Unlocking Value: The 'Win-Win-Win' From Smart Parking

Imagine that all the land in Mexico City is a pie. Now, imagine that more than half of that pie is locked away in a vault. This isn't a metaphor, it's our stark urban reality. In Mexico City, 88,400 hectares — a staggering 59% of the territory — are designated as conservation land. These are our green areas protected by the Constitution, the lungs that provide us with air and water, and they are untouchable for development.

The government's stance is clear and irrevocable. Mexico City's head of government, Martí Batres, has been emphatic: "We will not yield a single millimeter of conservation land." The message for developers and managers is direct: future growth will not be horizontal, outward, but vertical and inward, through the densification and optimization of already urbanized space. In premium boroughs like Benito Juarez, Miguel Hidalgo, and Cuauhtemoc, the availability of vacant lots is minimal, and land value appreciates between 7% and 8% annually. In this context, every square meter of your property must work at maximum capacity and generate returns.

The Silent Waste in Your Assets: The Case of Inactive Parking

Amid this space crisis, there is an elephant in the room consuming your income potential: parking spaces. We dedicate a disproportionate amount of our real estate assets to an asset that sits idle most of the day, generating fixed costs (maintenance, cleaning, security) but zero revenue.

The figures from a landmark ITDP study are revealing:

• 42% of the total area of the analyzed buildings was dedicated to parking — more than for housing or offices!
• Building each space has an average capital cost of MX$175,500 (US$9,500), a huge initial investment that, in the traditional model, lies inactive most of the time.

The operational life of a parking space is sadly predictable and systematically inefficient:

• In your corporate office building: At 3 p.m, it's at 167% capacity, but by 8 p.m., it's a desert.
• In your luxury residential building: The exact opposite happens. During the day, the average usage is a meager 24%, only filling up at night.
• In your shopping plaza: It has explosive peaks during high season, but mediocre and constant usage the rest of the year.

The pattern is clear and undeniable: complementary uses (offices versus residential, commercial versus corporate) maintain opposite demand schedules, creating a system of vacant spaces that take turns. It's an absolute divorce between fixed supply and fluctuating demand. Your asset is disconnected from the market most of the time.

When Changing the Law Wasn't Enough to Unlock Value

In 2017, the city took a major conceptual step: it eliminated parking "minimums," which mandated building a specific number of spaces, and implemented "maximums." The idea was brilliant: to stop forcing the construction of more parking spaces.

However, the real change in your asset's value was modest. The new "maximums" were often so generous that many developments continued building ample parking. The proportion of area dedicated to parking fell from 42% to 33%. An advance, yes, but not the efficiency revolution the market needed.

This leads to a crucial conclusion for any real estate business: The core problem is no longer the regulatory quantity of spaces, but the obsolete business model governing their utilization. Regulation, whether with minimums or maximums, cannot solve this scheduling puzzle. The solution lies in managing your asset with the intelligence of a modern market.

The Market Solution: Turn Your Static Parking Into a Revenue Center

Imagine this all-too-common scenario: Your office building has 1,000 spaces that sit empty at night, generating a huge opportunity cost. Five hundred meters away, a residential building you manage has 200 spaces that are completely idle during the day. Under the traditional model, there is no secure, reliable, and automated mechanism to connect these two demands.

This is where Parkeo comes in. We are not just a web-app; we are becoming a technology partner that enables you to monetize your idle infrastructure without compromising the security, access, or experience of your primary users.

For you, the developer or manager, Parkeo offers a complete ecosystem:

• Marketplace for individuals: Your building can open its idle spaces to a network of verified users who need parking by the hour, day, or month. You define:
  • Which spaces you want to release (e.g., an entire level or only specific spots).
  • During which hours (from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends, for example).
  • At what dynamic price, adjusting to the area's demand.

This transforms a fixed asset into a recurring cash flow generator, improving your property's ROI and attracting buyers or tenants with the promise of parking that can, in turn, generate income for them.

Parkeo Pass: The Corporate Benefit That Fills Your Spaces

This is a key recent innovation in progress. We are working on a solution that enables any company to contract Parkeo as a benefit for its employees. The company subsidizes the parking, loading credit into a corporate account. Employees receive a discount code that, when used at your building, is automatically deducted from the company's balance.

The result? Your office building can fill its idle spaces during off-peak hours with employees from partner companies who need to park for personal reasons. Your residential building can rent its empty spaces during the day to employees from nearby companies looking for a safe, subsidized place to leave their car. It's a win-win-win: the company offers a valuable benefit, the employee parks easily and at a reduced cost, and you, the manager, maximize the use and income of your asset.

Beyond Regulation, Toward Intelligent Asset Optimization

The evolution of parking in Mexico City leaves us with a clear business lesson:

• The old model of minimums created massive waste of capital and space.
• The regulatory reform was a conceptual step but left the revenue potential untouched.

The most lucrative opportunity today lies not in construction regulations, but in management strategy. By implementing smart technology, you can maximize the revenue potential of every parking space you already own.

With 59% of our territory protected forever, the strategic question is no longer if we should optimize parking, but how we can quickly implement the technological and business systems to make it happen at scale.

Parking, an essential component of urban infrastructure, fundamentally relies on a finite resource: land. Historically, a significant portion of this land has been sourced from vacant and often unproductive terrains within and around city centers. These plots, while seemingly abundant at one point, are increasingly becoming scarce as urban areas continue to expand and develop.

The inherent characteristic of land, particularly in urban environments, is its inevitable transformation. What was once an empty lot or underutilized space will, with the relentless march of progress and economic development, eventually be converted into new buildings. This continuous process of construction and expansion encompasses a wide range of structures, from residential complexes and commercial centers to public institutions and industrial facilities. Each new building erected directly competes with the need for parking, thereby reducing the available land for this purpose. This constant competition underscores the critical challenge of managing parking resources effectively in an ever-growing urban landscape.

The future of real estate value in Mexico City is not about building more parking spaces, or even about building less. It's about using the ones we already have infinitely better, transforming them from a fixed cost into a revenue-generating center. The opportunity is in your hands, in the empty spaces of your buildings. It's time to put them to work.

If you are interested in learning more about Parkeo, please reach out to me: carlos@parkeo.mx