Dreams Shattered in Mexico

The LA Times has an article on Americans buying real estate in Mexico, with plenty of examples of investments gone bad:

Doug and Dru Davis sold their San Diego County home several years ago to buy a $200,000 house on the beach here.

The value of their new place not far from the resort of Puerto Vallarta increased fivefold — until some developers moved the beach.

The couple's serenity was shattered last fall when construction crews began dredging the bay in front of their property to reclaim land from the sea. A planned marina, hotel and high-rise condos now threaten to block their ocean view.

Instead of watching whales glide just a few hundred yards off their patio, the couple fear they'll soon be looking at garbage bins, a service road and beer trucks.

You purchase a beachfront home only to have greedy developers move the beach! Unbelievable. Buyers beware. Don't assume the real estate market behaves as it does En El Norte:

... No agency on either side of the border keeps statistics on the number of Americans who have encountered problems. But interviews with homeowners, real estate experts and government officials reveal real estate deals gone sour and a host of potential pitfalls.

Some would-be buyers have had brokers disappear with their deposit money. Others have had their homes seized in land disputes. A few have even landed in jail.

U.S. officials warn that Mexico's murky land record system exposes foreigners to complex title disputes in courts that may not give them a fair shake.

"There is a history of problems," said Liza Davis (no relation to Doug and Dru Davis), public affairs officer at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. "We ask people to go in with their eyes open."

The most high-profile dispute in recent years was the eviction of dozens of U.S. citizens from the Punta Banda peninsula south of Ensenada in Baja California in 2000.

Mostly retirees, the homeowners built their dwellings on so-called ejido land, communal farmland that has been the source of complicated title struggles nationwide. Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the group from which the Americans bought their land was not the rightful owner, forcing some of the Americans to abandon homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars