Agrarian Due Diligence for Industrial Land

The industrial site looks clean. Its origin may not be.

Mexico's industrial expansion is real — hundreds of industrial parks and counting, with new inventory announced every quarter. What the brochures don't say: a very large share of that land was ejido land once. That is not a defect — ejido land can lawfully become private property. The question that decides everything is whether that conversion actually completed, step by step, with every act valid and registered. When it did, you have a clean title. When it didn't, you have a title that reads clean at the Public Registry — and a challenge waiting at the agrarian one.

A title dispute against a house is a problem. A title dispute against a plant — its equipment, its permits, its workforce — is a different order of magnitude. This verification exists so you never meet it.

What a proper agrarian check verifies

• The dominio pleno chain, completed — the parcel was validly assigned, the dominio pleno was authorized by a qualified asamblea, the title was issued and the land actually left the agrarian registry. Every link, not just the last one.
• No common-use land in the footprint — the portion of the ejido that legally cannot be parceled or sold. Boundaries drift; footprints touch. We check the perimeter, not just the address.
• Valid asamblea acts — quorum, formalities, registration. A conversion built on a defective assembly resolution is a conversion that can be attacked.
• Concordance with the RAN — the National Agrarian Registry and the Public Registry of Property tell the same story, or they don't. When they don't, you want to know before wiring anything.

If you want to see the failure mode at scale, read our analysis of the Bacalar case — lots sold over land that never legally left the collective estate.

Why your corporate counsel doesn't catch this

Not for lack of skill. Agrarian law is a separate branch of Mexican law, with its own statute, its own registry, its own courts and its own doctrine — most corporate practices simply never litigate in it. A firm can close a flawless share deal and still miss that the plant beneath it sits on an incomplete conversion, because the documents that reveal it don't live in the data room; they live in the agrarian system. That is the specialty we bring to the table — it's the first check we run, on every site, every time.

Water rights: they no longer travel with the land

Since Mexico's water-law reform (in force December 2025), a water concession is no longer an accessory that automatically follows the property. Transfers now run through reassignment before CONAGUA — a new title, with the authority empowered to review volumes. For an industrial buyer this changes the question from "does the land have water?" to "will the water survive the transfer to me — at the volume my process needs?" We verify the concession, its status and its transfer path as part of the same due diligence, because a plant with a clean title and no water is still a stranded asset.

Where this fits in your softlanding

The agrarian check is the first move of a larger sequence — entity, land, labor, permits, people. The full picture lives in our Nearshoring Softlanding practice; this page is where it starts. Many clients begin with a single site verification and expand from there.

Frequently asked questions

This page provides legal information, not legal advice; no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Flat fees are quoted in writing before any engagement. © 2026 Terra Firma Attorneys at Law · terrafirma.law