If Los Cabos has felt more crowded lately — longer lines at the clinic, more traffic on Highway 1, more “sold” signs in neighborhoods that were empty lots a few years ago — the numbers now back up the gut feeling. Baja California Sur’s population grew more than 20% in just five years, according to the Intercensal 2025 survey from Mexico’s national statistics agency, Inegi. Governor Víctor Castro Cosío didn’t try to spin it as good news alone. He called it, plainly, a challenge for every government trying to keep services running.
The state now counts 961,514 residents, up from 798,447 in the 2020 census. That’s the kind of growth curve that usually shows up in a boomtown, not a peninsula best known for marlin and margaritas. And nowhere in BCS is the curve steeper than in Los Cabos.
Los Cabos Is Growing Faster Than It Can Build
Los Cabos remains the state’s most populous municipality, with 469,163 residents, but the more telling figure is the growth rate: 33.62% since 2020, easily outpacing every other municipality in Baja California Sur. Castro Cosío put the raw number in blunt terms. “There’s more than 100,000, actually 130,000 more people in Los Cabos,” he said at a press conference, “just so you get an idea of the size of the challenge we have as governments to solve a migration problem that hit us hard this last decade.”
He noted that most of the newcomers are arriving from Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Baja California Sur itself — workers drawn by construction, hospitality and the broader tourism economy — and that the strain isn’t limited to hospitals. “We have a problem with school spots, with healthcare,” he said. “Imagine, 100,000 more people in these years.” La Paz, the state capital, grew a comparatively modest 13.25% to 330,957 residents, while Comondú added 4.82%. Mulegé and Loreto actually lost population, down 7.33% and 2.52% respectively — a reminder that Baja Sur’s boom is not statewide so much as it is Cabo-and-La-Paz-specific.
What This Means If You’re Buying Property
For anyone shopping for a home or a rental investment in Los Cabos, this isn’t just a demographic footnote — it’s the fine print behind every future HOA meeting about water pressure, every conversation about permit delays, and every headline about a governor proposing to pause development over a water crisis. Population growth on this scale means more pressure on the same aquifers, the same two-lane roads and the same handful of public schools and clinics that were sized for a much smaller Cabo. Buyers who assume infrastructure automatically scales with the skyline are usually the ones surprised later by a well running dry or a commute that triples during high season.
Water remains the sharpest edge of the problem. Castro Cosío said he will keep pushing for the green light on Los Cabos’ desalination project, which has been tangled in roughly 18 legal injunctions filed during the previous municipal administration under then-mayor Armida Castro Guzmán, according to Tribuna de México. He says the second desalination plant could be operating by 2027, though he’s careful to note the project technically belongs to the municipality of Los Cabos, not the state. “I’ve been trying to help however I can, even though it’s not really my job as governor,” he said. “Of course I care about there being water for the people — I care a lot.” The stakes look familiar to anyone who followed the recent reservoir project announced for La Paz, another sign that water infrastructure statewide is scrambling to catch up with rooftops.
Land, Schools and the Housing Squeeze
The governor also flagged a second problem that hits closer to home for developers and buyers alike: a shortage of land for affordable housing. As Los Cabos absorbs tens of thousands of new residents — many of them the construction and service workers building and staffing the very properties foreign buyers are purchasing — the municipality faces a straightforward math problem of not enough land zoned, permitted and serviced fast enough to house them. That tension is already playing out in policy discussions, including a recent move to limit certain apartment projects and separate efforts to streamline permitting so legitimate projects don’t get stuck in years of red tape the way the desalination plant did.
None of this means Los Cabos’ growth story is turning sour — tourism investment, jobs and property values have all continued climbing along with the population. But growth without matching infrastructure has a way of catching up with a place eventually, whether through water rationing, overcrowded classrooms or roads that can’t handle the traffic. For prospective buyers, the smart move is the same one it’s always been: ask not just about ocean views and finishes, but about the water source, the school zoning and whether the municipality’s infrastructure plan is keeping pace with its census numbers. Baja Sur’s population boom isn’t slowing down. Whether services catch up to it is the story worth watching over the next few years.
