1. How much of a maintenance fee are you folks paying at the moment for your condominium? We bought a single family, stand alone Casa in the Hotel Zone on Pok-Ta-Pok so we pay no maintenance fees but we have chosen to have a full-time caretaker/maintenance person/now part of the family who lives on the property rent free and we pay him +/- 4800 pesos per month depending the # of days worked in each month. Our property taxes are 6K pesos per year. 2. Is it even possible for a canadian citizen to have a mortgage in Mexico in case I have an FM-3 or an FM-2 status? If so, then how much is an average monthly pay? No idea. 3. Does anyone have any idea about the maintenance fee and mortgage rates for Bay View Grand Cancun (yeah, those fancy condominiums in the Hotel Zone)? Not sure what the going rate is for BVG's MFees now but do know that it's calculated on the square meters of the unit. We do have friends who have a 3 bedroom, 2 story Villa at BVG who have indicated that their MF's are more than we pay our guy even with housing included. 4. How much is your car insurance per month? We pay about $40 USD per month for our 1997 Mexican car with coverage for anything and everything. Our homeowners insurance, without hurricane coverage as we're not on the front beach, is $450 USD/year with heavier liability than is necessary. We had timeshare here in Cancun, 5 weeks worth, for almost 24 years. We used it every year, 3-4 times a year and knew that for the long term, condo living was not for us for an extended period of time, hence the decision to buy a stand alone place. It depends upon the wants and needs of each individual. Hope this helps.
Just thinking I was overpaying for car insurance after seeing everyone elses replies, so I asked Jannet. We actually pay 7,500 a year not 12,000 as I first stated, that's for a 2003 Jeep Liberty.
Do you mean you have a mortgage from a U.S. based company on property in Mexico? How is that done, Mole? I don´t think I´ve heard of it before, if that´s what you mean.
BVG did have some issues with their administration and have serious legal issues going on from what I hear. BVG Steve can answer more on all of these questions.
Scorpio, 4. My car is a US car but with Mexican Insurance from Qualitas. It renews in April but my 2011 bill was $418 US. That includes a VIP plan which adds 30% and I now think that might be a waste of $100 or so. The policy is sold by an agency in California. www.mexicanautoinsurance.com (Lewis & Lewis). The insurance is for the car and not for the driver but you can add an addtional an driver, not that I think you need to. The deal is that with a Temporary Import Permit, only a registered owner can drive it, as well as an immediate relative, OR the owner must be in the car for anyone else to drive it. It cost me about $800 to ship the car here from Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale, FL) to Puerto Morelos. The moment I retrieved the car from the port, I cancelled my US insurance. The shipping is based on volume, not value. So a 1980 VW van would cost more than a 2011 Ferrari. My car is a 2002 model and I can nationalize it this year. I am looking into that at the moment. This would allow me to sell it to a non-foreignor, aka a Mexican, and bring in a newer car.
That's too bad, Mole. I thought I was about to hear something new and exciting in the field of the financing of purchases of Mexican properties by Americans. And, don't worry about any confusion, the confusion was mine! ______________________
I'm certainly no expert on this subject, but I think you could be waiting a long time. One of the reasons may be that, unlike the U.S., distressed properties don't often get moved through liquidation processes, such as foreclosures. They linger and linger on the markets, with the owners holding out for what they think they should get for the property (their investment, plus a little more, if possible). Perfect example was a condo in our building. In foreclosure for three years, it was sold, recently, by the owner/debtor for the full asking price. The same thing seems to happen with commercial property. Owners will hold out for rents commensurate with their investment, instead of discounting the rents to get tenants. Paying too much for properties, during times of easy credit, produced run ups in prices, last decade, but the legal processes are just too inefficient here to clear the over priced market of inventory. Anyway, that's my theory. You can find similar situations in other countries with somewhat weak judicial systems, and owners who would prefer not moving a property to cutting their prices.
Scorpio...I thought I'd share our property buying situation with you. My husband (who is Mexican) & I live in Toronto. We had saved up quite a bit of money a few years back. We ended up buying a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in Residencial Islazul using our savings and borrowing the rest from here in Canada at a very good interest rate. It's not a "mortgage" but a large sum unsecured loan from our bank. This allowed us to pay for our home in full upfront in Mexico. We have always rented our home through long term rental contracts to Mexican nationals coming to Cancun for work. We have never had to deal with weekly rentals (likely wouldn't work in our area anyway) which can be lucrative but we're too far to be on top of everything. In 5 years our house has only sat empty for a few months (which is why hubby & I always stay in a cheap hotel when we're there). I have to also add that in our complex situation renting our house didn't mean the house was paying for itself. Between various family obligations in Mexico buying & renting our house just meant that in the end we would own a home in Cancun in addition to financially supporting my step-daughter and father-in-law who requires 24/7 care and assistance after he fell ill. Breaking it down...a certain amount of $ was going to be sent to Mexico every month regardless, this was a way of making that $ work for us and give us an investment while taking care of those obligations. It was just what was right for us at that time. It wasn't necessarily an "easy" plan and we have struggled even from Canada but in the end it is pretty awesome to know we will fully OWN our home in Cancun in just a few short years.
