Mexicans were the second largest group of foreign buyers of residential property in the United States between April 2025 and March 2026, behind only Canada, according to the latest report from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR).
During that period, they acquired approximately 9,400 properties—representing 14% of all purchases made by foreigners—with a total value close to 5 billion dollars.
This figure is particularly significant because Mexico ranked above China, India, and the United Kingdom in terms of the number of homes acquired. China, although third in the number of properties, led total expenditure with 7.6 billion dollars, driven by the higher average value of its acquisitions.
The phenomenon deserves attention for an additional reason: it does not appear to stem from a single motivation.
For some Mexicans, a property in the United States represents a second home; for others, a real estate investment, a place for their children to study, a way to facilitate family mobility, or a natural extension of their business activities.
And for a portion of private wealth families, it can represent something even broader: the establishment of a permanent presence on the other side of the border.
Mexico’s results within the US international market take on greater significance when viewed against the overall context.
Foreign purchases in the United States dropped 14% in volume and 19.1% in value during NAR’s latest measurement period, down to 67,100 homes and 45.3 billion dollars, respectively. This marked the second lowest transaction volume since the association began tracking these metrics in 2009.
Amid that contraction, Mexico accounted for 14% of foreign acquisitions, just two percentage points behind Canada.
The data, therefore, does not simply describe an expanding international market. It describes something more specific: the Mexican presence remains one of the most prominent within a foreign buyer market that, overall, lost momentum.
Furthermore, NAR notes that Canada and Mexico—the two countries sharing a border with the United States and its regional trade partners—were the top buyers in terms of property count.
In this context, geography helps explain part of the story, and the border remains important because Mexicans do not purchase US residential real estate following the exact same pattern as other foreign buyers.
The primary destinations for Mexican buyers during the latest period were California, Texas, and Florida, according to NAR.
California shares a particularly deep historical, cultural, and family connection with Mexico, while Florida has for years served as one of the primary destinations for Latin American capital.
However, Texas warrants special attention. The state combines geographic proximity, strong economic ties to Mexico, robust business growth, and a significant population of Mexican origin. That combination is also reshaping the real estate map.
Data from Realtor.com showed that during the first quarter of 2025, Mexico accounted for 5.4% of international web traffic for US residential properties. Mexican search interest was heavily concentrated in markets near the border, such as San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, and Houston.
The rationale provided by the analysis itself is revealing: proximity, cultural and linguistic connections, family and corporate networks, and access to education, healthcare, and global travel. It is not, therefore, strictly an investment decision.
Buying a home can also mean buying mobility; one of the most interesting traits of the Mexican buyer is precisely that their real estate decision can serve multiple simultaneous functions.
A property in the United States can serve as a primary residence, a second home, an investment asset, or a combination of these uses. NAR points out that roughly half of foreign buyers acquired property as a vacation home, a rental investment, or both—a proportion significantly higher than the 17% recorded across existing US home buyers overall.
This helps explain why the phenomenon cannot be reduced to simple residential migration. A family can maintain its primary residence in Mexico while simultaneously purchasing property in Texas or California to facilitate business activities, provide housing for studying children, generate rental income, or simply maintain a permanent footprint in the United States.
Real estate thus becomes a tool for mobility.
The Business Factor
The growing internationalization of Mexican companies may serve as another contextual driver.
The KPMG Global Family Business Report 2026 indicates that 27% of Mexican family businesses consider geographic expansion one of their main strategic priorities heading toward 2035. New product and service development ranks first at 30%, followed by geographic expansion.
This figure does not mean that 27% of those families are buying properties in the United States; there is no evidence to establish a direct causal link.
However, it does show that geographic internationalization is part of the growth strategy for a significant portion of Mexican family businesses.
And when a family business internationalizes, family decisions can also assume an international dimension, involving factors such as: where the entrepreneur lives; where their children study; where the next generation settles; where a portion of family wealth is concentrated; where new corporate relationships are built; and where a second residence is maintained.
The property can become the first visible component of a much broader wealth architecture.
Texas: Where Business and Housing Meet
The rising importance of Texas helps clarify this intersection. Realtor.com found that Texan markets gained traction among international buyers due to a combination of lower relative living costs, business expansion, job creation, and a pro-business environment. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio stood among the top US markets for international interest in 2025.
For Mexicans, the added advantage is clear: Texas is close, but not only geographically. An established corporate, familial, and cultural infrastructure facilitates mobility between both countries.
This helps explain why cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio prove particularly appealing to Mexicans seeking to combine housing, work, education, and investment.
The border, in these cases, ceases to act as a barrier and begins to function as a shared economic domain.
Yet there is another less visible, albeit highly relevant reason: education. For certain Mexican families, purchasing property in the United States can be tied to children enrolling in American universities.
Realtor.com has identified specific instances where international buyers acquire real estate for family members studying in Texas.
The logic can be straightforward: rather than paying rent over several years, a family with the financial capacity can acquire a property that serves as a residence for their children and, eventually, as a long-term capital asset.
The decision thus blends three variables: education, wealth management, and housing. This helps explain why foreign buyers do not necessarily seek real estate exclusively for their own immediate use.
Mexican private wealth is beginning to take on a more global dimension because real estate purchases are only one part of a broader wealth management relationship.
A family holding real estate in the United States may eventually require financing, insurance, property management, legal services, cross-border tax planning, financial investments, and estate planning structures.
Consequently, the growth of Mexican buyers carries implications extending far beyond the residential market.
For private banks, family offices, financial advisors, asset managers, and international wealth specialists, each property can mark the start of a much broader cross-border financial relationship—which is where concepts like Near-Living gain relevance.
This is not necessarily because all Mexican purchases are linked to nearshoring, but because deeper economic integration can require a family to operate seamlessly across two distinct markets.
Not Yet a Mass Wealth Migration
It is also important to put the phenomenon into perspective. The 9,400 properties acquired by Mexicans represent a small fraction of the vast US residential market. Moreover, NAR does not identify nearshoring as the direct cause of these transactions.
Nor can it be assumed that all buyers are corporate executives or high-net-worth families.
NAR’s definition of a foreign buyer includes both non-resident foreign nationals and resident foreign nationals—meaning recent immigrants and visa holders living in the US for professional, educational, or other reasons.
This distinction is key because it prevents automatically framing the statistic as a story of wealthy Mexicans relocating capital to the United States. The reality is far more nuanced, which is precisely what makes it compelling.
From Foreign Buyer to Binational Economic Citizen
What the data illustrates is an increasingly complex relationship. Mexico stands as the second largest country of origin for foreign home buyers in the United States.
Mexican buyers concentrate acquisitions primarily in California, Texas, and Florida.
Mexican real estate searches show a strong tilt toward border cities and major economic hubs. Mexican family businesses place geographic expansion high among their growth priorities, and the United States remains Mexico’s primary economic partner.
Each metric, taken individually, tells a distinct story. Together, they outline a broader transformation: the border between Mexico and the United States is becoming less relevant for specific corporate, family, and wealth management decisions.
Where nearshoring initially moved corporate entities and supply chains toward Mexico, another movement has emerged—less visible and more personal: Mexicans buying a foothold for their lives in the United States.
A home may be the entry point. What follows can be education, an office, an investment, a business enterprise, an investment account, or a comprehensive wealth structure.
Rather than looking at this simply as Mexicans buying houses in the United States, the phenomenon can be viewed from another angle:
Mexico is already the second largest foreign buyer of US residential real estate; the question now is what drives those acquisitions and how far this evolving mobility of people, businesses, and capital can go.
