a house.
The published cycle runs April to October, the beach communiqué is daily with an 08:00 cut-off, the regional outlook is monthly. What to ask, and when.
Property management is counted in months. Vacation rental management is counted in nights, and every difference between the two follows from that.
Otis was flagged a week ahead and warned twenty-one hours ahead. Its strength was never forecast. What an owner abroad can act on, and what gets counted.
In the United States a short-term rental is defined by counting days, and the count changes with who counts. In Mexico no text counts them at all.
An American owner expects trust accounting. Mexican law regulates the money document by document: what a statement must prove, and what a spreadsheet misses.
Mexico has four legal time zones and no seasonal clock outside the northern border. Which hour a house keeps, and why the gap to yours moves twice a year.
What an American owner has to move after the deed is signed in Mexico: the accounts that change name, the notices with deadlines, and what blocks each.
What the short-term rental loophole means in US tax law, which conditions it turns on, and what a house in Mexico answers to instead.
What rental arbitrage is when the house is yours: the contract underneath it, who carries which risk, and how it differs from co-hosting and management.
Acapulco weather month by month, from the official 1991-2020 normals: when the rain arrives, what the dry months are for, and what a closed house needs.
Is property management worth it when the house is used rather than rented: what the comparison is against, what an owner absorbs alone, and when it is not.
What are concierge services: the definition, how a property concierge differs from a hotel one, what an empty house asks for, and how it is priced.
How much do property managers charge, and what the number is charged on: gross against net, what a fee usually excludes, and the questions that settle it.
What does a property manager do: the trade described by acts rather than adjectives — who enters the house, how often, what is documented, and who signs what.
The form below is the same one at the foot of every page on this site. Write the house rather than an introduction: where it stands, what kind of property it is and how much of the year it spends empty are enough for a first estimate to begin.