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Real Estate for sale Merida Mexico - Yucatan mexico real estate
Real Estate for sale Merida Mexico
What is a ejido?
A Ejido (pronounced heedo) is a form of land title. For example, in Canada and the States you have property in fee simple or free hold (private property), condominium, co-ops, leased land and so forth.
Depending on who and where you do your research you will discover that 40 to 80 percent of the land in Mexico is titled in the form of Ejido.
I am going to keep this simple because an in depth explanation of the concept of the Ejido is quite involved and quite unnecessary. Instead; I would like to take an overview of the concept as it relates to the impact of a foreigner buying property in Mexico.
First of all a foreigner cannot buy Ejido land. Secondly there are plenty of people who will try and sell foreigners Ejido land, so let's talk about the what, and why not, of this situation in case you cross paths with this situation.
There are thousands of existing Ejidos in Mexico today. Each Ejido may have hundreds of members and a very small percentage of the existing Ejidos are being used for the purpose the concept was originally intended to serve.
Way back when, there were many powerful land owners in Mexico, who allowed individuals and families to use their land in exchange for various considerations. The occupants had no rights or equity in this property and could be removed at the land owners will. Over time the national picture changed and the establishment of the Ejido concept of land ownership allowed the occupants, communal rights to enjoy and improve the property but still offered no individual rights or title to the land. In 1992 the laws were changed again and now Ejido's could be privatized. In other words, after going through a process, the occupants actually owned a specific piece of property and had the documents to prove it.
However it could only be privatized when the majority of Ejido occupants agreed to the process, providing there were no encumbrances which would frustrate the outcome. There are many, many hang ups and hurdles during this process, therefore it takes a long time from start to finish. Five to ten years is not unusual.
Here's were you come in. Many properties which are Ejido are being offered for sale as if the privatization process was already complete. You give the seller a deposit and chase your deal through the courts for ten years.
Most of the time the seller will not disclose to the purchaser that the land is a Ejido. I personally have had sellers come into my office to list property which was actually Ejido. They did not disclose such and failed to produce documentation supporting their interest in the title of the property.
Do not use a general family law lawyer to transact these deals. I recommend a lawyer who specializes in real property law. Just to give you an idea, I recently represented a client who purchased a privatized ejido property. The privatization process was complete and the deal still took almost a year to close because the seller was unable to satisfy some seemingly small detail. These problems which the seller tried to discount as nothing would have been my clientâ??s problems if left unresolved.
Remember the headaches survive transfer of title.
Robert Harker is a Canadian living and practicing real estate in Yucatan Mexico serving the beach communities north of the city of Merida, in the state of Yucatan. He has been a practicing real estate and mortgage broker in Mexico for the last 10 years and has a total of 25 years international real estate experience with 1,000 career deals and counting. He specializes in retirement beach property for foreigners and has a full service construction company catering to the needs of his market niche.
For more information http://www.thegringosguideblog.com
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