Picture two properties a fifteen-minute drive apart. One sits on a quiet street in town, walking distance from the plaza, connected to a municipal line that has served the property for decades. The other sits oceanfront in Cerritos, glass doors open to the Pacific, priced to reflect that view. On paper, the beachfront lot should command the premium. In practice, one of these two property types lost value nearly three times faster than the other between 2022 and 2024, the most recent full years of sales data available for the area, and the difference has almost nothing to do with the ocean.
It has to do with what comes out of the tap.
The number that does not match the story
Anyone shopping the Todos Santos region has probably heard some version of the last few years described as a cooling market. That is true, but it flattens a story that is actually two very different stories layered on top of each other.
Look at single-family homes across the broader Todos Santos region. Unit sales peaked in 2021 at 140 homes, then eased to 71 in 2024. Median values peaked the following year, in 2022, at $1,046,000, before settling to $825,000 in 2024. That is a real correction, about 21 percent off the top, consistent with a market absorbing a post-pandemic wave of remote-work buyers who have since thinned out.
Now look at condos, most of them concentrated in Cerritos. Unit sales peaked in 2022 at 88 transactions, then fell to 41 in 2023 and 35 in 2024. Values kept rising through that first drop, peaking in 2023 at $887,500, before collapsing to $334,000 in 2024. That is not a 21 percent correction. That is a 62 percent one, in a single year, according to the Todos Santos market data compiled by Protect Todos Santos from regional MLS reports.
Same region. Same general downturn in demand. Wildly different outcomes. Something structural is doing extra work on the condo side, and it is not taste or timing. The same local reporting notes the broader market stayed soft into 2025, with unit-level figures for that year not yet compiled, but nothing in the data suggests the gap between town-center homes and Cerritos condos closed on its own.
What Cerritos does not have
Here is the detail that explains the gap: Cerritos Beach has no municipal water distribution system. None. Every drop used by a home or condo there has to be trucked in, and according to the same local research, that delivered water runs at roughly 15 times the cost of municipal supply.
That is not a closing-day inconvenience. It is a permanent operating cost baked into every month of ownership, on top of whatever the HOA or property manager already charges. A buyer comparing a Cerritos condo to a similarly priced unit inside town is not just comparing view and finish quality. They are comparing a fixed monthly utility bill against one that depends entirely on truck schedules and delivery pricing, indefinitely.
When water access this basic is missing, it shows up in resale math eventually. The 2023 to 2024 condo price collapse looks less like a market correction and more like a repricing event, buyers finally weighing the ongoing cost of trucked water against the sale price they are being asked to pay.
Why the shortfall exists in the first place
The reason Cerritos was never wired into a municipal system traces back to the aquifer the whole region depends on. Todos Santos draws its fresh water from a single aquifer, and that aquifer has been running a structural deficit for years. A 2023 report from Mexico's National Water Commission put annual extraction at 6.6 million cubic meters against an average annual recharge of only 3.7 million cubic meters, according to figures compiled by Protect Todos Santos. Extraction has been growing at roughly 11 percent a year on top of that.
Overdraft of this kind does not just mean less water. It means the coastline itself starts drawing seawater inland to fill the gap. Research from Colorado State University found that saltwater intrusion had already reached at least 1.6 kilometers inland as of 2017, degrading water quality in the zone closest to the beach, which happens to be exactly where Cerritos sits.
Extending a municipal grid into new beachfront development when the source aquifer is already over-extracted and salting up is not a simple infrastructure upgrade. It is asking a shrinking, degrading resource to cover more ground. That is the real reason Cerritos properties still rely on trucks, and it is not a problem anyone expects to resolve quickly.
The paperwork just changed underneath this market
There is a second layer to this that has nothing to do with trucks and everything to do with title certainty, and it is genuinely new. On December 11, 2025, Mexico enacted a General Water Law that rewrote how the country manages water concessions. The reform ended the practice of private concession transfers, the informal market where agricultural water rights could quietly become the water supply for a real estate development. Going forward, any reallocation of water volumes has to flow through the National Water Commission directly.
Alongside that reform, the commission opened a one-year window, from July 16, 2026 through July 15, 2027, to regularize concession and assignment titles that expired anywhere between 2009 and mid-2026 and were never formally renewed, according to reporting on the regularization program. Legal analysis of the rule change notes that it applies to domestic, agricultural, and combined-use titles, and that the commission will now verify actual water use against registered volumes rather than taking a paper title at face value, per Garrigues' summary of the regularization agreement.
For a buyer, this matters most on any parcel where the water source is a private well or an older concession rather than a straightforward municipal connection, which describes a meaningful share of properties outside the town center. A concession that looks fine on a 2019 document may be sitting inside this exact regularization window right now, which is worth confirming before it becomes the seller's problem to have solved and the buyer's problem to discover after closing.
The closing-day questions this actually changes
None of this argues against buying in Todos Santos, Pescadero, or Cerritos. It argues for asking a specific set of questions before signing, ones that a generic property checklist will not surface.
- Is the property connected to a municipal or Ejido-supplied water line, or does it depend on a private well, a concession, or trucked delivery? Get the answer in writing, not verbally.
- If a well or concession exists, ask for the concession title number and its registration status in the National Public Water Registry. If it expired between 2009 and mid-2026, confirm whether it falls inside the current regularization window and who is responsible for filing.
- If the property is in Cerritos or another area without a municipal line, request twelve months of actual water delivery invoices, not an estimate, and build that recurring cost into the ownership budget rather than treating it as a rounding error.
- Arrange your own independent inspection. Baja California Sur transactions frequently happen without a lender involved, which means there is no automatic third-party inspection requirement, and the municipal permit office in La Paz does not routinely send inspectors to verify construction against approved drawings, according to Protect Todos Santos' own reporting on local buyer practices.
Every one of these is a question a seller should be able to answer without hesitation. Hesitation is information.
The takeaway for anyone comparing neighborhoods right now
The obvious story about Todos Santos is that the whole market cooled after its pandemic run-up. The real story is narrower and more useful: the properties that lost value fastest through 2024 are the ones sitting on infrastructure that was never built to keep up with demand, and the properties that held value are the ones with a direct line to a system that, however strained, still exists. That single distinction explains more of the price movement in this market than square footage, finish level, or proximity to the beach.
An ocean view will always sell the showing. The water line is what determines whether the number on the closing statement still makes sense five years later.
If you are weighing a purchase anywhere in the Todos Santos area and want the water and concession picture on a specific property before you get attached to it, CaboLuv can walk it with you privately, alongside the legal and escrow partners who handle exactly this kind of due diligence. Request Private Access to start that conversation.
A few direct questions
Does every property in the Todos Santos area have municipal water? No. Todos Santos proper and much of the surrounding area draw from municipal or Ejido-supplied lines, but Cerritos Beach currently has no municipal water distribution system, and properties there rely on trucked delivery.
What is a water concession, and do I need one if I am buying an existing home? A concession is the federal title that authorizes drawing a specific volume of water from a well or other national water source. If a property already connects to a municipal line, you likely will not need one. If it relies on a private well, confirming the concession is valid and properly registered is part of standard due diligence.
How long is the current CONAGUA regularization window open? The program runs from July 16, 2026 through July 15, 2027, and covers concession or assignment titles that expired between 2009 and mid-2026 without being renewed on time.