The trade is view and breeze against everything else
Buyers arrive in Los Cabos wanting the water and leave having discovered that inland has a case. Both are right. The honest way to put it is that being on the water buys you view, breeze and short access to the beach, and costs you in exposure, upkeep and how far you are from ordinary life. Inland reverses every one of those.
Neither is the correct answer. Which one is correct for you depends almost entirely on how many days a year you will actually be here.
What the sea does to a house
Salt air is relentless. Anything metal near the water needs specifying for it and maintaining regardless: railings, window and door hardware, outdoor kitchens, air conditioning condensers, light fittings. Glass needs cleaning more often. So do terraces. None of this is a reason not to buy on the water, but it is a running cost and a running task, and it is heavier if the property sits empty for months.
Inland properties are not exempt, but they are meaningfully further down the scale.
Temperature and wind run in opposite directions
On the water you get the breeze, which is welcome most of the year and occasionally more wind than you want on a terrace. Inland is calmer and warmer. Elevation changes the picture again: a hillside lot a few hundred metres up can be noticeably cooler in the evening than the flat ground below it.
This is a thing to test rather than read about. Stand on the terrace of anything you are seriously considering, in the late afternoon, in the season you would use it.
Distance to ordinary life
The corridor between the two towns is where most of the beachfront communities sit, and the trade there is that you drive to almost everything. Inland communities above San José del Cabo are closer to the practical version of Los Cabos: shops, medical, schools, a working town centre.
Owners who are here for two or three weeks a year barely notice the difference. Owners who are here for months notice it constantly. That is usually the deciding factor once people have been here long enough to know.
How to think about it
If your time here is short and the view is the point, buy the view. If you are going to live here, or want to, weigh the drive and the maintenance honestly. And if you are undecided, look at both: Cabo Real for the coastal version and Club Campestre for the inland one, and see which one you keep thinking about a week later.