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Real Estate Law

Regularization of Constructions Without Permission in Quintana Roo

March 15, 2026 — Enrique Benet-Gregg

Applicable Regulatory Framework

The regularization of works executed without a construction license, or that exceed the parameters of the authorization originally granted, is governed in Quintana Roo by an articulated set of federal and local provisions. At the federal level, the General Law on Human Settlements, Territorial Planning and Urban Development (LGAHOTDU, published in the DOF on November 28, 2016, with amendment published on June 1, 2021) establishes in its article 9 the scheme of concurrent competence of municipalities in matters of urban development and territorial planning. Said article functions as a framework provision for competence attribution: fractions I and II of that provision refer to the formulation and administration of municipal urban development programs, not to licensing and sanction powers in the strict sense. The operational competence of municipalities to issue construction licenses and to sanction irregular works derives directly from article 115, fraction V, subsection d), of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, which empowers municipalities to authorize, control and supervise the use of land in their territorial jurisdictions; this constitutional power is operationalized through the construction regulations of each municipality, with the LGAHOTDU remaining as the framework for concurrent coordination in which said power is inserted. The municipalities of Solidaridad and Tulum have their own regulations that replicate the structure of the Benito Juárez municipality with variations in the coefficients of land occupation and utilization. At the state level, the Law on Urban Development of the State of Quintana Roo (LDUEROO, with the latest amendment published in the Official Gazette of the State on March 24, 2023) and the Construction Regulations of the Benito Juárez Municipality (applicable to Cancún and the conurbated zone, with the latest amendment from 2022) constitute the operative regulatory axis.

Most Frequent Cases of Irregularity

Real estate practice in the Riviera Maya produces three recurring categories of construction irregularity. The first comprises works executed entirely without a construction license, which technically constitutes the infraction provided for in article 196 of the LDUEROO and may generate, in addition to the corresponding fine, a demolition order. The second category encompasses works that exceed the authorized area or height, either due to densification not contemplated in the original license or due to undeclared subsequent expansions. The third involves constructions that, even though they had a current license at the time of the work, did not obtain the work completion certificate or the completion statement, which prevents registration and hinders the transfer of ownership.

Regularization Procedure Before the Municipality

The regularization procedure is not homogeneous among municipalities, but follows a common structure derived from articles 197 to 203 of the LDUEROO. The owner or possessor presents to the municipal Urban Development Office a regularization application accompanied by: descriptive report of the work executed; architectural plans signed by responsible work director (DRO) with current professional credentials; current land use and zoning certificate; topographic and photographic survey; proof of ownership or possession; and tax debt clearance certificate. The municipality conducts a visual inspection through the Inspection and Surveillance area. If the work is compatible with the land use and respects the land occupation coefficients (COS) and land utilization coefficients (CUS) established in the Municipal Urban Development Program, the Office issues the regularization license, whose fee payment is calculated on the cadastral value of the work in accordance with the Finance Law of the Benito Juárez Municipality or its equivalent in each municipality. When the work exceeds the permitted coefficients, regularization only proceeds if the excess can be covered under a modality of land use change or through urban compensation, a circumstance that requires approval by the Municipal Council under the terms of the constitutional article 115.

A special note corresponds to the municipality of Tulum, created by legislative decree in 2021 following its separation from the municipality of Solidaridad. The Urban Development Department of Tulum, in its capacity as a recently established municipal entity, presents lower consolidated institutional capacity and less predictable administrative response schedules than municipalities with greater operational history. For properties located in the vicinity of Tulum National Park or in areas of influence of cenote systems and medium jungle, any municipal regularization management must be preceded by a parallel analysis before SEMARNAT, given that such ecosystems may be subject to federal protection declarations that condition or prevent isolated municipal regularization. The filing of a regularization request with the municipality of Tulum without having previously exhausted such federal analysis exposes the applicant to the risk of activating a municipal administrative procedure that may subsequently be invalidated due to incompatibility with preexisting federal restrictions.

Registrar and notarial implications

Administrative regularization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for full legal regularization of the property. Once the municipal regularization license or certificate has been obtained, the owner must proceed before a notary public with the declaration of expansion or rectification of constructed area, whose registration in the Public Registry of Property and Commerce of the State of Quintana Roo updates the registral description of the property. This registration is indispensable for regularized works to be enforceable against third parties and for the property to be subject to mortgage guarantee or transfer of ownership without registral contingency. Article 2998 of the Civil Code of the State of Quintana Roo (as amended, published January 15, 2024) establishes the principle of registral enforceability: registrable acts produce effects against third parties only as of the date of their registration in the Public Registry, such that any work regularized at the administrative level but not registered lacks erga omnes effectiveness and does not fully consolidate the property owner’s real right against subsequent acquirers or creditors. It is recommended to verify the current text of such article in the updated version of the state code published by the Official Gazette of the State, in order to confirm the article numbering in light of potential reorganization amendments.

Relevant judicial criteria

In light of verifiable availability of references in the Federal Judicial Weekly, the criteria described below are presented as interpretive trends observed in the jurisdictional practice of the XXVII Circuit and of the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, without attributing to them the character of an isolated thesis or jurisprudence with a specific registration number, insofar as .

Along these lines, the Collegiate Courts of the XXVII Circuit have held in matters related to irregular construction in Quintana Roo that the municipal power to order demolition constitutes a discretionary power subject to the principle of proportionality: before issuing a demolition order, the authority must exhaust the possibility of regularization when the work is materially compatible with current zoning, under penalty of violating the right to be heard enshrined in constitutional article 14 and the principle of minimum impact. This approach imposes on municipalities the burden of specifically explaining why regularization is not viable before ordering demolition. Likewise, criteria from the First Chamber of the SCJN have been observed to the effect that administrative infractions arising from irregular construction do not generate automatic objective liability; when the sanction exceeds mere economic fine and affects consolidated real rights, the authority must establish the subjective element of the infraction.

Regarding proportionality in administrative sanctions, the most solid Mexican doctrine is found in Carbonell, Miguel, Fundamental Rights in Mexico (UNAM/Porrúa, 4th edition), a work that develops the content and scope of the principle of proportionality in the Mexican constitutional context and is directly applicable to the analysis of urban planning sanctions. The invocation of foreign doctrine on this specific point provides no additional value in light of the abundant jurisprudence of the SCJN in the matter.

Risks and practical considerations

The property owner attempting to regularize an unauthorized work faces specific risks that must be assessed before initiating the procedure. The first consists of the possibility that municipal inspection triggers an autonomous sanctioning procedure if the infractions detected exceed those declared in the application. The second lies in the supervening incompatibility of the work with the current zoning when the Municipal Urban Development Program has been updated after construction. The third relates to the existence of construction restrictions in federal zones, coastal strip or protected natural areas administered by the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT) or the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP), which prevent isolated municipal regularization and require parallel federal procedures under the Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente (LGEEPA). Regarding the federal environmental regime, it is advisable to clarify the interaction between two distinct instruments: article 28 of the LGEEPA activates the obligation to obtain environmental impact authorization (environmental impact statement or MIA) for any work or activity in federally protected coastal zones, while article 47 bis imposes additional restrictions determined by the specific sub-zoning of the protected natural area in which the property is located. Both provisions operate on distinct but complementary legal regimes, and both must be analyzed in parallel before submitting any municipal regularization application in the coastal strip, since the absence of environmental impact authorization or incompatibility with the ANP sub-zone may render municipal regularization legally unfeasible regardless of local urban planning compatibility.

Federal Maritime-Terrestrial Zone

A risk of particular relevance for the Riviera Maya, frequently underestimated in the preliminary evaluation prior to regularization, is that arising from the regime of the Zona Federal Marítimo Terrestre (ZOFEMAT). The ZOFEMAT constitutes a public domain asset of the Federation regulated by articles 119 to 134 of the Ley General de Bienes Nacionales (LGBN), and comprises the strip of twenty meters in width transversal from the line of ordinary maximum high tide along the coastlines of the national territory. Its administration corresponds to SEMARNAT through the Federal Delegations and ZOFEMAT offices, with the intervention of the Secretaría de Marina in cases determined by the LGBN itself. No private party may occupy, use or exploit the ZOFEMAT without holding a concession title granted by the competent federal authority pursuant to articles 119 and et seq. of the LGBN. Consequently, any construction that invades or physically adjoins the ZOFEMAT without a current concession title constitutes an irregular occupation of national property, whose situation cannot be remedied through the municipal regularization procedure: the regularization permit that the municipality may eventually issue lacks legal effect with respect to the portion of the property that corresponds to the federal strip, and its obtainment does not extinguish federal administrative liability nor cancels the obligation to obtain the concession. For coastal properties in Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Tulum or any other point of the Riviera Maya that present adjacency or overlap with the ZOFEMAT, the analysis of the federal concession title must precede and condition any municipal regularization management, at the risk that the regularization obtained may prove partially ineffective or be challenged by the federal authority.

Statute of Limitations for Sanctions under article 207 of the LDUEROO

The reference to the statute of limitations for infractions provided in article 207 of the LDUEROO merits specific development, as it constitutes the most operatively relevant variable for deciding between proactive regularization and wait-and-see strategy. Pursuant to article 207 of the LDUEROO, infractions in matters of urban development are barred by limitation in a period of five years. The computation of the prescriptive period begins from the date on which the municipal authority becomes aware of the infraction or, in the absence of such documented knowledge, from the date of conclusion of the irregular work, a criterion that in practice is determined through municipal inspection records and cadastral documentation. Prescription is interrupted by any act of authority that implies the formal initiation of the administrative sanction procedure, including the notification of an inspection visit order directed specifically to the property in question, the issuance of a formal summons to the owner or occupant in the corresponding sanction file, or any procedural act that initiates the procedure provided for in articles 196 et seq. of the LDUEROO. A construction completed more than five years ago, with respect to which there is no active sanction file nor documented interrupting act, may find itself in a legal position of prescription consummated that makes administrative regularization unnecessary as a mechanism for extinguishing sanction liability, although it does not eliminate the registration and notarial limitations derived from the lack of proof of completion of work. This distinction is strategically critical: prescription extinguishes the sanction authority but does not supply the absence of registration documentation, so the analysis must differentiate between sanction risk and risk of obstacle to property circulation.

Tax Implications of Regularization

An element frequently omitted in the preliminary evaluation of regularization is its impact on the tax situation of the property. Obtaining a regularization license entails the updating of the cadastral value of the property, insofar as the regularized construction increases the surface area or value of the buildings declared to the municipal cadastre. Pursuant to the Municipal Tax Code applicable in Quintana Roo, such cadastral updating may give rise to recalculation of property tax corresponding to prior fiscal years, generating potential retroactive adjustments with surcharges and updates in accordance with the rates and procedures established by the municipal tax ordinance itself. For properties of commercial, hotel, or tourism development use in Cancún or the Riviera Maya with constructed surface area significantly greater than that declared to the cadastre, this tax exposure may represent a material liability that affects the economic viability of the regularization process. It is recommended to estimate that potential liability before initiating the administrative procedure, particularly in the case of properties with a history of prolonged cadastral under-reporting, and to evaluate together with the tax advisor the convenience of voluntary cadastral regularization versus the exposure derived from an ex officio review by the authority.

Operative Conclusion

The regularization of irregular constructions in Quintana Roo is a viable process in most instances, but its success depends on a prior technical-legal evaluation that determines the compatibility of the work with current zoning, the absence of federal restrictions on the property (including verification of adjacency or overlap with ZOFEMAT and with protected natural areas), the cadastral and tax situation of the property, and the appropriate procedural strategy to prevent the regularization procedure from becoming the trigger for greater sanctions. Incorrect management before the Department of Urban Development can generate preclusion of rights or consolidate an infraction that otherwise would have been barred by prescription pursuant to article 207 of the LDUEROO. The correct sequence of analysis encompasses, in that order: verification of the federal situation of the property (ZOFEMAT, ANP, EIA); analysis of statute of limitations for infractions; evaluation of urban compatibility; estimation of cadastral tax liability; and, only then, decision on the initiation of the municipal procedure.

IBG Legal has directly managed the interface between the federal ZOFEMAT regime and municipal regularization procedures before the Departments of Urban Development of Benito Juárez, Solidaridad and Tulum, as well as the risks derived from the opening of sanction files in the context of regularization requests presented to the municipality of Benito Juárez. That accumulated experience in the simultaneous management of the federal, state, and municipal planes is the most relevant resource that IBG places at the disposal of owners and investors facing the contingencies described in this analysis. Persons interested in a specific evaluation of their situation may contact IBG’s real estate practice team in Cancún.

Sources and References

Legislation

  • General Law on Human Settlements, Territorial Planning and Urban Development (LGAHOTDU). DOF, November 28, 2016. Last amendment: DOF, June 1, 2021. Article 9 (concurrent municipal competence, attribution framework); constitutional article 115 as the seat of operational licensing competence.
  • Political Constitution of the United Mexican States. Articles 14 (right to a hearing), 115 section V subsection d) (municipal competence to authorize, control and supervise land use). Last amendment: DOF, March 22, 2024.
  • Urban Development Law of the State of Quintana Roo (LDUEROO). Official Gazette of the State of Quintana Roo. Last amendment: March 24, 2023. Articles 196 to 207.
  • Building Regulations of the Municipality of Benito Juárez. Last amendment: 2022. Municipality of Benito Juárez, Quintana Roo.
  • Civil Code of the State of Quintana Roo. Last amendment published in the Official Gazette of the State: January 15, 2024. Article 2998 (registry enforceability against third parties; verification of numbering in the current version published by the Official Gazette is recommended).
  • General Law on Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection (LGEEPA). DOF, January 28, 1988. Last amendment: DOF, January 18, 2021. Article 28 (environmental impact assessment in federally protected coastal zones); article 47 bis (sub-zoning of protected natural areas).
  • General Law on National Assets (LGBN). DOF, May 20, 2004. Last amendment in force. Articles 119 to 134 (Federal Maritime-Terrestrial Zone: regime, concessions, competent authority).
  • Finance Law of the Municipality of Benito Juárez, Quintana Roo. In effect as of March 15, 2026.

Judicial Criteria

  • Collegiate Courts of the XXVII Circuit (Quintana Roo): interpretative trend observed in practice to the effect that the municipal power to order demolition of irregular works is discretionary and must be preceded by exhaustion of the regularization procedure when the work is materially compatible with current zoning, based on the principle of proportionality and constitutional article 14.
  • First Chamber of the SCJN: interpretative trend to the effect that administrative infractions arising from irregular construction do not generate automatic objective liability; when the sanction affects consolidated real rights, the authority must prove the subjective element of the infraction. Reference pending verification of specific IUS record in the Federal Judicial Weekly.

Official Sources

  • Fernández Ruiz, Jorge. Administrative Law and Public Administration. Editorial Porrúa / UNAM, Mexico, 2016.
  • Carbonell, Miguel. Fundamental Rights in Mexico. UNAM / Editorial Porrúa, Mexico, 4th edition. Chapters on proportionality in the exercise of administrative sanctioning powers, applicable to the analysis of urban planning sanctions in the Mexican constitutional system.
  • Institute of Legal Research, UNAM. Mexican Legal Encyclopedia. Volume VI (Urban Law). Editorial Porrúa / UNAM, Mexico.
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