CDMX Tourism Law

The CDMX Tourism Law is Mexico City's legislative framework governing short-term rental activity, most recently applied through a three-property-per-individual-host cap that began implementation on 21 May 2026. Under the cap, individual hosts may list no more than three properties on short-let platforms. A registration deadline of 20 June 2026 was set, falling nine days after the FIFA World Cup opens on 11 June, a timing that concentrated short-let supply pressure precisely when enforcement capacity was at its lowest.

The cap has a structural flaw that activists and analysts have flagged since its drafting: it is written around the individual host, not the firm. Around 1,400 CDMX hosts holding four or more properties control roughly half the capital's short-let supply, but many of the largest operators are registered as companies rather than individuals. A per-individual cap is legally inapplicable to corporate entities, so the rule misses precisely the actors driving supply consolidation. The underlying registry the cap relies on has been due since 2024 and remains inactive, snarled by injunctions, and the cap itself was suspended in practice after a 2024 suspension proposal cleared committee.

The legislative gap reflects a broader challenge: Mexico City's short-let market has professionalised faster than the regulatory instruments designed to govern it. Closing the enforcement gap requires a commercial land-use reclassification or a corporate-entity version of the cap, neither of which is in the current legislative text.