Hello all, If you had 1 million pesos cash (I know its not much :cry: ) - where would you look to buy a house in Cancun??? I went out to that new area the other day, out past santa fe, I don't want to live there really but I checked it out. This new development Vitali - I was trying to get him to throw the mini spits in, a fridge etc into the deal - they had only sold 2 houses so far out of about 300 - so i thought he would be motivated to shift them presale. He wouldn't add anything for free - kind of like take it or leave it! They must be confident that people still have loads of money to spend on houses and the banks are lending without a problem! If that was in England now I would have free wall to wall carpeting, a fridge, microwave, closets - anything to make quick sales!!!
Cancun is not England, or the U.S. or anywhere else that I know of. The "take it or leave it" attitude has been prevalent as long as I have been here. People prefer to not sell or rent than to lower the price. Go figure. "Cada cabeza es un mundo".
I would not necessarily buy a new house. I would buy close to downtown either in a conjunto/guarded subdivision or in an area that is naturally safe (I live on a dead-end street and together with my neighbors pay a guard to watch the street). There are a LOT of bargains out there right now. I noticed that the Real Tikal subdivision has 5 Se Vende signs right now, normally it has one or zero. And there are no buyers right now. If you come along with cash you can make a deal. You just have to be willing to walk away if the seller is stubborn. Be more stubborn and you'll be fine. If it were me I'd probably buy a fixer-upper. I've renovated 4 houses so far in life and my husband is a trained architect, so for me fixer-uppers make sense. And around here even when a house is new it's always missing something important and needs so much work that I don't see the point in paying for a new house (as they cost more per square meter than a used house). I've looked at a LOT of new houses here and even the spendy ones come with crappy kitchen cabinets and cheap doors and the electricity isn't grounded. Why pay for that? Buy a cheaper house and put in better fixtures, that's what I would do anyway. The big things you can't change in a house are the location, the size of the lot and the neighbors. The rest you can pretty much fix. (I sure wish I could change one of my neighbors.) There are a lot of houses here that are in your price range in safe areas. You just need to hunt. If you want ideas for specific neighborhoods or streets to look at PM me.
Thanks, Kim for keeping us on task! If I had a million pesos and had to use it for home buying, I would: 1.- buy a half hectare piece of land ($200,000m.n.??) Not feasible for non-Mexicans. 2.- build a house on it (quite a nice one for $500,000 m.n.) and 3.- spend the rest digging a well and buying a solar panel and wind system to supply the house.
Not a bad plan Jim, but puts you outside the city...there are definite advantages either way...but I do like being 5 minutes from more than half the place I go.
Thanks for the replies, RG, JIM I have been looking around the Paseo Cancun area and your ideas RG were pretty much what I was thinking - which SM is Tikal in by the way? Yes Jim, I'm aware that Mexico isn't the US or England - it just seemed strange that the guy had loads of houses and didn't seem to want to do any kind of deal - I was more thinking how was he going to sell them? Do you think its a case of the constructor is so cash flush that they don't care how long it takes to sell them all - whether it be a month of 5 years?
I don't want to paint all builders with the same brush BUT anyone who is "cash flush" is looking more for a washing machine for his money than to selling a $20,000 home.
Probably the opposite coupled with being stubbornly greedy. There are a number of developments here that have much slimmer profit margins than you might think. If they don't get what they are asking they may not be able to pay the bank notes off. Real Tikal is in SM38 just off of Ave Tikal.
I can't speak from experience regarding developers, but I think the reason why individual people are so steadfast in their prices, is that the cost of ownership in Mexico is a fraction of what it is in the States....(at least most states.) Property taxes are next to nothing here. I just paid 757 Pesos (about $54) for the property taxes on my 3776 sq. ft. home here in Veracruz. Conversely, my home in Florida is half that size, and the taxes are $3230 a year. Mexican citizens don't have to pay the fideo commiso, either. Many Mexicans don't have homeowner's insurance, either, and that is a big expense. So the bottom line is, that they are under no pressure to sell, unless you luck into someone who really needs the money.
