The areas of the city that do not lose value

The national average no longer describes the city

During the first half of 2026, housing prices in Mexico appreciated 7.9% compared to the same period the previous year, according to the Índice SHF de Precios de la Vivienda. The figure, however, conceals considerable territorial divergence: while the Guadalajara metropolitan area grew 11.1% and Monterrey 8.3%, the Valle de México registered 4.6%, the lowest variation among the country's principal metropolitan areas alongside Toluca. The city, in other words, is appreciating today at little more than half the national pace.

That slowdown should not be read as weakness. The economic-social segment grew 10% in the same period, against 6.7% for the middle-residential segment, indicating that price pressure concentrates where demand is most elastic and inventory most abundant. In Mexico City's consolidated markets the movement is different: less volume, less volatility, and an internal dispersion the average fails to describe.

The distance between one neighborhood and another

The Indicador Banorte de Precios de Vivienda, as of June 2026, places the national average price at 31,911 pesos per square meter. Against that reference, the first section of Bosque de Chapultepec reaches 100,267 pesos, the third section of Polanco 96,862, and the fifth 94,803. At the opposite end of the city, the Tláhuac borough averages 19,842 pesos.

The difference between the most expensive and the most accessible square meter within the same city exceeds a factor of five. No reading of the capital's market that starts from a single average is useful to someone who owns or seeks a property in the west of the city: the relevant indicator is not the city, but the neighborhood, and frequently the section within the neighborhood. Between the third and fifth sections of Polanco there are little more than two thousand pesos per square meter, a shorter distance than the one separating either of them from the adjacent neighborhood.

What sustains value

The areas that hold their price across cycles share three structural conditions, and none of them is demand.

The first is land scarcity. Polanco, Lomas de Chapultepec and Bosques de las Lomas operate on finite surfaces, with land-use regulation that restricts densification and a proportion of residential land that admits no growth. Where nothing more can be built, future supply is bounded by definition.

The second is low turnover. In these areas property is frequently transferred through inheritance and remains in the same hands for decades. A market with few annual transactions is one in which each transaction sets a reference, and in which an individual price adjustment does not drag the whole.

The third is inventory composition. The Indicador Banorte notes that 76.9% of housing available for purchase in Mexico City corresponds to apartments. In areas where the single-family house with land predominates, the product is structurally different from what competes in the rest of the city, and its value responds to a logic of scarcity the vertical market does not share.

The new leasing framework

On February 25, 2026, the full bench of the Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación resolved amparo en revisión 546/2025 and declared constitutional article 2448 D of the Código Civil de la Ciudad de México, which limits the annual increase of residential rents to the previous year's inflation. With inflation at 3.69% in 2025, that is the applicable ceiling for contracts being renegotiated. The ruling also upholds the Registro Digital de Contratos de Arrendamiento administered by the city government.

The resolution does not limit the initial amount agreed between the parties, so its effect concentrates on renewal rather than on placement. For the patrimonial owner, however, the consequence is clear: rental yield becomes indexed to inflation, and the real return on a property in the city will depend increasingly on asset appreciation and less on cash flow. In that scenario, location stops being one variable among others and becomes the variable.

The international context

The capital's slowdown coincides with that of the prime segment globally. According to Knight Frank's Prime International Residential Index, published in The Wealth Report 2026, luxury residential prices grew 3.2% during 2025, below the 3.6% registered in 2024. Of the hundred markets that make up the index, 73 closed the year up and 24 down.

The figure offers perspective: a prime market growing below its country's general average is not a Mexican anomaly, but the characteristic behavior of a segment where price has already absorbed scarcity and where revaluation proceeds from preservation, not expansion.

What this means

For those holding a property in a consolidated area, the half-year requires no movement. For those evaluating a purchase, the price differential between neighboring areas justifies analysis by section and by direct comparable, not by borough average.

Four readings of the half-year

The Valle de México is appreciating at 4.6%, close to half the national average of 7.9%.

Intra-urban dispersion exceeds a factor of five between the highest and lowest square meter.

The rent ceiling shifts return from cash flow toward asset appreciation.

The global prime segment grows 3.2%, below its own 2024 figure.

Sources

Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal, Índice SHF de Precios de la Vivienda en México, second quarter 2026, bulletin 05/2026.

Banorte, Indicador Banorte de Precios de Vivienda (INBAPREVI), as of June 2026.

Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, Amparo en Revisión 546/2025, resolved February 25, 2026.

BBVA Research, Situación Inmobiliaria México, first half 2026.

Knight Frank, Prime International Residential Index, in The Wealth Report 2026.