Most people sign a year-long lease after twenty minutes in the apartment, in the dry season, with the owner standing next to them. We go back and look properly — before you commit, and again on the day you get the keys.
You are being shown around by someone who wants you to say yes. It's the middle of the day, everything is switched off, and you have no way to know whether the A/C actually cools, whether the water pressure survives a shower on the eighth floor, or whether the ceiling stain came back last August and will come back again this one.
None of that is dishonesty on the owner's part. Plenty of owners genuinely don't know — they live somewhere else, and the last tenant never mentioned it. But you're the one signing for twelve months, and you're the one who lives with the answer.
Before you sign. We go through the place as though you were buying it — systems tested under load, not just switched on — and you get the report before you commit to anything.
On the day you take the keys. Every room, every existing mark, photographed and timestamped, so nothing that was already there becomes yours at the end.
Before you hand the keys back — or after, if a deposit is being withheld and you need something better than your word against theirs.
For long stays and seasonal rentals booked from abroad off eleven flattering photographs. We go and look at the actual apartment before your deposit leaves the country.
We inspect for owners too — that's most of our work, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What it means in practice is that we know exactly what a landlord will try to charge you for at the end, because we've written the other side of that report many times.
It also means we don't do advocacy. We don't argue your case, and we won't write that something is damage when it's twelve months of ordinary use, or that it's wear when someone put a chair leg through the drywall. The report says what's there. That's precisely what makes it useful when two people disagree — a document that obviously isn't taking sides is the one that ends the argument.
A standard inspection covers the property. It can't tell you how the building is run — that answer lives with the administración and in the reglamento, not in the walls. We'll go and get it. The lease itself is a lawyer's job, and we'll say so rather than pretend otherwise.
| Service | What it covers | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Building & Administración Review | We contact the administración, obtain the reglamento interno, and report in writing: how repair responsibility is split between the building and the unit, water and gas arrangements and who pays, maintenance and lift service history if they'll share it, and the house rules on pets, guests and subletting. We report what the documents say and what we're told — we don't interpret them for you. | $1,500 |
| Lease review (referral) | Your contract itself should be read by a lawyer, not an inspector. We can put you in touch with an attorney in Puerto Vallarta who does this — you engage them directly and they bill you directly. We take nothing for the introduction, the same as every other referral on this site. | No charge |
| After-Hours Noise Visit | A second visit to the property after 22:00 — the only way to know what the street actually sounds like at night. Notes and audio, added to your report. | $800 |
| Both, booked with an inspection | The administración review and the noise visit together, booked alongside a pre-lease or move-in inspection. | $2,000 |
Pesos. This is a document and enquiry service, not an inspection, and it is not legal advice — we report what the reglamento says and what the administración tells us. Interpreting what any of it means for your position is a lawyer's work, which is why we hand that part over rather than guess at it.
This isn't a list of horror stories. It's the ordinary stuff — the things a twenty-minute walkthrough in February cannot tell you about living somewhere through August.
Not inspection findings — homework. An inspection happens in daylight on one day and can't tell you any of this, so ask, or add the Building & Administración Review below.
Do the arithmetic on your own lease rather than taking our word for it. A year at even a modest Vallarta rent is a six-figure peso commitment, plus a deposit you'd like back. Set the inspection fee against that number and against the cost of discovering in July that the A/C can't cope — when your options are paying to fix someone else's equipment, arguing about it for a month, or breaking a lease.
It's also fine to conclude it isn't worth it. On a two-month stay in a small studio, it probably isn't.
Rental inspections are priced by size, the same as any other inspection — the full table is on the rate schedule, along with travel fees by area. Tell us the address and roughly how big the place is and you'll have a firm number the same day.
Yes — we need lawful access, which in practice means the owner or their agent agreeing and letting us in. Most say yes without much fuss; a serious tenant paying for a professional inspection is not a threat to an owner with a decent property.
If someone flatly refuses to let an inspector through a unit you're about to commit twelve months to, that refusal is itself worth knowing about before you sign.
No, and you shouldn't want us to. A proper inspection takes hours, not the twenty minutes an agent has allotted, and half of what matters only shows up after equipment has been running for a while. Book the viewing, decide you're interested, then get us in before you sign.
We can document the condition of the property and put it in writing, which is usually what's actually missing from these disagreements. What we can't do is represent you, negotiate for you, or tell you what your rights are under Mexican tenancy law — that's a lawyer's job, not an inspector's.
If we did your move-in record, the comparison is straightforward. If we didn't, we can still document the current state, but be realistic: without a baseline it's a weaker position.
That's exactly what the sight-unseen check is for. We go to the property, inspect it, and send you photographs, a video walkthrough and the written report. You can be on a call with us while we're standing in it.
Not from the inspection, no — and be wary of anyone who says they can. What we can do is read the last CFE bill with you, if you get hold of it.
Ask the owner for it before you sign, the same way you'd ask for anything else. It's an ordinary request and a reluctance to produce it tells you something on its own. Bring it to us and we'll walk through what it actually shows: the consumption, the tariff it's being billed on, and whether that's a comfortable number or one that's near a threshold.
The honest limit is that we can't guarantee it. The bill is a record of how somebody else used the place, and it isn't a promise about how you will. If you run the A/C harder than the last tenant did, your bill goes up and can eventually change which tariff the service sits on. Ask for the bill, read it carefully, and treat it as evidence rather than a quote.
Book an inspection, or just send a message and tell us about the property. No pressure, no obligation — we'll tell you honestly whether you need us.