Service

The annual plan for a rental property in Mexico

Twelve monthly statements describe twelve months that have already happened. They are the right document for that, and they are the one you receive every month. What they cannot do is tell you what the house will ask for next year, which is the question an owner who lives somewhere else has no other way of answering.

The annual plan is that other document. Once a year it sets out what should be replaced, what should be renewed and what can wait another year, each line with an estimated cost and with the month by which the decision has to be taken. You decide what goes in. What you decide is written down, and that same page is where next year's plan starts.

This page is written for the owner. Nothing here is a projection of income, and nothing here is approved until you approve it.

An empty room at the end of a season, photographed from the doorway in flat early light. Closed list: bare floor, one armchair under a folded dust sheet, shutters half open, a plain wall showing honest wear, a single closed door. Palette sand, cream, one warm wood tone, deep shadow. The house is finished, unoccupied and about to be looked at rather than used. No people, no hands, no luggage, no tools, no ladders, no packing boxes, no screens, no legible text or labels, no branded anything. No sea, no pool, no terrace, no horizon, no jungle, no desert, no colonial patio, no wrought iron, no midday postcard saturation.

What an owner abroad cannot see

From a distance a house looks stable until the month it does not. The failure is almost never sudden: a pump repaired three times, a mattress that has been described as tired for two seasons, an exterior finish that has been on somebody's mental list and nobody's written one. Distance does not cause the damage. It causes the delay, and the delay is what turns a decision into an emergency.

An emergency is settled at whatever price and in whatever month it lands in. That is the whole argument for writing the year down in advance, and it is why this document exists alongside the standing preventive schedule described in full-service management for luxury homes. The schedule handles the work that recurs and needs no instruction from you. The plan handles everything the schedule cannot decide on its own: what is past repair, what still works but no longer presents the house, and the work whose date is set by a permit or by the weather rather than by convenience.

The four services and how they divide the year sit next to each other on the services overview.

Renew, replace, defer

The plan is three lists rather than one, because the three are decided on different grounds and mixing them is how a wish list gets written.

Renew. What still works and no longer holds the standard of the house: bathroom fittings pitted by hard water, a rug that has been cleaned as many times as a rug can be, curtains that no longer hang the way they were hung, a table whose finish has gone flat under daily use. Nothing on this list has failed, so nothing on it shows up in a repair log — which is why it has to be looked at deliberately, once a year, by someone standing in front of the object.
Replace. What is consumed, lost or broken: towels and table linen, glassware, filters and cartridges, spare parts for the equipment, the second set of keys, the remote that opens the gate. This one is arithmetic rather than judgement — two inventories and one subtraction — and there is no opinion anywhere in it.
Defer. What was inspected, priced and deliberately left for another year, with the reason written beside it. It is the list almost no report keeps, and the one that makes the plan worth reading twelve months later: the line comes back already described and already costed, so next year's conversation starts where this one stopped.

None of the three is an instruction. Every line carries an estimated cost so that the choice is made between comparable things, and nothing is ordered without your approval.

There is no furniture replacement schedule for a rental on this page, and no table of useful lifespans either; you should be careful with anyone who hands you one. A mattress in a coastal house that receives guests and a mattress in a house opened four times a year are not on the same clock, so replacement is decided on condition and use, with the inventory and the photographs from the walkthrough beside it.

What produces the list

The plan is the output of a walkthrough, not of a meeting. Four things go into it, and none of them is a catalogue.

The year's service history, read end to end rather than one ticket at a time. A gate motor adjusted in March, in July and again in October is not a run of small jobs: it is a replacement that has not been called by its name yet.
A walkthrough with the season closed and the house empty, which is the only point in the year when wear can be seen instead of inferred: floors, fittings, textiles, equipment, pool, garden and everything outside.
An annual property inventory, counted against last year's rather than remembered. What is missing is replaced, what broke is recorded with a photograph, and what can no longer be presented comes off the list even though it is intact.
A price against every proposal, so that what reaches you is something you can decide rather than something you have to take on trust.

The plan is written for one house. Two houses in the same town, with the same age and the same systems, do not get the same list, because one of them was occupied all winter and the other was closed.

The year has windows, and they are not the same on both coasts

Work on a house in Mexico is not scheduled around your diary. It is scheduled around two storm seasons, the months that pay, and — where a house stands inside a protected centre — the time an authorisation takes. Missing a window does not cost weeks. It costs a year, because the next one opens twelve months later.

WindowWhat has to be settledWhat sets the date
The end of the seasonThe plan itself: walkthrough, inventory, costed listsThe house is empty and the year's wear is still visible.
Before 15 May on the Pacific, before 1 June on the AtlanticHeavy work: roofs, waterproofing, pool, exterior finishesThe Eastern Pacific hurricane season opens on 15 May and the Atlantic on 1 June, both closing on 30 November.
Months ahead of the work itselfAnything structural inside a protected historic centreSan Miguel de Allende is a monument zone by decree of 1982 and on the UNESCO list since 2008: INAH authorisation is scheduled like the work.
December and JanuaryThe year's budget and the annual chargesProperty tax is paid by year and each municipality sets its own early-payment discount: in Mexico City it was 8% in January and 5% in February 2026.
Before the paying months openReplacement of linen, kitchenware and consumablesAn inventory completed with the house already occupied is completed twice, and badly.

Local limits move those dates again. In Los Cabos the binding constraint is often water rather than weather: San José del Cabo was under water rationing in May 2026, so a pool that has to be drained and filled again, or a garden whose irrigation has to be relaid, is a question for the municipal supply before it is a question for anybody's calendar. On the coastal strip of the Boca Paila road in Tulum, where properties run without mains drainage or a grid connection and work off their own generating plant, that plant is a line in the plan every year rather than an item that appears the week it stops. San Miguel de Allende has no storm season and no coast, and still the tightest calendar of the three, because the permit sets it.

Three kinds of cost, and the reserve

A yearly maintenance budget for a rental property is not one number, and the useful way to break it is by the size of the cheque rather than by how confident anyone is that it will be written.

Capital expenditure on a vacation rental. The large single items: equipment reaching the end of its life, and the pieces the inventory has flagged two years running. It may not fall in this year at all, which is precisely why it is priced now — a number that exists before the failure is a decision, and the same number afterwards is a bill.
Standing cost. The preventive schedule, condominium dues, policies and the annual charges on the house. Amount known, month known; in the plan it is one line per month, and it asks nothing of you.
What cannot be quoted. Sized rather than priced: the most expensive thing that could fail in this house, and what putting it right would cost, so that the figure is not met for the first time on the day it is needed.

A reserve fund is your decision and not our charge. The plan does not open a fund, does not ask for a deposit and does not hold your money: it puts the numbers where you can see them, so that if you want to set something aside you are setting it aside against something specific. The large items above are described, costed and dated like everything else, and never presented as an investment with a return attached.

What the plan costs, and what it does not

The plan is not a separate service with a fee of its own. There is no fixed fee and no setup fee: the office is paid a percentage of income, net of expenses, and this document is part of that. What carries a cost is the work you approve — quoted per job, before it starts.

Approved work then appears where everything else appears: in the monthly statement for the month it happened, with the supplier's invoice behind it. Anything a guest or an owner asks for beyond the standing service is optional, quoted per use, and never folded into the fee.

If the house also earns

A house that receives guests wears faster than a house opened four times a year, and the first two lists get longer accordingly. The calendar changes too, because work has to fit between stays rather than between seasons; how that calendar is built is set out in vacation rental management.

What does not change is who decides. Bookings are not a reason to buy anything you have not approved.

If you would rather put the question in writing before anything is scheduled, what the request asks and who reads it is set out on the contact page.

Frequently asked questions

What is an annual plan for a rental property?

It is a document delivered once a year with three lists — what to replace, what to renew and what can wait — an estimated cost against every line, and the month by which each decision has to be made. It approves nothing on its own; it is what the owner decides from.

What do you replace in a vacation rental, and what do you renew?

Replacement is counted: the inventory is compared against last year's, and what is missing, broken or no longer presentable comes off it. Renewal is judged on condition rather than on age, because the same item ages at different speeds in a coastal house and an inland one.

Do you hold a reserve fund for property repairs?

No. The plan prices what could fail so that you can decide whether to set money aside and against what, but no fund is opened, no deposit is asked for and none of your money is held here.

When should work on a house in Mexico be scheduled?

Heavy work is finished before the storm seasons open — 15 May on the Pacific and 1 June on the Atlantic, both closing on 30 November — and interior work goes in the months that do not pay. Where a house sits inside a protected historic centre the permit sets the date, not the weather.

Does the annual plan cost extra?

It does not. The fee is a percentage of income, net of expenses, with no fixed or setup charge, and the plan is part of the service; only the work you approve is quoted and billed.

What if I approve nothing this year?

That is a valid answer and it is written down with its reason, in the deferred list. Recording it is the point: next year that line is reviewed first instead of reappearing as an emergency with no history.

Private valuation

Start with a valuation

Tell us where the house is, how you use it and when it was last looked at properly. We will answer in writing with the condition it is in, what it would need over the next twelve months, and the months by which each of those decisions has to be made.

No commitment.
A written reply within 48 hours.
Our fee is a percentage of income, net of expenses.