Picture a buyer who wired a deposit toward a St. Regis Residence at Quivira back when sales first opened in January 2021. The marketing materials promised a Michelin-decorated dining program, a butler on call, and a move-in date that felt close enough to plan around. Five years later, that buyer is still checking construction updates instead of unpacking boxes.
This is not a story about a bad project. Quivira's Jack Nicklaus course has real credentials, and the master plan has delivered plenty of finished product. It is a story about what happens to a buyer's money and expectations in the gap between a signed contract and an actual set of keys, and why that gap in Quivira has a documented habit of stretching further than anyone announces at signing.
The Completion Date Has Moved at Least Three Times
Construction on the St. Regis Los Cabos at Quivira began in January 2020. The first phase of residences, seven oceanview condos and five oceanfront villas, went on sale in January 2021. From there, the target date has been a moving object.
By August 2025, one market snapshot of the project listed an expected completion of March 2026. By November 2025, Mexico News Daily reported that after a run of delays tied to the pandemic and labor shortages, the hotel was on track for a summer 2026 opening. By July 2026, the Los Cabos tourism board's own published list of upcoming openings had already shifted the target again, to late 2026.
Read that sequence in order and the pattern is plain. In under a year, the public estimate moved from an early-2026 quarter, to a season, to a broader half-year window that is still open as of this month. None of these were rogue rumors. Each came from a credible source describing the same project at a different point in its life.
Quivira Has Done This Before
None of this is a surprise if you know the master plan's history. Quivira's own construction bulletins from 2018, years before anyone had heard of the St. Regis partnership, show the same rhythm playing out in an earlier phase. One update announced that Tower 5's delivery had been rescheduled to February, with the full building, pool included, not finished until the end of June that year.
Copala, the development built during that same stretch, is complete today aside from a handful of remaining house lots, and Coronado's condo inventory already trades regularly on the resale market. Buyers who held on through the slippage eventually closed. That track record matters, because it separates two very different risks that get lumped together in pre-construction conversations: the risk that a project never finishes, and the risk that it finishes years later than advertised while your money sits committed. Quivira's history points squarely at the second one, not the first.
What Your Deposit Actually Buys You
If the finish date is a moving target, the contract terms around your deposit are what actually determine your exposure. Pre-construction purchases in Los Cabos generally follow a structure like this, though the exact split varies by developer:
| Stage | What Happens | Refundable? |
|---|---|---|
| Initial deposit | Roughly $10,000 held while you review HOA rules, design selections, and financing terms | Yes, during the due diligence window |
| Due diligence period | Typically about two weeks to inspect contract conditions | Deposit becomes non-refundable once this expires |
| Second deposit | Often around 30 percent of the purchase price, minus the initial deposit, released to escrow or the developer | No, once conditions are removed |
| Construction draws | Additional installments tied to milestones such as foundation and shell completion | No |
| Closing | Final balance due at delivery | No |
The protection built into this structure is that your later installments are tied to construction progress, not a calendar promise. The gap is what happens to your earlier money once the due diligence clock runs out. At that point you are committed regardless of whether the building finishes on the date printed in the sales deck or eighteen months after it.
The Costs That Don't Wait for a Ribbon-Cutting
A slipping completion date doesn't pause every cost on your side of the ledger. Baja California Sur's acquisition tax, known as ISABI, became a flat 3 percent statewide as of January 2026. Anyone closing on Quivira property this year is paying that rate regardless of when their unit was originally supposed to deliver.
Foreign buyers also need a fideicomiso, the bank trust structure required to hold coastal property in Mexico's restricted zone. Setup typically runs $2,500 to $4,000, with annual trustee fees in the $550 to $1,000 range. Those fees start on the schedule the bank sets, not on the schedule the developer announces.
Once a St. Regis unit actually delivers, HOA dues reported for individual residences run from roughly $3,800 to nearly $4,900 a month depending on the unit, on top of standard property tax, insurance, and utilities. None of that changes because the opening slipped from summer to late 2026. The only thing that changes is how many months you wait before those dues start working for you instead of just sitting on a spreadsheet as a future line item.
The Bigger Supply Story Behind One Tower
There's a second layer to this that most pre-construction conversations skip entirely. The St. Regis isn't the only large project moving through Quivira right now. Market tracking of the community's active pipeline counts roughly five projects and 463 combined residences and hotel keys converging toward completion around the same late-2026 window.
That matters beyond the buyers who signed St. Regis contracts. Anyone who already owns in Copala, Mavila, or Coronado and rents their unit is about to compete for the same guests against a wave of brand-new, fully furnished inventory arriving at once. A single project running late is a contract question. Five projects clustering into the same six-month window is a rental-market question, and it's one that current owners should be asking now, not after the ribbon cuttings start.
What to Actually Verify Before You Sign
If you're looking at remaining pre-construction inventory in Quivira, whether that's a St. Regis unit or a future phase, a few questions do more work than any sales brochure:
- Who holds your deposit, and is it a licensed escrow account or a direct developer account.
- What triggers each construction-draw payment, and can you request documentation showing the milestone was met before you wire funds.
- What does the contract say if the delivery date moves again. Some agreements include buyer remedies past a certain delay threshold, and some don't.
- Has the developer delivered comparable product in this same master plan before. Copala's completion is a real, checkable answer to that question.
- What will your all-in carrying cost look like the year after closing, once ISABI, fideicomiso fees, HOA dues, and insurance are all running at the same time.
None of these questions require you to predict when the building finishes. They just make sure you're not the one absorbing the cost of someone else's schedule.
FAQ
Is the St. Regis Residences at Quivira still selling units? As of the most recent available reporting, remaining inventory has been available across the project's 74 total residences, spanning oceanview condominiums to oceanfront villas. Availability changes as phases sell, so confirm current unit status directly before assuming anything is still open.
If the completion date moves again, does that affect resale value for finished Quivira units? Not directly. Delivered inventory in Copala, Mavila, and Coronado is already built and titled. A later St. Regis opening mostly affects buyers still holding pre-construction contracts and owners planning to rent once the new supply lands.
Does the 2026 ISABI change apply to resale purchases too, or only pre-construction? It applies to any qualifying property transfer in Baja California Sur closing under the new rate, not just new construction. Confirm the applicable rate with your notario at the time of your specific closing.
If you're weighing pre-construction against resale in Quivira, or trying to model what a slipping delivery date actually costs you over time, that's exactly the kind of math worth walking through before you sign anything. Jorge Gómez has spent years tracking how these projects actually deliver, not just how they're marketed. Let's Connect.
