Costa Banderas, Riviera Nayarit real estate: properties for sale

Costa Banderas is the sparsely populated cliff-and-cove coast between La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and Punta de Mita, the lowest-density stretch on the bay and, with Punta Mita, the priciest: gated single-family villas on one- to two-acre lots and one beachfront condo complex. Pontoquito is the gated enclave of ultra-luxury villas on a private cove at kilometre ten of the La Cruz road, most of them rented by the week when the owners are away. El Banco is the hundred-and-ten-acre gated estate enclave in the hills at kilometre fifteen, opposite Alta Mita. Bolongo is the fifty-five-acre beachfront development of condos, penthouses and villas on the sand just south of the Punta Mita resort gates, with its own beach club. Punta del Burro is the cliff-and-cove coast between the south side of Punta Mita and Higuera Blanca: a surf beach and gated villa pockets.

Buyers are the top of the market, second-home owners who want privacy and a private beach and expect to arrange everything by car or driver. Nothing is walkable and there is no supermarket in the pocket.

Practical points. The airport is forty to fifty-five minutes and downtown Vallarta fifty to sixty-five, all on the one coastal road. El Anclote's fish tacos are five kilometres north, La Cruz's restaurants and marina ten to fifteen minutes south, Sayulita twenty-five minutes. No clinic in the pocket; the Punta Mita and Sayulita clinics are on the corridor, and the twenty-four-hour hospital is CMQ in Bucerías, twenty-five to thirty-five minutes. Water is trucked or cistern-fed. Every enclave carries homeowner and often beach-club dues and its own rental rules; read them before you buy.

— John Forget, Mexico Life Realty