For sale: £86.66 million ($115m USD). An exceptional 140-hectare (346 acre) gated island style beachfront peninsula, the El Cuyo Estate, close to Cancún in Mexico comes with full planning permission and designs to create either a £400 million (GDV) ($530m USD) Mustique style luxury residential and 5-star hotel resort, with 64 beachfront villas and a 40 bed/suite 5-star hotel; or a billionaire’s private palace with guest lodges in the beachfront grounds, providing up to 340,000 sq.ft. (31,590 sq.m.) of luxurious acommodation. For sale via Beauchamp Estates.
Just 2.5 hours from Cancún by road, less by private plane or speedboat, the El Cuyo Estate is one of the hidden treasures of the Yucatan coast, the ‘Mayan Riviera’, where the turquoise blue Caribbean Sea mingles with the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico/America.
In addition to 7 kilometers of pristine white sand beaches and blue sea, the El Cuyo Estate backs onto the Rio Lagartos National Park, the wetlands and lakes internationally famous for the 20,000 pink flamingos that come to the nature reserve between January to September for mating and reproduction. The park is also famous for the Las Coloradas pink lake, the lake’s bubblegum hue a natural phenomenon caused by red algae, plankton and shrimp that thrive in the water and produce colourful pink pigments.
The gated estate is located on an island style peninsula with beach and ocean on one side and to the other the large lakes and wetlands of the Rio Lagartos National Park.
The estate has the benefit of full planning permission from the Mexican government for either a luxury residential and hotel resort or a billionaire’s beachfront private palace and residential domain.
The owners and vendors of the El Cuyo Estate are Mónica Hernández, a Mexican landscape designer with a host of global clients, and her husband, Anibal González, an award-winning architect and painter from Seville in Spain.
The couple acquired the El Cuyo Estate 30 years ago at the same time as purchasing a former 17th-century cattle ranch nearby, which they restored and turned into Hacienda Katanchel, an ultra-luxurious and discreet Yucatan boutique hotel and eco-resort frequented by global celebrities and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Famous guests to Hacienda Katanchel have included John Galliano, the British fashion designer, former New York Times editor Dorothy Kalins and the offspring of President Eisenhower. The couple have recently sold the Hacienda Katanchel resort to billionaire Bernard Arnault’s Belmont luxury hotel chain. Arnault plans to reopen the resort in 2027.
To devise designs for the El Cuyo Estate the vendors and Beauchamp Estates have worked closely with Casa E Progetti, the London based super-prime design house which specializes in billionaire estates, luxury mansions and hotel resorts for brands including Intercontinental Hotel Group and Sheraton Hotels and Resorts.
The El Cuyo Estate is a protected habitat of outstanding natural beauty with strict eco-conservation requirements. To ensure an environmentally sensitive scheme for the architecture, layouts and interior design, the vendors and Casa E Progetti used a fusion of traditional local Mayan architecture, renowned for its eco-friendly construction, and inspiration from the Balinese style design of Sir Richard Branson’s famous Necker Island estate in the nearby British Virgin Islands acclaimed for its use of reclaimed natural materials and renewable energy combined with luxurious living spaces and amenities.
If developed into a resort, the El Cuyo Estate will provide 64 beachfront villas, each with 100 metres (328ft) of private beachfront, located on plots of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) in size – with an average lot size of 1.7 hectares (4.3 acres).
Each villa would be up to 5,000 sq.ft. (465 sq.m.) in size, providing 4 or 5 bedroom suites, with the Mayan style architecture having an oblong or oval footprint for each villa with open-air layouts, wooden and pole-and-fine frames, stone feature walls and pitched thatch roofs made of palm/grass.
The apsidal or oval floor plans with rounded ends are specifically designed to withstand hurricane-force winds whilst the pitched thatch roofs shed heavy rainfall efficiently with the open-air layouts providing natural cooling and the vaulted roofscape naturally regulating temperature. All villas benefit from separate covered garaging for three cars/limos.
Each multi-storey villa is designed around a central oval staircase with all the principal rooms opening onto beachfront terraces. On the ground floor each villa would provide a spacious entrance hall, double reception room, dining room, family kitchen/breakfast room, family/TV room and fifth ensuite bedroom/flexi space.
The first floor provides four VIP bedroom suites, each suite having a bedroom with day room/lounge area, spa style ensuite bathroom and walk-in dressing dressing room lined with fitted cupboards. The vaulted top floor provides a children’s playroom or club lounge for teenagers.
The main £260 million (GDV) ($345m USD) 5-star hotel in the centre of the estate provides for a luxury multi-storey 40 bedroom/suite hotel with the design by Casa E Progetti inspired by the Palenque summer palace of Mayan King Pacal the Great (603 – 683) where he lived with his wife Queen Ajaw, mother Lady Sak K-uk and Royal court. The building’s lavish interior design and luxurious amenities are guided by Sir Richard Branson’s Great House on Necker Island.
The hotel – like the Mayan King’s summer palace – is designed around a series of oblong ‘great houses’ linked by central atriums and grand courtyards the complex covered by a vast pitched thatched roofscape. The ground floor living spaces open onto large outside terraces with boulevards providing views of the beach and ocean.
The spacious covered atriums and courtyards form the grand open-air reception/entertaining rooms of the hotel and include the hotel lobby/concierge, lounges, dining room and hotel cinema.
Just like the Mayan King’s palace the grand reception rooms would have feature stone and wood beam walls with artwork and murals, paved stone floors and vaulted wood beam or thatched pitched ceilings. Feature chandeliers, bespoke joinery, stone columns and a bespoke interior design scheme with cosy sofas, armchairs and accessories complete the luxurious interiors of the principal rooms.
Around the main hotel are separate lodges providing further living space and hotel bedrooms, a lodge offering a fitness centre with gymnasium, yoga, health spa, Jacuzzi and swimming pool and a beachside lodge containing a beach restaurant, cocktail bar and beach club/disco for hotel and resort guests.
The arrangement of the lodges in the landscaped grounds is based on the palace complex of King Pacal the Great who had lodges in the grounds of his palace to house is three sons Princes Kan Bahlam, K’an Joy Chitam and Tiwol Chan Mat.
For a billionaire buyer seeking to transform the El Cuyo Estate into a private single residential domain the planning consent and designs allow for the palace hotel to be adapted into a luxurious mega-mansion of up to 40 bedrooms. Living like a modern Mayan King, this private palace would have a grand entrance hall, multiple reception and entertaining rooms, family kitchen, separate professional chef kitchen, library, private cinema, owner’s study, gymnasium, beauty salon and indoor and outdoor dining and swimming pools.
Guest lodges in the grounds of this billionaire’s mega-mansion would allow for extended family, guests, private family office, estate staff and security, providing a combined total of 340,000 sq.ft. (31,590 sq.m.) of accommodation. The completed value of a billionaire’s estate is anticipated to be in excess of £260 million (GDV) ($345m USD).
Owners and guests to the developed El Cuyo Estate would be able to arrive by either yacht/speedboat, helicopter or private plane since the estate has a private jetty/marina berth and land for a helipad and private runway/airport.
The vendors and Beauchamp Estates calculate that purchased as a resort the estate villas could be marketed and sold on a combination of built and off-plan product, supported by dressed showhome, with each villa achieving – based on current local comparables of around $4,400 per (£3,300) beachfront metre – unit sales values of over $2 million USD. The villa revenues could then contribute to the funding of the hotel construction, to be acquired and/or operated by an international hotel operator, or alternatively the hotel lot could be sold to a hotel investor-developer for development.
Beauchamp Estates highlight that the buying of luxury Mexican beachfront property is driven by wealthy buyers from America, Canada, Mexico City and Monterrey, with a smaller demographic of high-net-worth buyers from the UK and Western Europe. Mexican beachfront villas are typically purchased by families in their 30s and 40s and America’s Baby Boom generation retiring early who seek a year-around holiday, retirement or second home with US lending companies now providing mortgages on luxury residential properties in Mexico.
The Mexican luxury real estate market is also popular with North American professional investors drawn by the prospect of achieving rates of return and appreciation on properties that exceed those in the United States and Canada.
Gary Hersham, Founding Director of Beauchamp Estates says: “Bordered by beachfront ocean and large lakes the spectacular island style El Cuyo Estate is one of the hidden treasures of Mexico’s Yucatan coast and allows for either a luxury residential led resort or a billionaire’s private palace domain.
In the heart of the ‘Mayan Riviera’, this trophy estate is perfect for a discerning UHNW buyer to either create a Mustique style residential resort of luxury beachfront villas on generously sized landscaped plots, or for a billionaire to own a private palace estate where they can arrive by private jet, superyacht, helicopter or limousine.”
Kay Louise Smith, Super-Prime Sales Broker at Beauchamp Estates says: “The El Cuyo Estate comes with the benefit of full planning for luxury real estate with a detailed business model in place where the developed site is anticipated to have a return of at least 2.5 times capital invested.
“With a masterplan and designs already in place the buyer has the option of working with Beauchamp Estates and Casa E Progetti to deliver and market a commercial scheme on the estate or the project management of a private domain designed around a single beachfront private palace and guest lodges.”
The El Cuyo Estate, is for sale for £86,665,500 ($115m USD) contact international selling agents Beauchamp Estates (Kay Louise Smith) on Tel: +44 (0)20 7499 7722 E: [email protected] or visit: www.beauchampestates.com
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