|
To the best of my knowledge this is the way things are in La Manzanilla, Jalisco Mexico as of May 11, 2003. I assume no responsibility for the accuracy or inaccuracy of this information or my personal opinions, take everything I say at your own risk. La Manzanilla is currently Ejido land which is located in the restricted zone and is in the process of going through Procede, which is a process where the Government of Mexico regularizes the land. They measure off each lot and make sure that everything is in order for the individual properties and the community property as a whole. Once that process is complete the Mexicans will get title to their land and the Foreigners will be able to get a Bank trust (fideicomiso) for the property that they "own". As it stands now in La Manzanilla no foreigner has gotten fideicomiso (Bank trust) because you can't get a Bank Trust until Procede has completed the regularization process. So technically no one owns land or real estate in La Manzanilla, not even the Mexicans who have lived here their entire lives. The Procede process is supposed to be completed very soon, but then again we have been hearing that for a year or so now. Still, people "buy" land and real estate when they come to La Manzanilla. Some use presta nombre's (borrowed name) others get a 99 year lease and others just have their name on the paper the Ejido gives you when you "buy" here. A couple years ago the Ejido called a town meeting for all of the foreigners living here. The meeting had several state officials, some local accountants and the ruling members of the Ejido (Ejiditario). They said that it was basically a waste of time for everyone to be running around getting presta nombre's and doing the wills and power of attorney that usually go with the presta nombre method. They told us that we should trust the Ejido and put the property in our names, then when the Procede process was completed they would transfer the property to our name via fideicomiso for something like 5 pesos per square meter. Basically they were telling us to let the Ejido be our presta nombre. I have not done an official survey of who is using what method of property "ownership" here in La Manzanilla. But I believe that most have the property in their name (I do) and are trusting the Ejido to live up to their word when the time comes to go legal. Presta nombre's are also known as "Straw men" and are illegal. If the Mexican government finds out that a foreigner owns property by using a Mexican as the pretend owner they see it as you trying to cheat them out of the fees you would pay if you did have fideicomiso and can take the property away as a penalty. But, since we currently can't get fideicomiso in La Manzanilla there is no real deception going on for those who have presta nombres since we can't get a bank trust even if we wanted to. Once Procede has finished and we can get fideicomiso it will be a whole different situation when it comes to presta nombres. In the past there have been some horror stories of bad land deals in Mexico, some due to honest mistakes as to the legal ownership and some from mistakes that are more questionable. I believe that the Mexican government is actively seeking foreign investment in Mexico and will do anything in its power to prevent any more horror stories or bad press in regards to foreign land ownership. But there is an election coming up and International relations are always in a state of flux so basically follow common sense and don't invest more than you can afford to lose. A couple of years ago I did a lot of research on foreigners buying real estate in Mexico. I was going to build a website dedicated solely to this subject but never quite got it finished. So as an alternative to that I am going to list some of the message board and news group postings and link to the articles I found during that research here on this page. Keep in mind that some of the information may be a couple of years old and may have changed since then. I am also going to list some rough notes I had for each of the sections the original website was going to contain. I will not extensively edit these notes because if I do I will never get this project completed just like the last time I tried to finish it. If you find other relevant articles or information on this topic of foreigners buying land in the restricted zone please email me with the link. Please put something relevant into the Subject box of the email or I won't open it. |
|
HOME Contact Information - e-mail - lamanzanillainfo @ yahoo.com Telephone~ International ~ 52-315-35-15059 National ~ 01-315-35-15059 Local~ 35-15059 The contents of this site are copyright © 2001, Daniel Hallas. All Rights Reserved. Last updated: 05 - 09 - 18 |