México, destino clave para el nearshoring y la inversión inmobiliaria

El Economista

28/5/2025

Luis Miguel González Director editorial en El Economista conversa con Spencer Levy, el mayor experto global en bienes raíces, sobre el papel de México en la transformación del comercio global. Una charla imperdible para inversionistas, urbanistas y todo aquel interesado en el futuro económico de México.

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00:00Soy Luis Miguel González, El Economista y tengo un enorme gusto de presentar a uno de los mayores

00:09expertos del mundo en bienes raíces, Spencer Levy, CBRE. Welcome Spencer, how are you? I'm great,

00:17great to be back in Mexico City, as we were talking before. This might be my 25th trip here,

00:22love it here. How does Mexico looks right now, March 25? Well, first of all, you gave me a

00:29beautiful weather day out there, so I'd rather be doing this interview outdoors, but Mexico looks

00:34very good, and I look at it from an economic perspective, and the reason why Mexico looks

00:40very good is why Mexico has looked very good for the last 10 plus years, which is there are so many

00:45industries here that are thriving, led by manufacturing, industrial, but other forms of

00:52real estate are doing well, also retail. I think that Mexico has many competitive advantages over

00:58other markets around the world, which are only going to get stronger. They have a very deep

01:04and inexpensive labor force. They have proximity to the United States. They got great weather

01:10today, and great newscasters like you.

01:14You mentioned the last 10 years. How does in this changing era serve the last 10 years to look

01:24into the future? I think the competitive advantages of Mexico aren't going anywhere, and these competitive

01:30advantages are some of the things I mentioned a moment ago having to do with the low cost of labor,

01:36proximity to the United States, lots of virtuous cycles of manufacturing. When I say that, what I mean

01:43is manufacturing can't be done in a desert. It has to be done near other manufacturing, near logistics,

01:50near industrial. And so you have all these clusters here in Mexico that have formed around certain

01:55industries, notably automotive, but there are other pharmaceuticals. And I think those are only going

02:00to get better as the year has progressed, because most of the world has a labor shortage. Mexico does not.

02:09Last year, last two or three years conversation in Mexico about real estate has been dominated by

02:15a magical word, near-shoring. How does near-shoring looks like right now?

02:24Well, I think near-shoring is a big word that really means on one hand you have globalization,

02:30on the other hand you have near-shoring. And the question is, are we de-globalizing? Meaning,

02:35are we moving as a world away from China and Asia and towards the Americas?

02:41I think to some degree we are, but not as much as a lot of people think. Because much as I was

02:50suggesting a moment ago that Mexico is building these regions within the country that have these

02:55virtuous cycles of manufacturing, they're already in Asia. And they're very hard to pick up and move.

03:01So I think the world is moving towards near-shoring for a lot of the reasons we've talked about,

03:07the cheap labor force proximity to the United States. But I think that we're still going to be in a very

03:12global trade world for a very long time, which I think is good. Because I think that certain

03:18countries have competitive advantages in making certain types of goods and services. And that

03:23will continue. So yes, near-shoring is going to help Mexico a lot. And Mexico, until a couple of years

03:29ago, was the number one destination of foreign capital, of foreign direct investment. I think China

03:34putting 25 billion dollars one year. I mean, it's a huge numbers coming here. And I think that will

03:39continue.

03:41You've been here in Mexico like 25 times.

03:45Mexico City. I've also been to the touristy areas on the shot like Riviera de Maya and Cancun.

03:52But I come here to Mexico City a lot.

03:55Let's talk about regions in Mexico. We have the border. We have Valle de Mexico, western cities like

04:06Guadalajara. How do you compare those regions from the real estate point of view?

04:15When you're dealing with regions outside of Mexico City, outside of the tourist areas, areas that are closer

04:22to the border, those are the real areas of interest for manufacturing and industrial real estate.

04:29Once you're dealing with deeper population centers like we have here in Mexico City,

04:34that opens the door to other forms of real estate, most notably office, but also retail. And an area

04:40which I think Mexico is lagging, but I think that people should take a firmer push into, is multi-family,

04:47is apartments. I remember about 15 years ago, I wrote a white paper about why people should build

04:54and buy more apartment buildings in Europe. And they thought I was crazy because Europe had all of

04:59these regulatory reasons, landlord-tenant laws that made it very difficult to build and to operate

05:05those things. And candidly, you have many of those challenges here in Mexico today. But that is the

05:10opportunity. If you are able to somehow modify some of these regulations, you have a golden opportunity

05:17to build apartments here because Mexico needs it. I think the world is housing short.

05:26We were talking about the industrial facilities and then you jump and talk about residential.

05:32Yes. Let's start the conversation about residential. Not meaning stop talking about industrial.

05:40Sure. But there's a huge window of opportunity. That's correct. I mean, look, I think for the

05:46American, for the global investor, the reason why industrial looks so good is not just the near-shoring.

05:54It's not just these clusters. There are some very bottom-line economic reasons. Most industrial

06:01transactions are priced in American dollars. They are not priced in pesos. Retail deals are priced in

06:07pesos. Multifamily deals are priced in pesos. Makes it much more difficult to transact. And the

06:14reason is the inflationary risks associated with the peso. It's why it's very difficult to do

06:20certain types of deals in Brazil, because all the deals there are done in the real, their local

06:25currency. But the fact that industrial can do it in the American currency has given a level of

06:30stability to that market that it probably wouldn't have had otherwise.

06:35So you mentioned multifamily residential as an opportunity. Is there any song that you like the

06:44most? We have a lot of Americans that are looking in beaches, but there are also big urban

06:53buildings. For example, Monterrey, for example, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Tijuana.

07:00Those are the places I'm thinking of. I'm not thinking about the touristy areas.

07:04There is condominiums, and then there is rental housing that you use for your primary residence.

07:10Condominiums, maybe your primary residence, maybe a vacation home. I'm talking about the cities you just

07:15mentioned, including Mexico City, that I think is ripe for a lot of new multifamily development rental.

07:23The challenge being the regulatory environment, where it's challenging when you build, challenging

07:29A, to build it. B, once you do build it, the relationship between landlord and tenant makes

07:33it very challenging to operate it. But I think that's the opportunity here. I think that if you want to

07:38have new housing in a place that desperately needs it, these are the things that the developers should

07:46be speaking to the local politicians about. I've been reading the most recent issue in The Economist,

07:53and they say there's a big temptation all over the world to regulate rents. What's the advice you give

08:01to the politicians, to the public? Well, first of all, you should know that The Economist magazine is my

08:06favorite magazine. I'm not just saying because I'm on your show. I love it because it's so dense, it's so

08:13thought-provoking. But the challenge with rent regulation is it comes from a good place. It comes

08:21from a place of, I want my tenants to live a better life, not be rent poor. That's a term people use.

08:31And by doing that, we're going to limit the amount of rent they pay.

08:33The challenge is if you do that, people won't build any more of it. It is a direct relationship

08:41between rent regulation and limiting new supply. The only solution to affordable housing is more

08:48supply. And if you want more supply, the question is, well, how do you do it

08:54and also keep rents affordable for others? If you create enough supply, it will bring rents down.

09:03Is it a longer term thing? Absolutely is. And so in the short term, the challenge for the existing

09:09renter is they may have more upward pressure on their rents. But over the long term, you will bring

09:15rents down if you have more supply. So I certainly understand the political pressure behind rent regulation,

09:22and I'm not going to suggest that their motivations are bad because they want to keep rents down. But

09:27if their motivation is to have greater supply, cheaper housing over the long term, I'd ask them to

09:32consider the implications to supply of some of the rent regulation.

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