Fideicomiso for foreign buyers in Quintana Roo: what it really costs in 2026

If you are a foreign national and you want to buy a house or an apartment on the Quintana Roo coast, you need a fideicomiso, the Mexican bank trust through which foreigners hold coastal property. That has not changed and it is not about to.

What did change are the numbers. And a good part of what is published online about this, including what we ourselves had published, has fallen behind.

This article fixes that. It will tell you the range each item falls into, which costs are official and you can verify yourself, which ones depend on a quote, and what to ask so there are no surprises at signing.

Let us start with the most important part.

The fideicomiso is not one cost, it is several

The most common mistake is treating "the fideicomiso" as a single line item. In quotes it shows up as one line reading "Fideicomiso: 1,500 USD" and the buyer assumes that covers everything.

It does not. There are at least three separate things:

The federal government permit. It is issued by the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE), Mexico’s ministry of foreign affairs, and it is a fixed statutory fee published in the Ley Federal de Derechos, the federal fee law.

The bank fee for setting up the fideicomiso. Each institution quotes its own and none of them publish it.

The annual administration fee. Every year, for as long as you own the property.

And around those three sit the costs of any purchase: acquisition tax, notary, property registry, appraisal and certificates. Those apply to Mexican buyers just the same.

The numbers

The SRE permit

For 2026, issuing the permit costs 21,650 pesos, plus roughly 595 pesos for the receipt and examination of the application. A total close to 22,245 pesos.

At an exchange rate of around 17 pesos to the dollar, that is about 1,300 dollars.

This is an official, fixed cost and it does not depend on the value of the property. Whether you buy a 200 thousand dollar apartment or a one million dollar villa, the permit costs the same.

It is also the main reason the 1,500 dollar figure stopped making sense as a total: the federal permit alone eats almost that entire budget.

The bank opening fee

Here we move into ranges, and it is worth spelling it out: banks do not publish a fee schedule for this product.

We checked. BBVA says so explicitly on its own page: to learn the fees you have to contact them. With Banorte, Scotiabank, Monex, Mifel and Multiva the situation is the same. These are contracts quoted case by case through the trust desk.

Market references for 2026 put the opening fee between 500 and 1,000 dollars, and you have to add the 16% IVA, Mexico’s value added tax, which almost never shows up in informal quotes.

With IVA, that means roughly 580 to 1,160 dollars.

The annual fee

References for 2026 put it between 500 and 850 dollars a year, plus IVA. The 600 dollar figure that circulates is still a reasonable midpoint, but as a reference, not as a rate.

With IVA, budgeting between 580 and 990 dollars a year is prudent.

Two warnings about this fee. First: contracts usually include adjustment clauses, so the fee in year one is not necessarily the fee in year ten. Second: there are reports of owners paying above that range. That is not evidence of improper charging, but it is reason enough to ask in writing how the fee is updated before you sign.

The acquisition tax

This is the largest cost of the transaction and the one with the most misinformation around it.

In Playa del Carmen the rate is 4% for transactions from December 10, 2025 onward. Before that date it was 3%, and until 2019 it was 2%.

That change is recent and many sources have not updated it. While preparing this article we found specialized sites dated 2026 still publishing 2%. The difference between 2% and 4% on a 500 thousand dollar property is 10 thousand dollars.

In Benito Juárez, where Cancún is, the rate is still 3%: its Ley de Hacienda, the municipal revenue law, was not touched by the same December 2025 reform that did raise the one in Playa del Carmen. In Isla Mujeres, 4%.

For Tulum and other municipalities, the rate has to be confirmed with the corresponding municipal treasury, because each city council regulates it separately and changes are not always publicized.

We published the full table, with all eleven municipalities and the article that sets each rate, in our municipality by municipality analysis of the acquisition tax.

This is the point we most want to underline: check the rate in the municipality where the property is, on the date of your transaction. Not in a blog, not with your agent, at the treasury.

Registro Público de la Propiedad

In Quintana Roo the registry fee at the Registro Público de la Propiedad, the public property registry, is not a percentage of value. It is calculated in Unidades de Medida y Actualización (UMA), the inflation-indexed accounting unit Mexico uses for fees: 65 UMA for each registrable legal act.

With the 2026 UMA, that is around 7,625 pesos, roughly 450 dollars per act.

Watch the words "per act". A deed containing several registrable acts generates more than one charge.

Notary and appraisal

Here we are not going to give you a percentage, and we will explain why.

There is an official fee schedule for notaries in Quintana Roo, the Arancel de Honorarios de Notarios Públicos. But turning that schedule into a figure for your specific transaction depends on the instrument, the value, and what the notary does or does not include in the fee.

Market references quote wide ranges, and we found that a good part of what gets published as "notary fees" is really a package that already includes the acquisition tax, the registry and the certificates. Adding that percentage and then each item separately is counting twice.

The commercial appraisal is quoted according to the property.

Our recommendation is to ask for an itemized closing sheet that separates professional fee, taxes, registry fees, appraisal and processing charges. A serious notary will hand it over without a problem.

An indicative budget

With the above, this is the floor of costs you can verify line by line, modeled in Playa del Carmen with the acquisition tax at 4%:

That subtotal still does not include notary, appraisal and certificates.

As a planning budget, allow between 6 and 8% of the price for total closing costs. The percentage is higher on lower value properties, because the SRE permit and the bank structure are fixed costs that weigh more on a smaller transaction.

These numbers are indicative. They exist so you arrive prepared for the conversation, not to replace it.

What the fideicomiso does get right

After all those numbers, it is worth saying what the instrument does solve, because it is quite a lot.

You decide everything about the property. The bank is the formal titleholder, but you use it, rent it, renovate it, pass it on and sell it. The trustee executes your instructions.

The term is 50 years and it can be extended. The law establishes it and the extension is requested through the bank. It is not automatic and it has to be asked for within the window the regulation sets, but it is a contemplated procedure with an official published cost in the Ley Federal de Derechos: 9,740 pesos to modify the permit, and 10,615 pesos if the extension of the term is requested late. Asking late costs more.

You can designate substitute beneficiaries. This is probably the most underrated advantage. If you die, the rights under the fideicomiso pass to whoever you designated, with the corresponding documentation, without the probate process a directly held property would go through.

It is worth defining those names properly when the trust is set up. Changing them later usually has a cost.

On selling there are two routes. You can assign your rights to the buyer within the same fideicomiso, or the buyer can set up a new one. The first is usually cheaper and preserves the remaining term. The second restarts the 50 years. Which one suits depends on the case, and your notary should explain both before you decide.

One necessary clarification: assigning the fideicomiso does not avoid the acquisition tax. Municipal laws expressly cover acquisitions made through a trust.

What does not work as a shortcut

There is an idea going around that setting up a Mexican company avoids the fideicomiso. For housing, it does not.

The constitutional restriction applies to real estate for residential purposes, and the definition includes housing intended for the use of the owner or of third parties. Renting the apartment out does not make it non residential.

A Mexican company with a foreigner admission clause does have a different route for non residential property, commercial or industrial, through a notice to the SRE. But if what you are buying is a house or an apartment to live in or to rent out, the fideicomiso is the way.

And setting up a company for this brings accounting and tax obligations that usually cost more than what it saves.

Check before you sign

This is the most important part of the article and that is why we put it at the end, where it sticks.

Every range in this text is a market reference, not a quote. The official costs, the SRE permit, the registry fees and the municipal rate, you can verify yourself in the official sources. The bank fees you cannot, because banks do not publish them.

Before you commit to any transaction, make these three calls:

To the trustee bank. Ask in writing for: the opening fee, the first annual fee and the date of the next one, the currency it is charged in, applicable IVA, the mechanism for updating the fee, and the cost of changing beneficiaries, of assignment on sale, and of the extension at 50 years.

To the notary. Ask for an itemized closing sheet for the specific property, with professional fee, taxes, registry fees, appraisal and processing charges listed separately.

To the municipal treasury. Confirm the acquisition tax rate in force on the date of your transaction.

Three calls, and they will save you thousands of dollars in surprises at signing.

If you want, we make them with you. It is part of what we do with every client before they sign anything.

Sources for the official costs: Ley Federal de Derechos 2026 for the SRE permit; Ley de Derechos del Estado de Quintana Roo and the 2026 UMA value for registry fees; Ley de Hacienda del Municipio de Playa del Carmen, amended in the state official gazette on December 10, 2025, for the ISABI rate, the municipal acquisition tax, in force for transactions from that date.

The ranges for bank fees come from 2026 market references and are identified as such. Banks do not publish an open fee schedule for this product.

This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or notarial advice.