TalkBaja.com » Baja Real Estate Advice / Discussion » Before you even think about buying property

An interesting and controversial Baja California real estate topic is the matter of Rancho La Costa Azul. [It is important to first understand that ALL the land in Mexico belongs to the Mexican Government, and you have to buy it from the SRA (Secretaria de la Reforma Agraria) to get your land title.] In 1993 Rancho La Costa Azul provided the plot map and their payment to the SRA and they were given back this stamped payment reciept and their plot map was also stamped and accepted. The financial transaction to buy it was then complete, but the administrative act of issuing the land title was never done.

The area of RLCA in the below map covers most of coastal Rosarito Beach- running roughly from the thermo-electric plant on the north end of the main beach- all the way south through the tourist zone to La Paloma. It does not take much imagination to see why this is a very hot topic.

The RLCA map and the 1993 SRA payment receipt are attached to this post as documentation. They had not been seen in 22 years until RLCA provided this information to SEMARNAT and PROFEPA in the 2011 Federal Zone matter of Tila Ortiz -vs- Alonzo Nava. RCLA rightly claimed that with their 1993 stamped SRA receipt in hand, they have the only legitimate ownership claim to the land being claimed by Tila Oiz as her own private property. Even if no land title has been delivered to RLCA, they had already paid for the land an no other claim could be more valid than theirs. Mr. Nava won the case and that recent SEMARNAT decision will be posted on it's own thread.

Does the fact that they paid the SRA fees give them an unlimited time window to complete the process to obtain the land title? Part of me wonders if they didn't do so simply to delay having to begin paying predial???

The Rancho La Costa Azul topic is def Raphael's current passion. There is lots going on politically and below the surface on this and I'm sure he will update us.

It is my understanding that RLCA exercised it's ownership rights once against Hugo Torres Chavert. Torres tried to sell a nightclub in the tourist zone claiming he had the National Land Title to it. The army and prosecutors were called in and the club ended up renting from RLCA inastead of buying it from Torres- or at least that is my understanding of what took place. I'm not sure ANY National Land Titles were issued for the map area of RLCA- including National Land Titles for all downtown Rosarito. Not sure why the process stalled, time limitations, etc.

Good section to keep going. I would like to hear more stories. Thanks for the info on land documentation in Mexico.

There are a lot of stories. Baja California and Baja California Sur are fairly young from a legal entity perspective. Many of these geezers are still alive and are waiting to cash in before they check out. There are many dynamics to these stories. It would be too unpractical to undo things at this point, but the academics will always want to determine what the legal truth is.

The Secretaría de Reforma Agraria was created, as its name suggests, to protect the rights of ejidal lands. (Ejidos are -- or were -- farm land held in common by several families and which could be inherited only by direct descendants of the original ejidatarios.) With the Salinas de Gortari presidency, the SRA became the escrow service for the sale of these formerly unalienable lands. What we see in these documents is that a señor Avakian has paid about seven thousand dollars for unspecified rights to a strip of beachfront belonging to the Ejido Mazatlán. The timing and the price suggest that señor Avakian was a good friend to Salinas de Gortari.

What sort of title might have issued from this payment? An interesting question. The Constitution bars outright sale of all coastal lands, on the grounds on national defense, such that people who live on the water can do so only by usufruct permit. In other words, you can't own coastal land, you can only lease its use from the federal government. You can own the buildings but not the sand.

What we have here is a confusion of two legal concepts: on one hand, the sale of a communal farm; on the other, the limited use of federal property.

And you wonder why this hasn't been cleared up before now...