Tulum sends its 2027 land and construction values to the state Congress, setting the base for next year's predial

Tulum's council has approved a proposal for the land and construction values that will sit under every property tax bill in the municipality next year, and has sent it to the Quintana Roo Congress for approval. The tables do not set anyone's bill on their own. They set the value the bill is calculated on, and the full proposal, zone by zone, is already public for any owner to check.

The decision came at the 50th ordinary session of the Cabildo, the municipal council, chaired by Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo and reported on October 5. Council members authorized sending the XVIII Legislature an initiative of decree with the Tablas de Valores Unitarios de Suelo y Construcción for fiscal year 2027. The municipality describes the tables as the base for calculating contributions on real property, and under fiscal rules they have to be updated every year. In the same session the council approved a predial exemption for one property held by the state's strategic projects agency, Agepro, cadastral key 903010005001001, which the municipality said would ease coordination with the state on infrastructure works.

How the proposal was built

The municipal cadaster office drew up the 2027 project under a record dated March 31, 2026, published it in May and June, and gave owners until July 30 to file written observations at the Dirección de Catastro on Avenida Tulum Oriente at the corner of Alfa Sur, in the town center, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. On July 20 the cadaster director, Luis Ángel Itzá Balam, and the municipal treasurer, Rubén Raziel Ek Cruz, held a second consultation meeting with hotel, business and public sector representatives and the colleges of engineers, architects and appraisers. Officials said then that current values no longer kept pace with the municipality's growth, and presented the update as a matter of tax equity, legal certainty and revenue for public works.

How a cadastral value is worked out

The proposal is explicit about the arithmetic. A property's cadastral value is the value of its land plus the value of its construction. The land value is the area in square meters multiplied by the unit value of the zone it sits in, then by a combined factor for whatever merits or demerits apply. The construction value is each block of built area multiplied by a unit value that depends on the type of building, its structural quality and its state of conservation. For a condominium unit, the land counted is the unit's private area plus its share of the common land, and the same rule applies to built area.

The municipality is divided into seven regions: the urban area (zones 101 to 170 and 183 to 202), a northern expansion area (171 to 182), a southern expansion area (203 to 210), the northern coastal region (301 to 312), the southern coastal region (313 to 324), the rural region (401 to 429) and one rural coastal zone (430). Each zone carries a single value per square meter. The highest urban values in the proposal are $8,400 MXN per square meter in zone 125, $7,700 MXN in zone 123 and $7,000 MXN in zone 127. The top zone in the northern expansion area, 174, is $4,200 MXN. On the coast the highest northern zones are $3,250 MXN and the highest southern zones $2,500 MXN. Rural land runs from $80 MXN down to $5 MXN. The zone numbers are tied to maps published with the proposal, so finding a property's value means locating it on the regional plan, then on the detailed map for its region.

The factors that move the number

Three adjustments apply to land. Property in commercial or tourist use carries a factor of 1.12, which puts its land value 12 percent above a home or an unused lot in the same zone. Very large plots are discounted: residential land from 50,000 square meters takes a factor of 0.90, falling in steps to 0.60 above 600,000 square meters, while non-residential land starts at 0.90 from 10,000 square meters and falls to 0.70 above 80,000. And lots inside the urban zone that are still in transition, without formal road access, sewerage, electricity or drinking water, are valued at 0.30 of the zone rate when they lack all four services, 0.45 when they lack three and 0.60 when they lack two.

Construction values follow a grid of building type, quality and condition. For a single family home of medium quality in normal condition the proposal sets $7,937 MXN per square meter of construction, and for a luxury home in the same condition $15,978 MXN. For apartments in a multifamily building the equivalent figures are $8,745 MXN and $16,739 MXN. Swimming pools have their own line, at $5,926 MXN per square meter for medium quality in normal condition.

What happens next, and what the tables do not say

The initiative now goes to the XVIII Legislature, which analyzes the tables and approves them if it agrees. Until then the published document is a proposal. And the proposal does not say how far any one owner's bill will move. The proposal sets out the 2027 values but not a comparison with this year's, and although the fiscal impact was discussed at the July consultation, no figure has been published. The bill also depends on discounts. In 2026 the municipality offered 30 percent off for payment in January, 15 percent in February and 10 percent in March, and 50 percent until March 31 for retirees, people with disabilities, older adults with a senior card and public sector employees. We have found no announcement yet of the discounts for 2027.

For owners the useful step is simple. Take the cadastral key from a predial receipt, find the property on the zone maps in the published proposal, and check that the zone, the land area, the built area and the construction category on file match what is actually there. A lot recorded as lacking services that now has them, or land recorded as empty that now has a house on it, is valued on a different basis from what stands there. The same check is worth making before a purchase. For a wider view of the municipality's year, see our report on Tulum's second municipal report.

Sources: Noticias Tulum, Quintana Roo Hoy and Poder & Crítica, October 5, 2026; Dirección de Catastro Municipal de Tulum, Propuesta de Tablas de Valores Unitarios de Suelo y Construcción para el ejercicio fiscal 2027 (tulum.gob.mx); Novedades Quintana Roo (Sipse), July 21, 2026; El Heraldo de México Quintana Roo, January 5, 2026. Main image: "Tulum Main Drag, January 2021," by Dennis Sylvester Hurd, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.