Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Cabo San Lucas
SUMMARY
Yes. Cabo has a housing shortage today, but it is overwhelmingly a shortage of affordable, serviced housing for permanent residents rather than a shortage of property in general.
Los Cabos has added roughly 70,000 residents since the 2020 census baseline. At the municipality’s previous occupancy rate, accommodating that growth alone implies demand for around 20,000 additional occupied homes.
The strange part is that Cabo can have a housing shortage while thousands of homes and condos remain available. The municipality already had almost 20,000 vacant or temporary-use dwellings in 2020, and today the resale market has more than two years of condo inventory in several segments.
The shortage appears much more clearly when prices are compared with local incomes. Apartments asking roughly MXN 15,000 to MXN 17,000 a month can consume an entire average monthly worker income, while rents in El Tezal are closer to MXN 30,000.
Informal housing shows what happens when the formal market cannot absorb that demand. Los Cabos identifies more than 11,000 occupied homes and roughly 42,000 residents across irregular settlements around Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo.
Cabo was also starting from a weak housing baseline. CONAVI already classified 22,824 Los Cabos homes as being in housing backlog in 2020, before much of the municipality’s latest population growth occurred.
At the same time, Cabo has been extremely successful at building and selling expensive property. In Q2 2026, 80% of residential transaction value came from properties above US$1 million, and just nine US$10 million-plus sales generated about US$161 million.
This produces one of Cabo’s biggest housing paradoxes: local workers face a shortage while buyers of US$300,000-to-US$1 million condos face abundant choice. Two-bedroom condos alone recently carried about 25 months of inventory.
The public response is now much larger than earlier announcements suggested. An August 2026 municipal update describes roughly 15,700 homes through Sedatu and another 15,400 through Infonavit, putting the projected Los Cabos program above 31,000 homes, although only the first 704-unit Cabo San Lucas phase has moved into construction so far.
Cabo therefore does not need more housing of every type. It needs tens of thousands of homes that local households can actually pay for, on land with water, drainage, roads, electricity and transport. Until that supply catches up, the affordable-housing shortage is likely to remain one of the municipality’s biggest constraints.
Thinking of buying real estate in Cabo San Lucas?
Acquiring property in a different country is a complex task. Don't fall into common traps – grab our guide and make better decisions.
Why are people suddenly talking about a housing shortage in Cabo?
Cabo currently has a serious housing problem because the number of people who need reasonably priced homes has grown much faster than the supply built for them.
Los Cabos had 351,111 residents in the 2020 census. More recent CONAPO projections put the municipality at roughly 420,000 people, which means the area has added around 70,000 residents in only a few years. Cabo San Lucas has absorbed a large share of that growth after already expanding dramatically during the previous decade.
That gives us a useful sense of scale. Los Cabos had about 3.4 people per occupied home in the 2020 census. Housing another 70,000 people at roughly the same ratio requires around 20,000 additional occupied homes. That works out to several thousand homes a year before we even consider the housing deficit that already existed.
The pressure is visible in government policy too. Baja California Sur chose Los Cabos as the starting point for its large Housing for Wellbeing program, and state authorities have repeatedly described Cabo San Lucas as one of the places where housing and urbanization pressures are most acute.
So when people talk about a Cabo housing shortage today, they are reacting to something much bigger than rising property prices. Cabo has been adding residents at a pace its local housing system has struggled to absorb.
| Indicator | Earlier level | More recent level | Approx. change | What we learn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Cabos population | 351,111 in 2020 | ~420,000 | +~70,000 | Housing demand has kept rising quickly |
| Occupied private homes in 2020 | 101,934 | — | — | Cabo started from a relatively small housing base |
| People per occupied home | ~3.4 | — | — | Useful baseline for new housing demand |
| Homes implied by ~70,000 extra residents | — | ~20,000 | Several thousand per year | New supply has to be very large just to keep pace |
Is Cabo actually running out of homes?
Cabo has plenty of property in absolute terms, but far too little of the housing that ordinary residents can realistically afford and use.
INEGI counted 121,645 dwellings across Los Cabos in 2020. About 101,934 were occupied, while 10,361 were vacant and another 9,303 were classified as temporary-use homes. Roughly one home in six therefore sat outside the permanently occupied housing stock.
Today’s property market makes the distinction even clearer. There are thousands of houses and condos available across Los Cabos, particularly once investor-oriented and higher-priced properties are included.
That sounds odd at first. A furnished US$600,000 condo near the tourist corridor is technically an available home, but it does almost nothing for a hotel employee looking for somewhere to rent on a salary paid in pesos.
Counting every dwelling together therefore gives us the wrong answer. Cabo has a mismatch between its housing stock and the people who need somewhere to live permanently.
| Los Cabos housing stock in 2020 | Homes | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Total dwellings | 121,645 | 100% |
| Occupied private dwellings | 101,934 | ~83.8% |
| Vacant dwellings | 10,361 | ~8.5% |
| Temporary-use dwellings | 9,303 | ~7.6% |
| Vacant + temporary use | 19,664 | ~16.2% |
Don't buy the wrong property, in the wrong area of Cabo San Lucas
Buying real estate is a significant investment. Don't rely solely on your intuition. Gather the right information to make the best decision.
Is Cabo’s real shortage an affordable-housing shortage?
Yes. Affordability is where Cabo’s housing shortage becomes hardest to argue against.
Current Data México figures put average monthly labor income in Baja California Sur at roughly MXN 13,000, with formal workers earning somewhat more and informal workers less. These figures cover the state rather than Cabo alone, but they give us the right income range for understanding the problem.
Now compare that with recent asking rents collected by Propiedades.com. Apartments in Cabo San Lucas Centro average roughly MXN 15,700 a month. Portales is around MXN 14,800, 4 de Marzo around MXN 16,700, and El Tezal close to MXN 30,000.
One average worker could therefore hand over roughly an entire monthly salary just to rent a fairly ordinary apartment in several Cabo neighborhoods. El Tezal can easily consume the combined income of two lower-paid workers.
Households obviously combine salaries, find cheaper informal rentals, share accommodation or move farther out. But those workarounds are part of the housing problem rather than evidence that the problem has disappeared.
| Current reference point | Approx. monthly amount | Compared with MXN 13,000 income |
|---|---|---|
| Average BCS worker income | MXN 13,000 | 100% |
| Portales apartment | MXN 14,756 | ~114% |
| Cabo San Lucas Centro apartment | MXN 15,740 | ~121% |
| 4 de Marzo apartment | MXN 16,724 | ~129% |
| El Tezal apartment | ~MXN 30,000 | ~231% |
Are Cabo workers really being priced out of the formal housing market?
Yes, many Cabo workers now need two incomes, shared housing, cheaper peripheral neighborhoods or informal accommodation to make local housing costs work.
Los Cabos supports one of Baja California Sur's largest concentrations of employment. Tourism alone accounts for tens of thousands of jobs, while hotels, restaurants, construction, retail, cleaning, security, landscaping and transport add a huge workforce around that core.
The problem is easy to see once wages and property values meet. Someone earning MXN 12,000 or MXN 15,000 a month competes for land and housing in a destination where second-home buyers can arrive with US-dollar incomes or substantial savings.
Foreign buyers are not the only reason prices are high, and plenty of Mexican buyers participate in the upper end of the market. The larger issue is that Cabo's property values increasingly reflect global resort purchasing power while much of its workforce remains on local Mexican wages.
The result is already visible in how people live. More workers commute from cheaper areas, several earners share one home, and informal settlements have expanded around the main urban centers. Cabo can keep attracting workers because the jobs exist, but finding formal housing near those jobs has become much harder.
Get to know the market before buying a property in Cabo San Lucas
Better information leads to better decisions. Get all the data you need before investing a large amount of money.
Does Cabo’s luxury building boom mean there cannot be a housing shortage?
No. Cabo can build an enormous amount of real estate and still leave its local housing shortage almost untouched when much of that construction targets affluent buyers.
Los Cabos remains a major luxury-property market. Cabo Real Estate Services recorded roughly US$1.6 billion in residential transactions during 2025, and expensive properties continued to account for a huge share of transaction value.
The latest Q2 2026 data make this split even more obvious. Cabo Real Estate Services recorded US$456 million of residential sales during the quarter. Properties above US$1 million accounted for 80% of dollar volume, while nine transactions above US$10 million alone generated about US$161 million.
So roughly one-third of the quarter's entire residential dollar volume came from just nine ultra-luxury deals.
Developers understandably follow that money. A site that can support condos or villas selling for hundreds of thousands or several million dollars has very different economics from a project aimed at workers earning pesos.
Cabo is producing plenty of expensive housing. The part that remains scarce is housing priced around the incomes of the people who actually work there.
| Q2 2026 Los Cabos market | Result | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Residential dollar volume | US$456M | Property activity remains substantial |
| Residential sales | 293 | Fewer units than Q1 despite much higher value |
| Sales above US$1M | 80% of dollar volume | Market value heavily concentrated at the top |
| Sales above US$10M | 9 | Tiny number of transactions |
| Value of US$10M+ sales | US$160.9M | ~35% of all quarterly dollar volume |
Doesn’t Cabo actually have too many condos right now?
Yes. Cabo currently has a large condo surplus at market prices, especially in the two-bedroom segment, and that is one of the clearest reasons we should avoid describing the shortage as universal.
Cabo Real Estate Services counted 2,320 active houses and condos at the end of Q1 2026, a new peak. Around 60% of that inventory consisted of condos.
The Q2 update still showed 658 two-bedroom condos sitting on the market, equal to about 25 months of inventory at the recent sales pace. That glut has a clear origin. Developers sold huge numbers of two-bedroom pre-construction units during the 2021 boom, and many of those projects subsequently reached completion.
The resale market is now absorbing those units far more slowly. Condo sales fell 19% from Q1 to Q2 according to the same report, and 1,049 price reductions had already been recorded across completed homes and condos during the first half of 2026.
Christie's current resale data tell a similar story. Condos below US$1 million have about 26 months of inventory, while those above US$1 million have about 28 months.
Cabo therefore has more than enough condos for buyers shopping at several hundred thousand dollars and above. That inventory cannot easily migrate into the local workforce market because even a large discount leaves most units far outside local budgets.
| Current segment | Active inventory | Approx. months of inventory | What it looks like today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homes under US$1M | 635 | 18.9 | Buyer has substantial choice |
| Homes over US$1M | 411 | 32.4 | Heavy inventory |
| Condos under US$1M | 1,202 | 25.8 | Clearly oversupplied relative to sales |
| Condos over US$1M | 212 | 28.3 | Slow-moving inventory |
| Two-bedroom condos | 658 | ~25 | One of Cabo's softest segments |
Buying real estate in Cabo San Lucas can be risky
An increasing number of foreign investors are showing interest. However, 90% of them will make mistakes. Avoid the pitfalls with our comprehensive guide.
Are Cabo’s informal settlements proof that people cannot find proper housing?
Yes. The scale of Cabo’s informal settlements is probably the strongest physical evidence that the affordable-housing problem has gone far beyond normal price pressure.
The current Los Cabos Municipal Development Plan identifies seven irregular settlements around Cabo San Lucas containing about 8,293 occupied homes and 31,653 people.
Caribe Bajo alone accounts for roughly 4,061 occupied homes and more than 16,000 residents. Tierra y Libertad has another 5,286 residents, while Las Torres/Vista Azul has roughly 4,196.
San José del Cabo adds six identified irregular settlements containing about 2,990 occupied homes and 10,351 people.
Combined, the municipal inventory therefore covers more than 11,000 occupied homes and roughly 42,000 residents in identified irregular settlements around the municipality's two main cities.
That figure deserves context. Forty-two thousand people would equal roughly 10% of Los Cabos' recent estimated population. Even allowing for differences in dates and definitions, informal housing here is far too large to dismiss as a fringe issue.
| Area | Identified settlements | Occupied homes | Estimated residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cabo San Lucas | 7 | 8,293 | 31,653 |
| San José del Cabo | 6 | 2,990 | 10,351 |
| Combined | 13 | 11,283 | 42,004 |
How many Cabo homes are already inadequate or overcrowded?
Cabo entered the current growth cycle with more than 22,000 homes already classified as being in housing deprivation, so the shortage goes beyond finding an available unit.
CONAVI's municipal analysis, based on the 2020 census, classified 22,824 Los Cabos homes as being in housing backlog. That represented 22.6% of the homes covered by its methodology.
Los Cabos ranked 42nd nationally by absolute number of homes in housing backlog, an unusually high position for a municipality with a much smaller population than Mexico's largest cities.
The underlying problems varied. CONAVI identified 14,592 homes with intermediate-quality materials, 12,467 with precarious space conditions and 2,127 with seriously deteriorated materials. Those categories overlap, so adding them together would overstate the total.
This baseline changes how we should read Cabo's recent population boom. The municipality was already carrying a housing-quality deficit before another roughly 70,000 residents were added.
Don't lose money on your property in Cabo San Lucas
100% of people who have lost money there have spent less than 1 hour researching the market. We have reviewed everything there is to know. Grab our guide now.
Are Airbnb and vacation rentals causing Cabo’s housing shortage?
Vacation rentals make Cabo’s housing pressure worse in some neighborhoods, but Airbnb cannot explain a shortage this large on its own.
The economic incentive is obvious. A furnished condo close to beaches, nightlife or resorts can target tourists paying in dollars, giving owners an alternative to renting long term to local households earning pesos.
That pulls some usable apartments away from permanent residents and can push rents higher in neighborhoods where tourists and locals compete for similar units. Cabo San Lucas Centro and tourist-friendly residential areas are particularly exposed to that competition.
But the evidence points to a broader problem. Cabo's population has been growing rapidly for years, tens of thousands of residents live in irregular settlements, CONAVI already counted more than 22,000 inadequate homes in 2020, and serviced land remains difficult to produce.
Even a large transfer of vacation rentals into long-term leases would mostly affect certain condo neighborhoods. It would not suddenly create enough MXN 6,000 or MXN 8,000 apartments for low-paid workers.
Vacation rentals contribute to the shortage, particularly around desirable central locations. They are not the main explanation for it.
Is Cabo’s population still growing fast enough to keep housing tight?
Yes. Continued population growth means Cabo has to build thousands of useful homes every year simply to stop the gap from widening.
Los Cabos grew from 238,487 people in 2010 to 351,111 in 2020, adding more than 110,000 residents in one decade. Recent demographic projections put the municipality above 400,000.
Tourism keeps feeding that growth. New hotels, restaurants, residential communities and construction projects create jobs, those jobs attract workers, and those workers bring families or form new households.
The pattern has lasted long enough that we should treat it as structural rather than temporary migration after the pandemic.
As seen above, roughly 70,000 additional residents at Cabo's old household size correspond to housing demand on the order of 20,000 homes. The precise number will vary with household formation, migration and occupancy, but the scale is what matters: Cabo needs housing in the tens of thousands, rather than a few isolated apartment projects.
Get the full checklist for your due diligence in Cabo San Lucas
Don't repeat the same mistakes others have made before you. Make sure everything is in order before signing your sales contract.
Why doesn’t Cabo simply build cheaper homes?
Cheap housing is difficult to make profitable in Cabo because affordable projects compete for land, infrastructure and construction capacity with one of Mexico’s most valuable resort property markets.
A developer deciding what to build on well-located land near Cabo San Lucas can target local households earning perhaps MXN 20,000 or MXN 30,000 together, or buyers capable of spending US$300,000, US$700,000 or several million dollars.
That gap is enormous.
Land values respond to what the highest-paying projects can support. The same applies to construction labor, materials and infrastructure. As luxury development expands, producing low-cost housing on commercially attractive sites becomes harder without cheaper public land, subsidies, density, financing advantages or some combination of the four.
Location adds another problem. Moving affordable projects farther into the periphery can lower land costs, but roads, water, electricity, drainage, schools and public transport then need to follow.
The government has effectively acknowledged this constraint. When Baja California Sur launched its Housing for Wellbeing program in Cabo, officials specifically mentioned the difficulty of obtaining suitable land.
The private market can build cheaper housing, but expecting it to produce enough homes at Cabo worker wages without public intervention is unrealistic under current land economics.
Is Cabo’s housing shortage also a water and infrastructure problem?
Yes. Finding enough serviced land has become almost as important as building the homes themselves.
Los Cabos has spent years dealing with water-supply pressure, fast outward urban growth and neighborhoods where infrastructure arrived after residents did. The municipal government is currently pursuing major water and urban-infrastructure projects alongside the new housing program for precisely that reason.
The first 704 Housing for Wellbeing units in Cabo San Lucas are being developed with roads and access to education, sports and other infrastructure rather than as isolated buildings. State authorities have also identified ten sites totaling roughly 87 hectares for an initial 4,454 homes.
More recently, state and federal authorities moved forward with the purchase of roughly 120 hectares of ejido land around San José del Cabo as part of the larger housing push.
The land still needs to become functioning neighborhoods. A cheap parcel without reliable water, drainage, electricity and transport does not solve Cabo's housing problem very well.
This is why building 10,000 or 30,000 homes in Los Cabos is harder than simply finding enough hectares on a map. Cabo needs urban capacity at roughly the same speed that it needs housing capacity.
Don't sign a document you don't understand in Cabo San Lucas
Buying a property over there? We have reviewed all the documents you need to know. Stay out of trouble - grab our comprehensive guide.
Is Cabo’s housing shortage pushing families into dangerous areas?
Yes. When formal serviced land becomes too expensive, some Cabo families end up building in places exposed to flooding and other hazards.
The municipal settlement inventory includes large communities around arroyos and peripheral areas where urban growth has advanced faster than formal planning.
Caribe Bajo and nearby settlements around the San Lucas arroyo are among the largest examples. Around San José del Cabo, irregular development has also expanded near Santa Rosa, Zacatal and other flood-sensitive areas.
Baja California Sur's hydrometeorological planning has specifically identified irregular settlements around Los Cabos as an important risk during intense rainfall and tropical weather.
Housing affordability therefore has consequences beyond rent. A family unable to access formal serviced land may accept weaker tenure, worse infrastructure and higher environmental risk because those are the options that remain accessible.
The shortage becomes much more serious once the cheapest available housing is also some of the most exposed housing.
Is the government finally building enough affordable housing in Cabo?
The public housing response is now much larger than earlier announcements suggested, but it is still far too early to say Cabo has built its way out of the shortage.
The latest municipal update from August 2026 describes two separate program tracks in Los Cabos: roughly 15,700 homes through Sedatu and another 15,400 through Infonavit. Together, that puts the projected program above 31,000 homes.
The first 704 homes in Cabo San Lucas have already moved into construction. They include 576 units of around 60 square meters and 128 smaller units of around 40 square meters.
This is more concrete than a housing target with no land or construction attached. Authorities have identified sites, the first phase is being built, and additional land transactions are moving forward.
But the gap between planned units and delivered units is still huge. Those first 704 homes represent only a little over 2% of the latest 31,000-plus projected program.
The latest program is actually larger on paper than CONAVI's 22,824-home housing-backlog count from 2020. Those numbers are not directly interchangeable, because housing backlog measures inadequate existing homes as well as housing need, while the public program measures planned new units. Still, the comparison shows that the intervention has finally reached a scale that could materially change Cabo's housing market if most of it is delivered.
Population growth will continue while all of this is being built. That is the uncomfortable part. Cabo needs the program to work, and then it will probably need more resident-oriented housing after it.
| Housing measure | Approx. scale | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Sedatu housing track | ~15,700 homes | Large federal housing component |
| Infonavit housing track | 15,400 homes | Separate major housing component |
| Total projected Los Cabos program | 31,000+ homes | Potentially transformative if delivered |
| First Cabo San Lucas construction phase | 704 homes | Construction has actually started |
| CONAVI housing backlog baseline | 22,824 homes | Large pre-existing housing-quality deficit |
| Homes implied by recent population growth | ~20,000 | Demand has continued growing in parallel |
Get fresh and reliable information about the market in Cabo San Lucas
Don't base significant investment decisions on outdated data. Get updated and accurate information.
Will falling Cabo property prices fix the housing shortage?
No. Cabo property prices could fall substantially in the condo market without bringing those homes anywhere close to what most local workers can afford.
There is already plenty of pricing pressure. Cabo Real Estate Services recorded 1,640 price reductions during 2025, up from 1,193 in 2024. By the end of the first half of 2026, another 1,049 reductions had been recorded across completed houses and condos.
Two-bedroom condos currently have roughly 25 months of inventory, and the Q1 median condo price fell 8.6% from the previous quarter before the market mix shifted again in Q2.
Consider what that means in practice. A US$400,000 condo falling 15% reaches US$340,000. A 30% crash would bring it to US$280,000. Neither price transforms the property into housing for someone earning MXN 15,000 a month.
The market can therefore experience real price corrections while the local housing shortage barely improves.
That distinction will matter even more if Cabo's resale market continues softening. Headlines about falling condo prices may sound like affordability is returning, while the workers facing the deepest shortage see very little change.
Could Cabo’s housing shortage eventually hurt the tourism industry?
Yes. Cabo’s housing problem is reaching the point where it can make the tourism economy itself harder and more expensive to operate.
Hotels, restaurants, luxury homes and resorts require huge numbers of cooks, cleaners, gardeners, security staff, maintenance workers, drivers and construction crews. Those jobs cannot be done remotely from another state.
When workers cannot afford housing close to employment centers, commute times increase, staff share accommodation, employers face higher turnover, and wage demands eventually adjust to the cost of living.
Some luxury destinations elsewhere have already reached the stage where employers provide staff housing or struggle to recruit because workers simply cannot live nearby. Cabo has several ingredients that can produce the same problem: fast population growth, extreme differences between local wages and property values, expensive serviced land and a tourism economy that remains labor intensive.
Affordable housing is part of Cabo's economic infrastructure. Resorts need workers just as surely as they need water, roads and airport capacity.
Get to know the market before buying a property in Cabo San Lucas
Better information leads to better decisions. Get all the data you need before investing a large amount of money.
Is Cabo’s housing shortage likely to get worse from here?
Cabo’s affordable-housing shortage will probably remain severe for years, even with the new public construction program now moving forward.
The strongest reason is that demand has several engines running at once. Los Cabos continues attracting workers, tourism development keeps creating jobs, household formation adds new demand, and much of the private construction pipeline still targets buyers well above local wage levels.
Meanwhile, the supply correction happening today is concentrated in the wrong part of the market. Q2 2026 still had 658 two-bedroom condos for sale, while ultra-luxury demand remained remarkably strong. Neither development produces many homes for households earning local salaries.
Public construction is the one major factor that could materially change the picture. Delivering something close to the latest 31,000-plus projected units would be a huge addition relative to Cabo's existing housing stock.
But construction will take time, and the population will keep moving during that period. Infrastructure, water and land regularization also have to keep up.
For now, the evidence points toward a persistent shortage rather than a quick normalization.
So does Cabo have a housing shortage today?
Yes. Cabo clearly has a housing shortage today, but the shortage is concentrated in affordable, serviced housing for permanent residents rather than across the entire property market.
The evidence lines up unusually well. Los Cabos has added roughly 70,000 residents since the last census baseline. CONAVI already identified 22,824 homes in housing backlog. The municipal government counts roughly 42,000 residents across identified irregular settlements around Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo. Typical apartment rents in several neighborhoods can consume an entire average local salary.
At the same time, Cabo's private property market currently has enormous inventory. Resale condos below US$1 million carry roughly 26 months of supply, two-bedroom condos remain particularly crowded, and sellers have made thousands of price reductions since 2025. Ultra-luxury demand is still strong too: nine US$10 million-plus sales generated about US$161 million in Q2 2026 alone.
Those facts fit together once we separate Cabo's two housing economies. One serves investors, second-home owners, retirees and affluent buyers. The other has to house the people working in hotels, restaurants, construction, transport and local services.
Cabo has become extremely good at creating valuable real estate. It still has nowhere near enough ordinary housing at prices its workforce can comfortably pay.
So the answer is clearly yes. Cabo has a housing shortage, and affordability is the shortage that matters.
Buying real estate in Cabo San Lucas can be risky
An increasing number of foreign investors are showing interest. However, 90% of them will make mistakes. Avoid the pitfalls with our comprehensive guide.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether Cabo has a housing shortage by separating the resident housing market from the broader Los Cabos property market. We compare population growth, housing occupancy, affordability, housing backlog, irregular settlements, resale inventory, development mix, infrastructure constraints and the scale of the public housing response rather than allowing one headline number to decide the answer.
We prioritized the freshest decision-relevant evidence available through August 31, 2026. Current market, housing-program and infrastructure data are drawn mainly from 2025–2026 updates, while census and federal housing datasets are used as structural baselines where they remain the strongest available reference.
Population growth is used to establish scale rather than a precise forecast of housing need. Los Cabos had about 3.4 people per occupied dwelling in 2020, so applying roughly the same occupancy rate to around 70,000 additional residents implies housing demand on the order of 20,000 homes. Actual demand will vary with household formation, migration and occupancy patterns.
For affordability, we use Data México's labor-income figures as a wage-range reference and compare them with current asking rents from Propiedades.com. Data México explicitly indicates that the labor-income figures shown for Los Cabos are representative at the Baja California Sur level rather than statistically specific to the municipality, so the comparison is directional rather than a precise Cabo wage-to-rent ratio.
We deliberately keep housing availability separate from housing affordability. The Los Cabos Municipal Development Plan provides the baseline for occupied, vacant and temporary-use dwellings as well as the municipality's inventory of irregular settlements. CONAVI's municipal housing-backlog calculation adds a separate measure of inadequate housing conditions. Together, those sources show why a large physical housing stock does not automatically mean that residents can access adequate formal housing.
Market inventory is treated as evidence about the property market, not as a direct measure of worker housing availability. Cabo Real Estate Services provides the Q1 and Q2 2026 inventory, transaction, price-reduction and luxury-sales data, while Christie's International Real Estate Cabo provides an independent cross-check on months of inventory across sub-US$1 million and US$1 million-plus homes and condos.
We also updated the public-housing figures to reflect the latest municipal information rather than preserving earlier headline targets. The August 2026 Los Cabos update describes roughly 15,700 projected homes through Sedatu and another 15,400 through Infonavit, putting the combined program above 31,000 homes. We distinguish those projected units from the first 704-home Cabo San Lucas phase that has actually entered construction.
Infrastructure is included because a housing unit is only useful if the surrounding land can support permanent residents. Baja California Sur's housing announcements, the Los Cabos water authority, municipal infrastructure planning and the state's hydrometeorological plan provide the evidence used here on land availability, water pressure, urban services and the exposure of some irregular settlements to physical hazards.
We gave the greatest weight to evidence that directly addresses resident housing conditions and used luxury sales, condo inventory and price reductions mainly to test the apparent contradiction in the market. Cabo can have heavy resale inventory and a luxury construction boom while still facing a shortage of housing accessible to households earning local wages. The conclusion rests on that distinction, not on the claim that Cabo is short of every kind of property.
Key sources used for this analysis include: CONAPO's municipal population reconstruction and projections, Data México's Los Cabos profile, CONAVI's housing-backlog update, CONAVI's municipal housing-backlog calculation, the Los Cabos Municipal Development Plan 2024–2027, the Government of Baja California Sur on the launch of Housing for Wellbeing in Los Cabos, the August 2026 Los Cabos update on more than 31,000 projected homes, Cabo Real Estate Services' Q2 2026 market report, its Q1 2026 market report, its Q4 2025 market report, Christie's International Real Estate Cabo's H1 2026 market report, Propiedades.com on Cabo San Lucas Centro rents, Propiedades.com on Portales rents, Propiedades.com on 4 de Marzo rents, Propiedades.com on El Tezal rents, Baja California Sur's 2025 Hydrometeorological Plan, the Los Cabos water authority's March 2026 supply update, and Los Cabos' 2026 basic-infrastructure planning update.
Don't lose money on your property in Cabo San Lucas
100% of people who have lost money there have spent less than 1 hour researching the market. We have reviewed everything there is to know. Grab our guide now.
Related blog posts
- Will property prices rise in Cabo San Lucas?
- Are property prices in Cabo San Lucas still rising?
- How much is rent in Cabo San Lucas now?
- Can foreigners buy property in Cabo San Lucas?
