AI Renderings Mask Growing Pre-Construction Risk for Buyers

Pre-construction real estate buyers are facing growing risks as developers use increasingly sophisticated photorealistic renderings and AI-generated imagery to market unbuilt projects, while slower sales in many markets leave some developments short of the funds needed to complete construction. The danger is especially acute for buyers purchasing property far from home, who often rely solely on marketing materials. Texas broker and Certified International Property Specialist Ed Eakin, who leads Eakin Group in Cabo San Lucas, warns that “in today’s world, a lot of developments use AI to create a beautiful picture. It looks like the project is done and people are living there. In reality, no dirt has been moved.”

Eakin advises buyers to ask developers direct questions: Has the project broken ground? How many units have closed? What are the expected completion dates for each phase? When will amenities be started and finished? The amenity question often reveals a gap between marketing and reality—he cites a Texas development where the golf course has been finished for about a year, but no homes have been built, streets and utilities are still going in, and the clubhouse is a temporary tent. The most revealing question concerns money: many developers cannot start construction until they reach a set level of pre-sales, so Eakin asks whether the project can still be finished if no further units sell over the next year. Track record also matters—a developer with decades of experience and dozens of completed projects presents a different risk than a first-time builder.

The structure of the deposit schedule offers another clue. In Eakin’s view, a developer who takes only an initial deposit and asks for nothing more until the end usually points to a stronger developer, one able to fund construction without drawing on buyers’ money along the way. At the other extreme, a developer asking for half the purchase price before breaking ground warrants extra caution. How deposits are held matters as well: Eakin advises against wiring funds directly into a developer’s own account and recommends a local third-party escrow service that releases money as construction milestones are met. Lenders can offer another layer of scrutiny, as mortgage lenders active in Mexico typically vet a developer before agreeing to finance a unit in the project. None of this replaces seeing the property. The signals on a site are straightforward: workers, machinery, and noise suggest progress, while a fenced, locked site with no crew or ground where grass is growing over earlier work suggests a project that has stalled. “If nothing has changed in 30 days, let’s figure out what’s happening and why,” Eakin said.

For buyers who cannot visit often, that monitoring can be delegated. Eakin describes regular site checks on behalf of out-of-town clients, sending photos and video, and walking clients through a unit by live video call so they can ask questions as they see it. The same approach applies before purchase: when a client is weighing several projects, he visits each, collects price lists and construction timelines, and reports which are close to delivery and which are still years out. The consequences of skipping these steps tend to arrive late. Eakin says he still receives calls from buyers who sent deposits directly to a developer who later disappeared, often after finding an online group of other buyers in the same position. “At that point, it’s really too late,” he said. As pre-construction marketing becomes more polished and financing for new projects tightens, the distance between what a buyer sees online and what exists on the ground is likely to keep growing. The questions that close it remain unchanged: who is building the project, how it is funded, and whether anyone the buyer trusts has stood on the site.