You cannot ballpark the prices in the whole Yucatan Peninsula because the prices in Cancun and in Playa del Carmen are much different than in the State of Yucatan.
To give you an example, you can buy a very nice, ¼ acre beach lot in Chelem, Chuburna, or Progreso (in the state of Yucatan in the beaches nearest to Merida) for US $100,000. If you do not want to be on the beach, the price changes depending on how many streets back from the beach you want to be located.
One of the most popular areas here for people to buy, whether it be land to build a home or buying an existing home is what we call “Beach Road” or in other words, it parallels along the beach. On one side of that road, you’ve got the beachfront homes, then you’ve got the road, then homes start again. So if you buy a home on the beach road that is not on the beach side, then you can save a lot of money. You still have a nice view, especially if you put a two-story home up. You still have a great ocean view. You are not directly on the ocean but you can walk to it in less than a minute. You can save a lot of money by going back one street or even the non-beach side of the street. A ¼ acre lot that is located back one street from the beach costs about $70,000.
Another thing that a lot of people have realized is that having an oceanfront home is very nice on a nice day but having it on a bad day is not very good. You have the winds coming off of the ocean, it blows the sand and everything rusts. As an example, people who own oceanfront properties have to buy a water heater at least every two years because they just turn into a pile of rust. When you move back one street away from the ocean, you would probably use the same water heater for four years. If you’re living directly on the ocean, the life span of anything that you own that is made of metal goes down to half than if you live back one street.
A ¼ acre lot in Merida (the large city in the state of Yucatan) varies because there are different colonias (areas) in Merida. If you want to be where all the other expats want to be, you can go to one of the areas called Santiago. There is not a lot of land for sale in Merida so if you’re buying there, you are going to buy an existing home. Homes in the Santiago area starts between $150,000 and $180,000, and this would be a home that needs some work. If you want a home that has already been done by a gringo, where everything is up to standard and you have air-conditioning and the whole 9 yards, you will spend around $300,000 and up. If you go to a different colonia where not all the gringos are, then the prices would be cut in half.
Less than a tenth of an acre oceanfront lot in Playa del Carmen (a very popular expat location on the Riviera Maya, which includes Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum, in the state of Quintana Roo), starts at around $300,000. If you go off the ocean from Playa del Carmen it gets cheaper. There is a major highway that takes you from Cancun to Playa del Carmen and to Tulum. If you are on the ocean side of the highway, you will spend big money but if you go on the other side of that highway, you would spend a 1/3 of the money.
(Beach in Tulum, Yucatan, Mexico with a Maya site within view, pictured.)
A. Employment or self-employment (for activities within the official list of high added value activities) 
When in my early twenties, after crossing the border near San Diego with my friends and driving south in Mexico, I noticed lots of houses in which the construction had begun, but was not finished. 
That is the willingness of people to look forward into the future with a very positive attitude. And that’s one thing I look for in any country where I’m going to live. It’s the local people and how they...
