Will your property tax increase with the new Cadastral Law? What really changes and who it will affect

Ximena Torres

After weeks of controversy, the decree for the General Law for the Strengthening and Harmonization of Cadastral and Registry Systems was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) on October 23. This means that, starting in January 2027, the authorities in charge of cadastral and public property registries throughout the country must transfer their operations to two platforms that will unify their processes and the territorial information related to real estate.

The legislation passed through the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate amid concerns about a sharp increase in property taxes and an infringement on state autonomy. However, based on his analysis as a lawyer specializing in urban and real estate law, William Gómez Hueso believes that “at least on paper, the law has a good purpose because it aims to simplify procedures for citizens, ensuring they are standardized everywhere and providing greater legal certainty. It also seeks to help municipalities obtain better information about properties, not only for revenue collection but also for decision-making.”

Gómez, a professor in the Sustainable Real Estate Development program at ITESO, made these statements after confirming that the new law does not modify the power granted to municipalities by Article 115 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States to administer property taxes. It also has no impact on the unit value tables that each city council approves to calculate taxes.

A second concern regarding a potential property tax hike is the standardization of cadastral and market values for real estate. This would mean that the annual tax would be calculated based on the market price of each house or building. Besides the fact that the new law doesn't address this issue, the academic explains that the measure intended to equate both values dates back to a constitutional reform published in 1999, which has not been implemented due to its unpopularity.

“The law doesn’t interfere with the issue of private property; it interferes with the process by which authorities monitor property transactions, but nothing more,” Gómez clarifies. The legislation aims to ensure that information shared between institutions is in the same format and kept up-to-date, a task that has been difficult to accomplish so far due to the unequal resources of different municipalities.

Standardization to address municipal gaps

To explain the context that gave rise to the new law, Gómez recalls that cadastral records are information systems that register the physical, qualitative, geographical, fiscal, and administrative characteristics of properties. Their most common function is calculating property tax and transfer tax (on sales), but they are also an important tool for urban planning.

Cadastral procedures depend directly on the municipalities, which generates large institutional gaps between territories due to disparities in their budget, extension, population volume and technical capacities.

On the other hand, public property registries are state agencies that record who the owners are and what the real rights are over each property —the existence of mortgages, easements, encumbrances and other real estate contracts—.

The problem is the disparity between these agencies. “Land registries and public records operate however they want and however they can. [...] The information the land registry has about your house may differ from what the public registry has. We need this territorial information to be standardized,” says the ITESO academic.

That is what the new law seeks to achieve through the implementation of the Unique Cadastral Key (CUC), a kind of "CURP for real estate," in Gómez's words. Its purpose is to ensure that all agencies that manage property have the same information.

In addition to the CUC, the Municipal Cadastral Platform and the Public Property Registry Platform will allow for the management of procedures under standardized procedures. The development of these platforms will be managed by the Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency, a federal entity that, unlike municipalities, has greater capacity to maintain this type of technological infrastructure.

Gómez asserts that some positive consequences of the legislation are the prevention of real estate fraud, due to the greater clarity of the information, and the strengthening of cadastral and registry offices, which “can be very easily manipulated to generate falsified information.”

What will likely be less popular is the updating of information on properties with unreported additions, as this will also modify their cadastral value—which considers the area, the land area, and the square footage of the construction. This is the only scenario in which the ITESO professor foresees an indirect increase in property taxes, although he considers it a fair measure.

“Nobody wants to pay more, but the obligation is that we contribute proportionally and equitably. If you decide to charge more after the update, it's because you weren't paying what you owed before,” he says.

The challenge of implementation

Despite the law's good intentions, William Gómez Hueso acknowledges that "it won't be standardized by decree." Once again, municipalities with greater institutional capacity will be able to more easily comply with the requirements of the proposed digital platforms, while smaller communities will depend on the involvement and monitoring of state authorities.

This means the biggest challenge lies in implementation. The first stage is harmonizing the legislation of the federal entities, which will chart the course for each territory. “It will be a gradual process, and not for lack of will. The issue of non-compliance is often due to a lack of capacity. Municipalities say, 'I'd be delighted to receive more funding, the problem is I don't know how to do it.' It will depend on the support of the states,” Gómez concludes.