“The initiative is very incomplete, it will not work if these absences and deficiencies are not addressed. It is important that this issue is being discussed, but I am also a little concerned that the current initiative will be practically the same as if it had never been done,” says Carla Escoffié, a lawyer specializing in housing rights.
An initiative that does not have mechanisms to ensure its enforcement is practically as good as not having been implemented.
How much does it cost to rent in CDMX?
Rents in the capital rose by 8.6% in the first half of 2024 alone, which is five times the inflation recorded in the same period of the year, according to Inmuebles24. In the last year, the increase has been 17.6%.
A two-bedroom apartment for rent in Mexico City has an average price of 18,345 pesos per month, which represents 2.5 times the minimum wage in effect in 2024, which amounts to 7,468 pesos per month.
The most expensive neighborhood is Del Bosque in Miguel Hidalgo, where the average rent for an apartment costs 31,567 pesos per month; in contrast, the cheapest neighborhood is Pantitlán, in Iztacalco, where the average rent is 8,425 pesos per month.
Municipalities such as Cuauhtémoc and Benito Juárez coincide in being among the districts with the most expensive rents and being the ones that generate the greatest interest among those looking for housing both for rent and for sale, according to the real estate agency Houm.
High demand and rising housing costs are among the reasons why 23,000 families are expelled from Mexico City each year, according to the draft General Land Use Program (PGOT) presented by the capital government in 2023.
Armando Rosales, president of the Mexican Association of Urban Planners in Mexico City, says that the causes of high rents in the city are not being addressed, including the difficulty for a large part of the capital’s inhabitants to buy their own home.
According to the capital government based on data from INEGI, 45.8% of those who rent do so because they lack access to credit or do not have the financial resources.
“There is an increasing rental housing market in Mexico City, but because the majority of the population cannot access housing in any other way, people can no longer buy their homes here because they are too expensive and the government is not intervening in that,” he believes.
