You can replace a kitchen. You can change a floor, a bathroom, a colour, eventually even a layout. The one thing you can never revisit is where the building stands. It is the least glamorous and most permanent decision in the whole process, which is presumably why Jorge Pérez gave over a whole section of his book, Powerhouse Principles, to the fundamentals of picking a property.
Key Takeaways
- —The site is the only element of a residence that cannot be altered after purchase
- —Each of the three Mexican developments sits on an address that is already established, not one waiting to become something
- —Thompson Mexico City overlooks Paseo de la Reforma and the Ángel de la Independencia
- —Thompson Puerto Vallarta sits between the shoreline of Banderas Bay and the Sierra Madre
- —Viceroy Playa del Carmen is a low, green, six-storey building with its own beach club
What the window faces
The first test is the simplest one: what will you be looking at. In Mexico City the answer is Paseo de la Reforma and the Ángel de la Independencia — the boulevard the city organises itself around, with the monument in the frame. In Puerto Vallarta it is the Pacific on one side and the Sierra Madre rising behind, the building set between the two. In Playa del Carmen the building keeps itself to six storeys and lets the greenery do the work.
What you can reach on foot
The second test is what exists around the site today, not what might. Reforma is lined with galleries, luxury retail, and MICHELIN-starred restaurants, and the Centro Histórico is minutes away. Puerto Vallarta's historic downtown — its art, its cafés, its malecón — is a short drive, and the sand is at the door. Playa del Carmen puts a resident beach club at the bottom of the building. None of that is forecast. It is the neighbourhood as it stands.
An address that already exists
There is a version of this business that sells you a location on the strength of what it is going to become. This is the other version. All three sites sit inside neighbourhoods that were finished being proven long before the towers were drawn — Reforma, the Vallarta shoreline, the Riviera Maya. The address is not part of the pitch. It is part of the purchase.
That has a plain consequence for how you shop. When the surroundings already exist, you can go and test them — eat at the restaurants, walk the malecón at seven in the evening, find out what Reforma actually sounds like on a Tuesday morning. Nothing about the neighbourhood requires you to take anyone's word for it, which is not something you can say about the building itself.
Standing on it
Every one of these considerations resolves, in the end, into something very ordinary: whether you want to be standing there. Floor plans, finishes, and amenities are all comparable on paper. The corner of the world the building occupies is the part you have to feel. It is the reason we push buyers toward a site visit earlier rather than later.