San Miguel de Allende Against Five Other Mexican Markets

8.1%

Guanajuato house-price appreciation, year to Q2 2026

Above the 7.3% national figure, fourth of the five comparator states. A state index built from mortgage appraisals, not a San Miguel number.

Level 3

US advisory, Guanajuato

The highest rating of the six comparator states, tied with Jalisco. Yucatan is Level 1.

No fideicomiso

San Miguel title structure

The municipality of Allende is named on INEGI's 1997 list of municipalities wholly outside the restricted zone.

29.4%

San Miguel short-term rental occupancy

Year to July 2026. Level with Tulum as the lowest of the six, just under the Mexican national average of 30.0%, on the second highest nightly rate.

San Miguel de Allende is compared with the same five markets over and over: Mérida, Oaxaca City, Puerto Vallarta, Lake Chapala and Ajijic, and Tulum. Almost every published comparison is written by somebody who earns a commission in one of them, and almost all of them assemble figures from six different measurement systems and set them side by side as if they were the same thing.

Two datasets cover all six markets on a single consistent methodology. Mexico’s federal SHF house-price index, a government primary source, publishes appreciation at state level and for selected municipalities as of Q2 2026. AirROI publishes short-term rental performance for each of the six on a trailing twelve months; the five comparison markets here are on the window to June 2026 and San Miguel on the window to July. Everything else, prices in particular, is uneven and in one case entirely absent.

The table below reports what those two datasets say, plus title status, advisory level, climate, population and airport access. Where nothing is published, the cell says so.

The comparison

All dollar figures are US dollars. Short-term rental figures are AirROI’s trailing twelve months to June 2026 for the five comparison markets and to July 2026 for San Miguel (page updated 12 September 2026, read 5 October 2026), so that row is a month out of step; on the June window San Miguel’s were $17,033, 29.9%, $210, $64 and −4.0%, figures no longer on the publisher’s page. Appreciation figures are SHF, year to Q2 2026 (second quarter 2026 on second quarter 2025), preliminary and subject to revision. Advisory levels are from the US State Department advisory issued 29 May 2026. The Guadalajara drive time is modelled free-flow on the OSRM routing engine, with no allowance for traffic.

Updated 24 September 2026: appreciation figures now use SHF’s second-quarter 2026 release, which also revised the first-quarter figures this page previously quoted.

Why does no market have a published rental yield?

Gross rental yield is the number most buyers want and the number nobody publishes. It cannot be responsibly built from what exists.

The revenue side of the fraction averages across every active listing in a market, including part-time and badly run ones. The price side is a different universe in every market: closed MLS averages in San Miguel, undisclosed-source averages in Puerto Vallarta, aggregator medians in Mérida and Ajijic, and asking prices in Tulum. Dividing $16,582 by a San Miguel median would produce a figure accurate to four significant digits and wrong in ways the reader could not see.

The components are in the table instead. A reader who wants a yield can divide, knowing exactly which two numbers were divided and how badly matched they are. That is a different act from being handed one.

Two further gaps sit behind that one. Nothing usable exists on net yields after management fees, the 16 per cent IVA a furnished letting bears under Article 20 fracción II of the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado, Mexican income tax on rental income, state lodging taxes, acquisition tax, trust fees, HOA and maintenance, in any of the six markets. And nothing at all is published on short-term rental regulation by market: registration requirements, caps, lodging taxes and pending restrictions are all material to forward income and none of it is sourced here.

Which of the six markets need a fideicomiso?

Every other row in the table is a matter of degree. This one is binary, and it separates the six markets into two groups.

Article 27 fracción I of the Mexican Constitution bars foreigners from direct ownership within 100 km of a border and 50 km of a beach. That provision was last amended on 20 January 1960 and has stood unchanged for 66 years. Article 2 of the Foreign Investment Law repeats the definition; Article 11 sets out the mechanism inside the zone, a fideicomiso held by a Mexican bank under a permit from the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, with the foreigner as beneficiary rather than titleholder. Article 13 caps the trust term at 50 years, renewable at the beneficiary’s request with no stated limit on renewals.

Puerto Vallarta and Tulum are unambiguously coastal. Mérida is the one people get wrong. It sits roughly 35 km inland from the Gulf, which is inside the 50 km strip, and an independent Yucatán legal commentary states plainly that all of Mérida is within the zone. Brokerage and relocation pages that describe Mérida as “technically just outside” are giving a buyer a false picture of what they will sign.

The other three markets rest on the same primary document. INEGI published a list in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 21 May 1997 naming municipalities “totally located outside the restricted zone.” Allende, Guanajuato, the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, appears on it. So does Oaxaca de Juárez, the municipality of Oaxaca City, and so does Chapala, Jalisco, the municipality that contains Ajijic. An earlier version of this page described Oaxaca City and Chapala as outside on geographic inference alone, because no document naming them had been located. The list names both. Our San Miguel and Lake Chapala comparison goes through what that title means at the notary in each town.

What it costs, in the two directions:

Two notes on that table. The fideicomiso permit fee is MXN 21,648.83 in the Cámara de Diputados text of the Ley Federal de Derechos, which carries the 2026 amounts; a second published copy shows MXN 19,952.46, the amount before the annual update: every fee in it sits 7.8 per cent lower, the Cámara de Diputados text being exactly 8.5 per cent higher. Fraction III of the same Article 25 adds MXN 596.29 for the examination of each permit application. And every dollar figure in circulation for trustee fees traces back to brokerages. No Mexican bank publishes its own fideicomiso tariff in a form that could be retrieved.

Corrected 8 October 2026: earlier versions of this page said every fee in the second copy of the Ley Federal de Derechos sits exactly 8.5 per cent lower than the Cámara de Diputados text. The percentage was taken on the wrong base: the Diputados text is 8.5 per cent higher (21,648.83 against 19,952.46), which puts the older copy 7.8 per cent lower.

Where San Miguel loses

Four rows, plainly.

Appreciation. Guanajuato recorded 8.1 per cent in the year to Q2 2026. Of the five distinct states in this comparison, only Oaxaca, at 7.0 per cent, appreciated more slowly. Jalisco led the five at 10.1 per cent, second of all 32 federal entities behind Tamaulipas, with Quintana Roo at 9.8 per cent and Yucatán at 8.7 per cent. Guanajuato did beat the 7.3 per cent national figure, having trailed it a quarter earlier, 8.3 against 8.6 per cent on SHF’s revised first-quarter figures. A state figure that crosses the national average from one quarter to the next does not support claims that San Miguel is outpacing the Mexican market, and the index does not measure San Miguel at all. The counterweight is real but cuts both ways: the SHF index is built from appraisals tied to mortgage lending, so it systematically under-represents the cash dollar purchases that define San Miguel’s foreign-buyer segment. It is not a San Miguel number. It is also the only comparable number there is.

Advisory level. Guanajuato carries Level 3, Reconsider Travel, one of seven states at that level alongside Jalisco. Yucatán is Level 1, the strongest single differentiator Mérida has. San Miguel is not named in the current advisory at all, and it lies north of Federal Highway 45D, the line the advisory draws around Celaya, Salamanca and Irapuato. It is also absent from the UK FCDO’s list of 20 named Guanajuato municipalities. None of that makes it separate from the state. Guanajuato logged 789 intentional homicides in the first half of 2026, the highest state total in Mexico, and San Miguel de Allende recorded 88 homicides over the twelve months to August 2025, a rate of 49.3 per 100,000 that placed it fiftieth among Mexican municipalities. In February 2026, cartel reprisal violence reached roughly 23 Guanajuato municipalities including San Miguel.

Airport access. The weakest of the six. No commercial airport in the municipality; Bajío International handled 3.31 million passengers in 2025 and sits about 1.5 hours away by road, with Querétaro’s airport a similar drive. Our San Miguel and Querétaro comparison sets the town against its nearest large city, airport included. Ajijic, marketed as the sleepier option, has Mexico’s third-busiest airport about 40 km away, a 41-minute drive without traffic on the OSRM routing model.

Occupancy and inventory. San Miguel’s 29.4 per cent rental occupancy in the year to July 2026 sits just under the Mexican national average of 30.0 per cent for the year to June and level with Tulum’s, the lowest of the six. On the sales side, active listings rose from 593 in May 2025 to 860 in May 2026, a 45 per cent increase, while the closing count is unresolved: Realty San Miguel reported 197 through May against 190 a year earlier, then 186 through June against 220, and a year-to-date count cannot fall. Average price per home fell 12.6 per cent between 2024 and 2025, from $650,462 to $568,829, even as unit volume rose. That is a mix shift rather than a proven price decline, but the inventory figure is not ambiguous.

Corrected 24 September 2026: earlier versions of this page described 2026 closings as essentially flat, gave the fall in the average price as 12.5 per cent, stated the fideicomiso permit fee as MXN 21,648.83 without the second figure, and called Guadalajara’s the second-busiest airport in Mexico, half an hour from Ajijic. The closing count is unresolved between the source’s own posts, the fall is 12.6 per cent, the permit fee is unresolved between two copies of the law, and Guadalajara ranks third, 40 km and a modelled 41 minutes from Ajijic.

Corrected 5 October 2026: earlier versions of this page gave Tulum’s airport about 1.23 million passengers in 2025, a figure read from a search result; the page itself gives 1,248,645. Earlier versions also said the fideicomiso permit fee was unresolved between two copies of the law. It is not. The Cámara de Diputados text of the Ley Federal de Derechos, which carries the 2026 amounts under Anexo 4 of the Resolución Miscelánea Fiscal (DOF 28 December 2025), gives MXN 21,648.83 in Article 25 fracción V inciso a), and fracción III adds MXN 596.29 for the examination of each application; the other copy shows the pre-update amount. San Miguel’s short-term rental figures were also moved from AirROI’s window to June 2026 ($17,033, 29.9 per cent, $210, $64, revenue −4.0 per cent) to its window to July 2026 ($16,582, 29.4 per cent, $211, $63, revenue −6.2 per cent; page updated 12 September 2026, read 5 October 2026), because the June figures are no longer on the publisher’s page.

Mérida

Choose Mérida for the advisory level, the entry price and the appreciation. Yucatán is one of only two Level 1 states in Mexico. Mérida municipality is the sole city in this comparison with a government-sourced appreciation figure, 8.5 per cent in the year to Q2 2026, and it sits above the 7.3 per cent national figure. Prices, on the best estimates available, are roughly half San Miguel’s.

Against that: the rental market is the weakest of the six on revenue and RevPAR, earning $9,254 a year at an $89 nightly rate, and supply is growing faster than anywhere else in the set at 22.7 per cent. It is also inside the restricted zone, which means a fideicomiso, an annual trustee fee, and a bank between the buyer and the title. And the mean annual temperature is 26.7°C against San Miguel’s 18.2°C, a difference of 8.5 degrees that no comparison table can convey and that decides the question for a large number of people.

Oaxaca City

Choose Oaxaca City if rental income matters more than capital appreciation and the buyer is comfortable operating on thin data.

It is the only one of the six with positive year-on-year rental revenue, up 6.5 per cent, and it achieved that with flat supply while four of the other five markets fell. Oaxaca state also posted the lowest appreciation of the six, at 7.0 per cent in the year to Q2 2026. Demand for nights is outrunning demand for deeds, which is the exact inverse of Tulum.

The problem is that no credible price source for Oaxaca City could be found at all. Not closed sales, not asking prices, not price per square metre. A buyer can see what a property earns and cannot see what comparable properties sold for. That is a real constraint on underwriting, and it should be stated rather than papered over with a plausible-looking range.

Puerto Vallarta

Choose Puerto Vallarta for rental performance. It leads the six on revenue at $22,166, on RevPAR at $87, and on nightly rate at $224, and it is the only market combining top-quartile rate with top-quartile occupancy.

Then read the demand data. Sales volume fell from 155 properties in May 2025 to 85 in May 2026, a 45 per cent decline. Average days on market ran 265. Airport traffic fell 18.7 per cent year on year in June 2026, corroborated by the listed airport operator itself. Rental revenue was down 7.7 per cent. Four independent indicators pointing the same direction is not noise.

The tension with Jalisco’s 10.1 per cent state appreciation, the highest of the five states here, is the most instructive thing in this dataset. A state index dominated by domestic mortgage-financed housing rose sharply while the dollar-denominated resort segment contracted. The two have decoupled, and anyone quoting the state figure as evidence about Puerto Vallarta condominiums is quoting the wrong market.

Lake Chapala and Ajijic

Choose Ajijic for climate stability and airport access. A year-round average near 19°C and 793 mm of rain is the mildest profile of the six, and Guadalajara International, at 18.77 million passengers, is about 40 km away by road, 41 minutes without traffic on the OSRM routing model, an advantage rarely credited in Chapala marketing. Title is not a point of difference: Chapala sits on the same 1997 list as San Miguel, and our San Miguel and Lake Chapala comparison sets the two towns side by side on transfer tax, hospitals and water.

Two limitations. The price data is the weakest of the six markets: no MLS, AMPI or notario-based series was located, and the ranges available come from an aggregator with no stated methodology. And the rental market is tiny, 348 active listings against Tulum’s 8,386. That makes the averages statistically noisy and, more importantly, makes the resale market illiquid. Ajijic does not appear in AirROI’s ranking of the top 100 Mexican markets.

Ajijic also sits in Jalisco and therefore carries the same Level 3 advisory as Puerto Vallarta, despite the two being marketed as opposite kinds of place.

Tulum

The data does not support Tulum on rental economics. Revenue fell 15.9 per cent while supply grew 16.4 per cent, from the largest listing base of the six. Occupancy is the lowest at 29.4 per cent. That combination is the standard signature of oversupply, and it corroborates the widely reported condominium glut from an independent direction.

Quintana Roo’s state appreciation, 9.8 per cent in the year to Q2 2026 and the highest in Mexico a quarter earlier, is the figure most often quoted about Tulum. Tulum is not in the SHF municipal series. The nearest municipal readings are Solidaridad at 10.0 per cent and Benito Juárez at 9.7 per cent, both driven by Cancún and Playa del Carmen mass-market housing. Presenting any of those three as Tulum appreciation is a category error.

Tulum’s own airport, opened in December 2023, carried 1,248,645 passengers in 2025 against a design capacity of 5.5 million, roughly 23 per cent utilisation (Wikipedia, from operator data, read 5 October 2026), with ten airlines serving 28 destinations as of July 2026. Cancún, at two hours by road, remains the main gateway.

What San Miguel actually wins on

Title, against the three markets inside the restricted zone: primary-source documentation that the municipality sits outside the restricted zone, direct fee-simple ownership, a single federal filing at MXN 5,252.02, and no bank, no trust and no annual trustee fee for the life of the holding. Oaxaca City and Ajijic are named on the same 1997 list and stand on the same footing, so this is a win over Mérida, Puerto Vallarta and Tulum, not over all five.

Nightly rate: $211, second only to Puerto Vallarta, and $122 above Mérida. San Miguel’s rental problem is not what it can charge. It is how many nights it fills.

Climate: the coolest, driest and highest of the six, at 1,900 metres, a mean of 18.2°C and 632 mm of rain. No hurricane exposure and no sargassum. Dry cuts both ways, though: the water risk in San Miguel de Allende is set out separately.

Rental revenue trend: −6.2 per cent is the second-mildest decline in a set where only Oaxaca grew.

Method, and what this page does not know

Every San Miguel transaction figure here, and every San Miguel transaction figure anywhere, is a brokerage’s reading of the local MLS. Most of those on this page come from Realty San Miguel; the first-half median comes from Mike Fanelli of The Agency San Miguel de Allende, reading the same MLS; Rafael Mora Real Estate published the same $480K for the first quarter in April. There is no public transaction registry for the city. The data is used because it is the best that exists and because Realty San Miguel has reported figures against its own commercial interest, notably the 45 per cent inventory increase. It is not an independent census of sales.

Corrected 24 September 2026: earlier versions of this page said every San Miguel transaction figure anywhere traced to one brokerage. Other brokerages publish closed-sale figures from the same MLS: a median public since 14 April 2026 (Rafael Mora Real Estate, Q1 2026: $480K), and monthly medians and days to sell since 1 August 2026 (Mike Fanelli, The Agency San Miguel de Allende).

Appreciation figures are state-level except for Mérida. Only Mérida appears in SHF’s selected-municipality series, so five of the six cities have no government-sourced city-level appreciation figure at all. No index of the dollar-denominated foreign-buyer segment appears to exist in any Mexican market, which means the transactions this audience actually makes are measured nowhere.

Foreign-resident counts are not knowable at municipal level from published sources. Mexico’s 2020 census recorded 1,212,252 foreign-born residents nationally, a figure that includes a large share of US-born children of returning Mexican migrants rather than retirees. For San Miguel the census count is 4,312, or 2.5 per cent of a municipal population of 174,615, while estimates in circulation run from 10,000 to 25,000. Nobody has published a defensible current number, and INM residency-card data by municipality, which would settle it, is not published.

Advisory levels for Yucatán, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo come from secondary reporting of the 29 May 2026 advisory, not from the primary text. The overall Level 2 rating, Guanajuato’s Level 3 and the seven-state Level 3 list were read from the State Department page directly. Two secondary outlets reporting on the same advisory contradict each other on which states are Level 4, which is reason enough to treat all secondary advisory reporting with suspicion.

Currency figures cut two ways and are frequently conflated. The peso strengthened across 2025 on a spot basis to close the year near 18.00 MXN per USD, and stood at 17.46 on 23 July 2026 on the ECB reference rate. Annual averages are a different measure entirely: the IRS yearly average was 18.330 for 2024 and 19.212 for 2025. The SHF index is peso-denominated, the rental figures are dollar-denominated, and comparing appreciation in one currency against income in another without saying so is how misleading comparisons get built.