Guide
The whole process, in the order it actually happens, and what you need settled at each stage.
Before thinking about bedrooms or style, there are three numbers that decide everything else: how much footprint you may cover, how much you may build in total and how much open area you have to leave. They come from the COS, the CUS and the perimeter setbacks of your street.
It is the step people skip most often, and the most expensive one to correct later: a preliminary design done without checking the setbacks has to be redone from scratch.
How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, whether you want a ground-floor bedroom, whether you need a service room, whether the house is to live in or to rent out. This sets the area you need, and that area has to fit inside what the building code allows you.
With the brief and the setbacks clear, the architect proposes the layout and the volumes. This is where the orientation is decided, where the pool goes, how the light comes in and how the house ventilates: in the climate of the Riviera Maya that completely changes how it feels to live there.
Architectural and structural drawings, plumbing, electrical and air conditioning. This is what is used to build and to price accurately. Without construction documents, any budget is an optimistic estimate.
Besides the municipal licence, inside a private development there is a committee that checks the project against the internal building code. Knowing their criteria before designing saves months of corrections.
Foundations, structure, masonry, services, finishes. This is where it counts to have suppliers, labour and machinery already working in the area: travel times and material availability in Tulum are not what they are in a city.
Snagging, testing of the installations, cleaning, and handover with the project documentation so the house is on record for the future.
The configurator gives you the real numbers of your lot in a few minutes, with no sign-up. It is the best starting point for any serious conversation about your project.
