Your developer still runs the HOA: condo owner rights in Mexico

You closed on a unit in Playa del Carmen, and three years later the same company that sold it to you still names the administrator, sets the fees, and writes the budget.

Mexican condominium law gives you specific tools to change that. This post explains what those tools are, which state statute governs you, and how fast the deadlines run.

The Context

Condo owner rights in Mexico come from state law, not from a single federal statute. Yucatán and Quintana Roo each have their own condominium act, and the two differ on quorum, on how votes are weighted, and on how long an administrator may stay in the job. Foreign owners usually learn this after the first assembly nobody told them about.

The structural problem is timing. A developer that still holds unsold units also holds voting weight, and it names the first administrator in the escritura constitutiva (the public deed that creates the condominium regime and registers its bylaws). By the time enough units are sold for owners to outvote it, the budget, the service contracts, and the reserve fund are already set.

Most foreign owners are not in the country when it matters. Notice goes to the unit, the session happens on a Tuesday morning in Cancún, and the resolutions bind everyone who did not attend. That is the same pattern behind unresolved defects in common areas, and it is where the law stops being abstract.

What You Need to Know

• Asamblea de condóminos (the owners' general assembly) — it is the supreme body of the condominium, ranking above the administrator and above any house rule the developer drafted. Article 30 of the Yucatán condominium act gives it the power to appoint and remove officeholders freely, and Article 34 lets it vote a removal even when the item never appeared on the agenda.
• Cuota de participación (your pro-rata ownership percentage) — in Yucatán, Article 34 makes your vote weight equal to that percentage, so a developer sitting on unsold inventory votes that inventory. Quintana Roo blunts this: under Article 28, when one owner holds 20% or more of the proindiviso, a resolution also needs a majority of the remaining percentage to be valid.
• One-year administrator term — Quintana Roo's Article 28 caps the appointment of the administrator and the oversight committee at one year, re-electable only twice in a row. A developer-appointed administrator who has held the position for six years without a fresh vote is operating outside what the statute contemplates.
• Convocatoria (the formal notice calling the assembly) — Yucatán requires at least five calendar days for ordinary sessions under Article 32, and Quintana Roo requires at least fifteen calendar days under Article 30. The notice must reach your unit or the email address you registered, it must carry the full agenda, and in Quintana Roo it must also be posted in five or more visible places.
• Proxy limits — Quintana Roo's Article 28 bars any single person from holding proxies for more than 20% of the owners, and bars the administrator and the oversight committee members from representing any owner at all. A management company that arrives with signed proxies across dozens of units is running against that rule.
• Comité de vigilancia (the owners' oversight committee) — Article 47 in Yucatán gives it standing power to review the administrator's account statements, receipts, and minute books, whether or not the bylaws mention it. If the bylaws are silent, owners representing 25% of total participation can call an assembly to install one under Article 45.

Strategic Dispute Resolution

These files tend to start the same way. An owner asks the administrator for account statements and the minute book, receives a partial answer or none, and waits. The record built during that silence is what later decides whether an assembly resolution can be undone, in the same way documentation drives post-closing claims.

We run the same three tracks here as in developer disputes generally: negotiation, conciliation, then litigation. Condominium conflicts sit mostly in the first two, because both state acts route them to alternative dispute resolution before the courts. Quintana Roo names the Centro de Justicia Alternativa as competent for owner-versus-administrator disputes under Article 64, and Yucatán's Article 61 sends the same controversies to the alternative-mechanisms framework first.

We do not represent condominium administrators, and we do not take developer work. That independence matters more here than in most matters. The administrator, the property manager, and the closing firm the developer recommended are frequently the same commercial group.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can PROFECO help with a condominium dispute?

Only where the fight is still consumer against supplier. PROFECO has jurisdiction over the developer that sold you the unit, including presale obligations and common areas promised but never built. Once the regime is handed over and the conflict becomes owner against assembly or owner against administrator, it moves to state condominium law and the civil courts.

When the developer is also still acting as administrator, both frames can apply at once. That overlap is often the ground for a group complaint brought by several owners in the same building.

2. How long do I have to challenge an assembly resolution?

In Yucatán, Article 62 gives thirty calendar days counted from the date you were notified of the minutes, not from the date you understood them. Standing belongs to owners who voted against, owners who were absent, and owners who were wrongly denied a vote. Resolutions that break the law itself can be challenged by any owner, including one who voted in favor.

3. What if the administrator refuses to call an assembly?

Both statutes anticipate that. In Yucatán, owners representing 25% of total participation can issue the notice themselves under Article 31. In Quintana Roo, the same 25% group asks in writing, and if the administrator does not convene within ten business days, a civil judge or the Centro de Justicia Alternativa publishes the notice under Article 30.

The Path Forward

The first move is documentary, not confrontational. Ask in writing for the founding deed, the registered bylaws, the last three annual account statements, the minute book, and the current reserve fund balance. The answer, or the silence, tells you which of the two tracks above you are actually on.

Deadlines here are short and they run from notice, not from discovery. An owner who learns in June about a February assembly has usually already lost the window to challenge it. Reading the minutes the week they arrive is worth more than any argument made months later.

PeninsuLawyers represents foreign buyers and owners exclusively. We have no affiliation with developers, property managers, or condominium administrators. Book a free case evaluation at peninsulawyers.com to review your condominium's bylaws and the last assembly that bound you.