Playa del Carmen Cadastral Values Double Cancún’s

Chetumal, November 27. — The government of Estefanía Mercado Asencio is taking advantage of the opportunity to address a 12-year backlog in cadastral valuation by implementing a highly aggressive revenue collection strategy, raising land cadastral values in Playa del Carmen to nearly double those in Cancún.

With this significant increase, the municipal government aims to double or triple the Property Tax in areas where it will update land values, which according to its proposal will only apply to tourist, commercial, and residential zones, excluding popular neighborhoods, social interest subdivisions, and marginalized areas.

However, this hike will make Playa del Carmen the city with the most expensive land cadastral values in Quintana Roo, exacerbating the known and severe gentrification already affecting the urban area. This problem diminishes the quality of life by generating high costs for rents or property acquisition, as maximum prices are often used as references to cascade value lower-value properties.

The intention is clear from the maximum land value set for Playa del Carmen in the Table of Values presented to the State Congress by Mayor Estefanía Mercado Asencio, corresponding to the tourist zone, which will be almost double the highest current value in Cancún.

In Playa del Carmen, the highest cadastral value for a tourist property will be 12,500 pesos per square meter of land, while the highest cadastral value in Cancún’s hotel zone is 7,000 pesos per square meter, a difference of 78% more.

Additionally, Playa del Carmen will set construction values higher than those applied in Cancún. For a standard good 3-star hotel in Cancún, the construction price would be 5,768 pesos per square meter, whereas in Playa del Carmen it will be at least 6,800 pesos per square meter.

To illustrate the impact of the cost increase that the Mercado administration will apply, consider the Property Tax for a beach hotel with 1,000 square meters of land and 2,000 square meters of construction, taxed at the current rate in Playa del Carmen, but with different appraisals resulting from the values to be applied in this municipality and those currently in effect in Cancún.

This hotel in Cancún’s hotel zone would have a cadastral appraisal of 18,536,000 pesos, considering 7,000,000 pesos for land appraisal and 11,536,000 pesos for construction appraisal, and would pay a Property Tax of 35,218 pesos, based on a rate of 0.0019 on the property value.

If the new values for Playa del Carmen are applied to this hotel, the resulting cadastral appraisal will be 26,100,000 pesos, 40.8% more expensive than in Cancún, and the resulting Property Tax will be 49,590 pesos, with the same rate of 0.0019 on the value.

In summary, a hotel with the same dimensions in Playa del Carmen will pay almost double the Property Tax compared to Cancún.

After the maximum value, Playa del Carmen will still have land cadastral values well above Cancún’s maximum, with plots at 11,800 and 10,000 pesos per square meter.

Puerto Morelos is following the same path as Playa del Carmen, increasing land values for revenue purposes. With the cadastral values presented by its mayor, Blanca Merari Tziu Muñoz, it will also surpass those of Cancún.

In Puerto Morelos, the highest value in the tourist zone will be 8,165 pesos per square meter of land, 16.6% higher than in Cancún’s hotel zone.

The trend of increasing land values is also being followed by the municipal president of Isla Mujeres, Atenea Gómez Ricalde, who, in her third consecutive Property Tax increase, will raise the highest cadastral value in the island’s tourist zone from 2,000 pesos to 4,680 pesos per square meter, more than double.

In contrast, the unit value of land in Holbox will be 1,500 pesos, the highest in the municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas, which will also see an increase in cadastral value tables after many years without regulation.

In Playa del Carmen, the justification for undertaking an aggressive increase in cadastral appraisals is that the governments of Lili Campos Miranda (PAN), Laura Beristain Navarrete (Morena), Cristina Torres Gómez (then PAN, now Morena), Rafael Castro, and Mauricio Góngora Escalante (then PRI, now PVEM for the latter) did not update land values during their administrations, leaving the Property Tax calculation base outdated.

Hotel, commercial, professional, and legal business owners warned that Estefanía Mercado’s project to apply 12 years of commercial value increases to cadastral values all at once would have a very harsh economic impact on the affected sectors, due to increases of up to double or triple in values applied with arbitrary parameters.

These observations fell on deaf ears, as the municipal government’s need is very high to cover the waste and payroll inflation of the Estefanía Mercado administration, which during the low tourism season felt the lack of resources so acutely that it even recorded delays in salary payments and other contracted services due to liquidity crises.

Finally, it should be noted that the precedent set by these municipalities only opens the door for the Benito Juárez city council, which this year did not promote an update of the Cadastral Value Table after two consecutive reviews, to increase Cancún’s land values in the next opportunity, to align with Playa del Carmen and further increase the cost of properties and life in Quintana Roo.