Mexico City Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Mexico City and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the city never banned the business the way New York or Barcelona did. Renting out a room, an apartment, or an entire house to tourists is legal everywhere in the capital, and it always has been. What changed, and changed hard, is everything wrapped around that basic permission.

Since May 2026, every host and every platform has had to register with the city's own Padrón de Anfitriones through a free digital portal, display a folio number on every listing, and answer to an enforcement institute that can fine or suspend a property outright. Layered on top of that sits a genuinely contested rule limiting registered properties to half the year's nights, so unpopular that hundreds of hosts have already won court orders suspending it while the fight over its constitutionality heads toward Mexico's Supreme Court. None of that makes hosting illegal. It does mean the rules you might remember from 2024 aren't quite the rules that apply today.

This guide walks through what Mexico City actually requires of a host in 2026: registration, the documents behind it, the taxes that stack on a stay, and how seriously the city is enforcing any of it during a World Cup year. Every figure below comes from the Ley de Turismo de la Ciudad de México, its Reglamento, the federal tax code, and Mexico City's own reporting on how enforcement is going, read directly rather than summarized secondhand. If you're comparing this property against markets where the rules are simpler, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Mexico City, Mexico?

That reading starts with two documents, because Mexico City regulates this through a law and the regulation that fills in its details. On April 4, 2024, a decree published in the Gaceta Oficial de la Ciudad de México added Articles 61 Bis through 61 Octies to the Ley de Turismo de la Ciudad de México, creating a legal category called Estancia Turística Eventual: paid, temporary lodging in a residential property. Anyone offering that, an Anfitrión in the law's language, has to register in the Padrón de Anfitriones. Every platform that lists them, Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, has to register separately in the Padrón de Plataformas Tecnológicas. The Reglamento, published that September 25, fills in how both registries actually work: what documents get submitted, how long a folio lasts, and what a verification visit looks like.

None of that touches zoning the way a US ordinance might. Mexico City doesn't carve out districts where short-term rentals are banned outright, and the law doesn't cap how many nights a listing can take on its own, a host renting a spare room stays legal at any occupancy. What it does instead is attach obligations, insurance, reporting, tax compliance, to anyone doing this commercially, then draw a sharper line once you're running more than a handful of properties.

The line that's actually contested sits inside Article 61 Sexies. An October 3, 2024 amendment added a fourth paragraph stating the city won't renew a registration for a property that exceeded 50% of the year's nights occupied, a rule widely reported as a "182 nights a year" cap. I couldn't find that paragraph in the Ley's own consolidated text (the copy hosted by Congreso CDMX doesn't appear to include it), so I'm relying on the wording quoted inside a later legislative repeal attempt, corroborated by multiple Mexico City law firms and news outlets. What's not in dispute: hundreds of hosts have filed amparo lawsuits against it, and by March 2026 two federal collegiate courts had granted unanimous suspensions against it, a pattern that could turn into binding precedent before the Supreme Court even weighs in. Treat that specific cap as unsettled while everything else below is firmly in force.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Mexico City

Whatever the Supreme Court eventually decides about that cap, the more basic question most owners have is simpler: can I do this with my specific property? For the overwhelming majority of apartments and houses in Mexico City, the answer is yes, and you don't need a company to do it. An individual can register up to three properties under the simplified Anfitrión path with no extra permit beyond the Padrón itself.

Cross that threshold, though, and the rules change. From the fourth property onward, Article 61 Sexies requires a clave de establecimiento mercantil, the commercial-establishment permit issued under the Ley de Establecimientos Mercantiles, and the property's own zoning has to actually permit that commercial activity. Miss that and the city can strike the fourth property and everything after it from your registration. An operation already running as a licensed hotel, aparthotel, or hostel before the Padrón existed can't register those same units as Anfitrión properties either. The two regimes don't overlap; a licensed commercial lodging business stays under its existing license.

Two categories of housing are off the table entirely, both added to the Ley de Vivienda para la Ciudad de México in the same October 2024 reform: vivienda social (subsidized housing) and units rebuilt with public money after the September 19, 2017 earthquake. Both carry a social purpose the legislature didn't want diluted into short-term rental income, and registering either one gets an application rejected outright.

Make sure you also check who actually lives where you're renting, since one exemption matters more than the property count. A host who lives in the unit and rents a room or two isn't limited by that three-property rule at all, since it targets people scaling up an investment business rather than someone renting a spare bedroom. That's most of the market, by the way: listings cluster overwhelmingly in three boroughs, Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, and Benito Juárez, the same neighborhoods driving Mexico City's gentrification debate, and the citywide count has grown from roughly 18,000 listings in 2023 to somewhere north of 24,000 by 2026.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Mexico City

Wherever your listing falls in that picture, the mechanics of getting registered are the same for everyone. Registration runs through estanciaeventual.cdmx.gob.mx, a portal that opened to hosts on May 22, 2026 and requires a Llave CDMX digital identity account to log in. I wasn't able to load the portal directly while researching this guide, since Mexico City's own web properties were unreachable from where I was working, so the process description below comes from the law and regulation themselves plus multiple Mexican outlets that walked through it step by step in May 2026. Unlike most US city registrations, this one is free: the Secretaría de Turismo's own social accounts describe the tramite as gratuito, needing nothing but a Llave CDMX account.

The clock on that first registration window was tight. Existing hosts had 30 days from the May 22 launch, effectively to June 30, 2026, while platforms had to be registered by roughly June 20. If you're reading this after that window and haven't registered yet, don't wait for a second notice before starting. You upload your documents, get a provisional folio while the Secretaría reviews the application, then receive a final certificate and folio once it's approved. That folio has to appear in every listing and, per the Reglamento, somewhere visible inside the property itself.

The registration doesn't last forever, either. A host's folio is valid for one year and has to be renewed within the 30 days before it expires; a platform's registration runs two years on the same renewal logic. That's exactly where the 50% occupancy condition bites, since a property that crossed the threshold in its first year can be denied renewal, at least until the courts settle whether that condition survives at all.

Skip registration, or slip up once you have it, and the penalties are real, even if they're modest next to what New York or Barcelona charge. Under the Reglamento's Articles 121 and 122, a host gets a written warning first, then a fine of 25 to 100 times the Unidad de Medida y Actualización (UMA). As of February 2026, that daily UMA is $117.31 pesos, so the fine works out to roughly $2,933 to $11,731 pesos, plus a suspension of activity for up to 15 days.

Platforms face the same warning-then-fine sequence at 50 to 200 UMA, about $5,866 to $23,462 pesos, and can lose their registration entirely. The city has to weigh the infractor's ability to pay, how serious the violation was, and whether it's a repeat offense. None of that replaces separate civil or criminal liability if something goes wrong at the property.

Required Documents for Mexico City Short-Term Rentals

Since the fee is free but the fines aren't, it's worth getting the paperwork right on the first attempt. Article 61 Quinquies lists what a host has to submit for every property registered:

• Name and nationality (or company name, if registering as a business)
• Valid ID showing your address, or a signed statement under oath that you live at the property being registered
• Proof of ownership, administration, or legal possession of the unit
• Your RFC (tax ID) and constancia de situación fiscal
• Proof that predial (property tax) and water charges are current, for each property
• A comprobante de domicilio for the unit, which the Reglamento says can be no more than three months old and doesn't need to be in your name
• The property type, matched to the categories defined in the law
• Every platform where the property is listed
• A signed statement that the property meets civil-protection and safety standards
• Proof the condominium's general assembly was notified, if the unit sits inside one
• The liability insurance policy's carátula, when you have one
• A phone number and email address for handling neighbor and guest complaints

Platforms file a shorter, parallel set of documents under Article 61 Septies:

• Corporate name and nationality
• Incorporation documents
• Proof the person filing can act as legal representative
• RFC and constancia de situación fiscal
• A Mexico City address for notifications, or, for a foreign platform without a local address, its home-country address plus a designated local contact
• A liability insurance policy from an insurer accredited with Mexico's national insurance regulator

Don't skip that insurance line even though the host document list only asks for it "cuando cuente con éste," when you have one. The Reglamento is more direct about it elsewhere: Article 68 calls it obligatory and requires you to keep it active for every registered property. If you genuinely don't have one, the platform's own insurer has to cover you, but only for the specific dates of that one reservation, a much thinner safety net than year-round coverage of your own.

Mexico City Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that paperwork and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and it stacks in three separate layers.

Tax	Rate	Applies to
Impuesto Sobre Hospedaje, hotel rate	3.5%	Hotels, hostels, motels, campgrounds
Impuesto Sobre Hospedaje, platform rate	5%	Houses and apartments booked through an intermediary platform
ISR withholding (federal)	4%	Hospedaje income paid through a platform
IVA withholding (federal)	8% (16% without an RFC on file)	VAT on services sold through a platform

The city's own charge is the Impuesto Sobre Hospedaje, and Mexico City splits the rate by property type. Article 164 of the Código Fiscal de la Ciudad de México sets it at 3.5% for hotels, hostels, motels, and campgrounds, but at 5% for houses and apartments once a facilitador, in practice Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo, is the one collecting the guest's payment. Since Estancia Turística Eventual is exactly that arrangement, most hosts pay the higher rate without necessarily realizing a lower one exists that just doesn't apply to them. Whoever collects the payment has to remit the tax by the 15th of the following month.

Two federal taxes sit above that, and they follow you no matter which Mexican city you're hosting in. Article 113-A of the Ley del Impuesto Sobre la Renta requires the platform to withhold 4% of your hospedaje income as a provisional payment toward income tax. If your total platform income stays under $300,000 pesos a year, you can elect to treat that withholding as your final ISR liability instead of filing separately. It's worth checking with an accountant, since it can genuinely simplify things for a small host.

On top of that, Article 18-J of the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado has the platform withhold half of the 16% IVA charged, 8%, as long as you've given it your RFC. Forget to provide one and the withholding jumps to the full 16%. The law treats a missing RFC as a reason to assume the worst.

One more detail worth knowing: platforms aren't just tax collectors here, they're on the hook alongside you. Article 61 Octies makes a platform jointly liable with its hosts for unpaid Impuesto Sobre Hospedaje and for sanctions tied to the stays it facilitated, unless it can prove the host acted in bad faith. That's a large part of why Airbnb pushes compliance on its hosts as hard as it does: the city can come after Airbnb directly if a host doesn't pay up.

Mexico Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

All three of those tax lines sit inside a federal shell that has nothing to do with which Mexican city you're hosting in. The ISR and IVA withholding rules above come from national law, the Ley del Impuesto Sobre la Renta and the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado, and Mexico's tax authority, the SAT, applies them the same way whether your listing sits in Mexico City, Cancún, or Guadalajara. Give a platform your RFC and you're withheld at 8% IVA and 4% ISR. Don't, and you're withheld at the full 16% and effectively taxed as if you were trying to hide.

There's also a broader Ley General de Turismo at the federal level, setting up a national Registro Nacional de Turismo for tourism service providers generally. Be aware that this federal law doesn't itself regulate short-term rental platforms the way Mexico City's local reform does. It has no national registration requirement built specifically for Airbnb-style hosts, no occupancy cap, and no preemption clause blocking a city or state from writing its own rules. That's a meaningful gap compared with a country like the US, where a handful of states preempt local short-term rental bans outright. In Mexico, the decision to regulate, or not, sits almost entirely with each state and city on its own.

Mexico Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Left to their own devices, Mexico's tourism-heavy states have landed in genuinely different places, and Mexico City's approach sits somewhere in the middle of the pack. Quintana Roo, home to Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum, runs a mandatory RETUR-Q registration that's actually operational and enforced, charges the highest hotel tax in the country at 6%, and backs it with fines running up to $100,000 pesos for an unregistered property, plus new safety inspection requirements added in 2026. Only a small share of the estimated 40,000 short-term rental properties there had registered as of early 2026, but platforms are now demanding a registration number before they'll list a property at all.

Jalisco, covering Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, is the opposite case: as of my research, it has only proposed rules, not passed ones, including a 180-night cap that would drop to 90 in high-impact zones. Until that changes, Jalisco hosts answer to whatever their municipality requires plus a 5% state hospedaje tax collected by the platforms, with none of Mexico City's registry or Quintana Roo's enforcement layered on top.

So keep in mind that "Mexican regulation" isn't one thing you can learn once and apply anywhere in the country. Mexico City's free registration and contested occupancy cap sit between Quintana Roo's blunt, real enforcement and Jalisco's current near-absence of one. If you're weighing a purchase against a different Mexican market, don't assume the rules transfer with the property.

Does Mexico City Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Set against that spectrum, the honest answer for Mexico City itself is that it depends which rule you mean. The registration requirement looks like it's being taken seriously. The rollout was timed deliberately, launching about six weeks before Mexico City co-hosts matches in the 2026 World Cup, and the government has been explicit that unregistered listings can be blocked by the platforms themselves rather than waiting for an inspector to notice. The Instituto de Verificación Administrativa (INVEA) runs the actual verification visits under Articles 119 through 124 of the Reglamento, and it can act on its own even without a formal opinion from the Secretaría de Turismo first.

I haven't found a published compliance count for after the June 30, 2026 deadline, so I can't tell you what share of the roughly 24,000 to 30,000 listings in the city finished registering on time, and I'd rather say that plainly than guess at a number.

The 50% occupancy cap is a different story entirely. Airbnb itself filed an amparo against the reform in early 2025, arguing it was written without input from hosts and that most of its Mexico City guests are domestic Mexican travelers rather than the international tourists the reform's backers pointed to. The host advocacy group Todos Somos Anfitriones, representing roughly 12,000 member families according to its own reporting to Mexico News Daily, has filed hundreds of individual amparos since November 2024, and by March 2026 two federal collegiate courts had issued unanimous, definitive suspensions against the cap. Under Mexican amparo law, five consistent rulings in a row create binding jurisprudence, so hosts' lawyers are watching for a fifth ruling as closely as they're watching the Supreme Court.

So the practical read for 2026 is this: register, keep your documents current, and don't bank on the 50% cap actually limiting you the way the headline reform once promised. Whatever happens to it, run your specific property's numbers through BNBCalc Markets so you know what you're working with before you commit either way.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Mexico City

Assuming you're still comfortable with that uncertainty and want to move forward, the order below matters more than it looks, since skipping ahead usually means redoing something later.

1. Confirm your property qualifies before anything else. Check that it isn't vivienda social or post-earthquake reconstruction housing, and if you're a tenant rather than an owner, get your landlord and, where relevant, your condo assembly on record as aware.
2. Decide how many properties you're registering. Up to three, you're on the simplified Anfitrión path. Four or more, budget time for a clave de establecimiento mercantil and confirm your zoning allows it.
3. Gather your documents. ID or a sworn residency letter, ownership or possession proof, RFC and constancia de situación fiscal, current predial and water payments, a comprobante de domicilio under three months old, and your liability insurance policy.
4. Register for free at estanciaeventual.cdmx.gob.mx using a Llave CDMX account, and register every platform you plan to list on at the same time.
5. Add your folio to every listing the moment you receive it, and post it somewhere visible inside the property itself.
6. Set up your tax withholding correctly. Confirm your RFC is on file with every platform so you're withheld at 8% IVA and 4% ISR instead of the punitive rate that applies without one.
7. Diarize your renewal date. A year out for hosts, two years for platforms, and start the renewal process 30 days early.
8. Track your own occupancy. Even with the 50% cap under litigation, keep a count of nights booked per property, since a court ruling could resolve the question either way with little notice.
9. Run the property through BNBCalc before you commit serious money, and compare it against other Mexican or international markets if you're still choosing where to buy.

Who to Contact in Mexico City about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up, a handful of offices handle almost everything between them, though I should say plainly that Mexico City's own web properties were unreachable throughout my research, so I couldn't verify a direct phone or email for the Tourism Secretariat's registration help desk the way I'd normally confirm a government contact. What follows is what I could verify.

Registration and the Padrón de Anfitriones

The Secretaría de Turismo de la Ciudad de México administers both registries.

• Address: Avenida Nuevo León No. 56, Colonia Hipódromo Condesa, C.P. 06100, Alcaldía Cuauhtémoc
• Registration portal: estanciaeventual.cdmx.gob.mx (requires a Llave CDMX account)

Verification visits and penalties

The Instituto de Verificación Administrativa (INVEA) carries out the inspections behind Articles 119 through 124 of the Reglamento and handles citizen complaints about unregistered or non-compliant properties.

• Direct complaint line: 55 66 51 58 66
• Email: [email protected]
• In person: Carolina #132, Monday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

General citizen complaints

Locatel takes general service requests and complaints from the public, including about a neighboring short-term rental, and routes them to the right agency.

• Phone: dial 0311 from anywhere in Mexico City

Federal taxes

The Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT) handles ISR and IVA withholding questions, RFC registration, and the constancia de situación fiscal every host needs.

• Phone (MarcaSAT): 55 627 22 728, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Do check which office actually owns your question before you call, since routing a tax question to INVEA, or a zoning question to the SAT, just adds a transfer to your day.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Mexico City on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Talk to any of those offices long enough and you'll hear an echo of what hosts are already saying in public, though I want to be upfront about where this section's sourcing comes from. Reddit blocks the kind of automated access this research would need, and its own policy restricts commercial use of scraped data, so I haven't read Mexico City host threads there directly and won't pretend otherwise. What I can point to instead is the documented, organized version of the same sentiment: Todos Somos Anfitriones, the host advocacy group behind most of the amparo filings, and Airbnb's own public statements.

• Small hosts feel targeted by a rule built for large operators. Todos Somos Anfitriones describes its roughly 12,000 member families as mostly women, about 15% seniors, with most owning a single property and relying on the income it generates. Their argument, echoed by the courts that have sided with them so far, is that a 50% occupancy cap written to curb professional operators with dozens of units instead falls hardest on someone renting out one apartment.
• Airbnb frames the reform as a housing-crisis solution that won't work. Its own amparo filing argues restrictive regulation doesn't fix housing affordability, and it points out that most of its Mexico City guests are Mexican nationals traveling domestically, not the foreign tourists the reform's backers describe.
• Nobody serious is arguing the registration requirement itself should disappear. The fight is almost entirely about the occupancy cap, not the registry, the insurance requirement, or the tax obligations, which suggests hosts see those as a reasonable cost of operating legally.
• The uncertainty itself is the complaint, not any single number. Whether you'll be able to renew your registration next year is currently a legal coin flip for anyone near the 50% line, and that unpredictability, more than the cap's exact percentage, is what keeps showing up in host advocacy and legal filings alike.

Remember that a suspension order from a Mexico City court protects the host who obtained it, not every host by default, so if you're worried about the cap, talk to a lawyer about your own amparo rather than assuming the litigation already covers you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Mexico City in 2026?

Yes. Short-term rentals are legal throughout Mexico City, and the city has never banned renting a room, apartment, or house to tourists. Since 2026, every host and platform must register for free with the Padrón de Anfitriones through estanciaeventual.cdmx.gob.mx, display a folio number on every listing, and comply with insurance, reporting, and tax rules. A separate rule limiting registered properties to 50% of the year's nights exists on paper but is currently suspended by court order for many hosts while litigation continues.

How much does it cost to register a short-term rental in Mexico City?

Nothing. Registration through the Padrón de Anfitriones is free, requiring only a Llave CDMX digital identity account and the required documents: identification, proof of possession, tax records, and proof the property's predial and water bills are current. A host's folio lasts one year and must be renewed 30 days before it expires; a platform's registration lasts two years on the same renewal schedule.

What happens if you don't register your Mexico City short-term rental?

An unregistered host can be warned first, then fined 25 to 100 times the Unidad de Medida y Actualización, roughly $2,933 to $11,731 pesos at 2026 values, and can have activity suspended for up to 15 days. Platforms face fines of 50 to 200 UMA, about $5,866 to $23,462 pesos, and can lose their own registration. Platforms are also required to block unregistered listings from taking bookings at all.

Do Airbnb hosts in Mexico City have to pay taxes on their income?

Yes, at three layers. The city's Impuesto Sobre Hospedaje applies at 5% for houses and apartments booked through a platform, compared with 3.5% for traditional hotels. Federally, platforms withhold 4% of hospedaje income toward income tax and 8% toward IVA, rising to 16% IVA if you haven't given the platform your RFC. Hosts earning under $300,000 pesos a year from platforms can often treat that withholding as their final tax liability.

Is Mexico City's 50% occupancy limit on short-term rentals actually enforced?

Not consistently, as of mid-2026. The rule, added to the Ley de Turismo in October 2024, denies registration renewal to properties that exceeded 50% of the year's nights occupied. Hundreds of hosts have filed legal challenges against it, and by March 2026 two federal courts had issued unanimous suspensions blocking its enforcement for those hosts. The case may reach Mexico's Supreme Court, so its long-term future remains genuinely unresolved.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.