Riviera Maya, Q.R. — Almost 900 real estate agents in Quintana Roo have been certified to buy and sell property. The certification comes on the heels of the publication of a state-wide reform on real estate.
Armando Lara De Nigris, the head of the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu), says the crackdown is due to the ongoing issues with the buying and selling of illegal real estate.
Real estate fraud has been a problem for many years with one of the most recent cases being in Playa del Carmen. The now defunct company DeRiMaya was dismantled in July after being shut down in early January 2024 for defrauding real estate purchasers of more than 250 million pesos.
Lara De Nigris says certified agents will prevent investors from continuing to deal with people who operate outside the law.
He says that two years into the current state administration, they have managed to certify almost 900 real estate agents. With certification the real estate agents have the means to provide legal certainty in real estate transactions across the state.
Lara De Nigris says new reforms to the current real estate laws are about to be published. Among its main benefits is the obligatory registration of agents with the Secretaría de Desarrollo Agrario, Territorial y Urbano (Sedatu) in Quintana Roo, which will include a categorization of real estate service providers to guarantee legal security in transactions.
“This benefits the entire state in the sense that real estate transactions are guaranteed because they are being carried out by professional, responsible people and are under the law of real estate agents.
“This gives certainty to real estate investments throughout the state and that is why it is important for investors to carry out their procedures with certified agents,” he explained.
He says before the current administration there were only around 200 certified real estate agents in the state of Quintana Roo. Now there are nearly 900. He said those who continue to practice real estate by operating outside state laws without state certification will be fined.
According to Lara De Nigris, in Quintana Roo, the boom in foreign investments continues from the United States, Canada and some Central America investors. Spain and Italy are also frequent investors in state tourism projects, he says.
In recent months, at least three developments in the Cancun area alone have been closed. Municipal officials shut down the real estate developers who were found selling land without documents or were found to be committing environmental violations.
Pablo Gutierrez Fernandez, the General Secretary of the Benito Juarez City Council, says there have been numerous complaints about developers selling land without permits or land title documents.
“There have already been complaints about these developments,” he said explaining that they are irregular real estate projects that do not have permits to develop.
So far, six people who purchased lots in Cancun have appeared before the City Council as victims of these undocumented developers. Of those, he says, there are currently three complaints before the office of the State Attorney General (FGE) for the sale of irregular lots. These particular lots were sold by an urban developer in the eastern part of the city on irregular land and without permits.
Gutierrez Fernandez says they have been working with the Urban Development of Benito Juárez, the Environmental Protection Agency (PPA) and Civil Protection to ensure developers have the legal paperwork to support the desired investments.
