New Real Estate Law: January 1, 2009

We would like to thank Mitch Keenan for this update on a new law related to sell­ing  prop­erty in Mexico.

Any for­eign per­son (non-Mexican cit­i­zen) sell­ing prop­erty in Mex­ico will now be required to have an FM-2 Visa, in addi­tion to elec­tric bills and fide­comiso in their name(s) (as their names appear on their pass­ports and visas). The bills and fide­icomiso must reflect the prop­erty address they are sell­ing, in order to avoid all or part of the “Impuesto Sobre la Renta” — ISR or cap­i­tal gains taxes.
The FM-3 visa will no longer suf­fice to avoid this tax at clos­ing.  For more infor­ma­tion and to find out if you might be exempt from all or part of this tax, please con­tact your attor­ney or agent if you are plan­ning to sell a prop­erty in Mex­ico. This was writ­ten as a pend­ing law a few months ago but has now become law and, as of the 1st of Jan­u­ary, is a require­ment.  Some notar­ios are already requir­ing it.

Update: Decreto 801
We would like to thank Vic­tor Huitron of Mex­ico Inter­na­tional for updated infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing Decreto 801 (The Beach Law). The news is that there is no news. Decreto 801 is still stand­ing as it was on the day it was signed into law – “real and inflex­i­ble.” This law is designed to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment of Yucatan, with spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion given to the coast­line, where exces­sive con­struc­tion con­tributes to ero­sion. For those who believe that their pro­jected design for either new con­struc­tion or remod­el­ing is envi­ron­men­tally friendly, but still get turned down,  it could be that bring­ing water and other ser­vices to that area is the issue. What­ever the case, it is the poten­tial home­owner or builder who bears the respon­si­bil­ity for find­ing real estate agents, attor­neys, and archi­tects who can move their project for­ward within the guide­lines of Decreto 801. It looks as if those who are mak­ing the final deci­sions are doing so on a case-by-case basis, so expect your project to move slowly through the approval stages. If turned down, the homeowner/builder is free to redesign and apply again. This entire law is now online in a 96 page pdf doc­u­ment HERE.

Vis­i­tors By Land or By Sea: Do You Need a Pass­port Yet? NO
Every year, about this time, thou­sands of Snow­birds and other vis­i­tors to Mex­ico begin search­ing Amer­i­can Con­sulate web­sites to see if they are going to need a pass­port for the com­ing year. The rule still is that, if you want to get back into the U.S., you will need (1) proof of cit­i­zen­ship (such as an offi­cial birth cer­tifi­cate from your state, not the one your par­ents got from the hos­pi­tal when you were born) and (2) proof of iden­tity (such as a pic­ture ID or driver’s license). It looks like vis­i­tors can promise them­selves, yet again, to put apply­ing for a pass­port on next year’s list of “things to do.”

Yes You Can In Yucatan
We just love read­ing other people’s Blog Rolls. The Ham­mock Man Paul, got these lyrics from a video posted by Vamanos, who, quite rightly, thought an old Desi Arnaz song was the per­fect musi­cal back­ground for a video of the State Fair at X’matkuil. We think these lyrics, from an old “I Love Lucy” show, are the best we have ever seen and describe the life we have found in Yucatan per­fectly! Thanks to Vamanos for find­ing them and to The Ham­mock Man Paul for bring­ing them to his blog.

You think that Adam had it nice?
Why all he had was par­adise.
Can you do bet­ter?
Ha! Yes you can.
In Yucatán!.

Urban Hor­ti­cul­tur­ist: Fresh Veg­eta­bles for Sale
“Don George” (Jorge Armando Solís Hoyos) is a 75 year old ex–bracero who learned enough Eng­lish in his 8 years in Cal­i­for­nia to be able to, as he says, “chew it.” He came home because the “shaken life” of Amer­ica got on his nerves and he has now spent 46 years as an urban farmer in Merida, with “to live happy” as his per­sonal phi­los­o­phy. His urban “farm” is located in Calle 138 #59 x 48 y 50 in Cinco Colo­nias. His crops include: pump­kins, radishes, corian­der, let­tuce, beets, small onions, white cucum­bers, turnips, epa­zote, toma­toes, Havanan Chile, sun­flow­ers, basil, ruda, espelón and fruits such as water­melon and other mel­ons in sea­son. For expats who are inter­ested in putting in their own gar­den, we all know that soil goes right through the lime­stone floor of this part of Yucatan and must con­tin­u­ously be replen­ished in gar­dens, but how much does that cost and where is the best place to buy that much soil? “Don George” reports that he pays $1,700 pesos per truck load for soil. Poten­tial gar­den­ers may want to talk to him about how much soil they need and how often they would have to buy it. Don George speaks Span­ish, Mayan, and Eng­lish, and sounds like he is the go-to guy for fresh veg­eta­bles and back­yard hor­ti­cul­tural advice in Merida.

Pro­greso: Fire on Chi­nese Oil Tanker

This past week there was a pre-dawn fire on a Chi­nese oil tanker that had been rented by PEMEX. Within 2 hours, the fire was con­tained but the port remained closed until all dan­ger of an explo­sion was gone. It is inter­est­ing to note that Pro­greso itself was in dan­ger because PEMEX pipelines run under Calle 84. In the 8 years of PMEX’s oper­a­tion at this loca­tion, this is the first time that Pro­greso has faced such a threat. Need­less to say, this inci­dent will be a major topic of con­ver­sa­tion in the area for quite some time.

Tiz­imin: The Pro­gram “Peso for Peso”
Some­times a gov­ern­ment just gets it right and we are so proud of the State of Yucatan and the small pro­duc­ers of Tiz­imin for mak­ing the pro­gram “Peso for Peso” work. This is a “match­ing funds” pro­gram for the ben­e­fit of up to 1,000 local pro­duc­ers. The pro­gram cov­ers 200 prod­ucts, includ­ing ranch­ing. Pro­duc­ers deposit their money in a bank account where it is matched “Peso for Peso” by the State of Yucatan. The pro­duc­ers can then use their now dou­bled money to buy what­ever they need for their small busi­nesses or ranches. …and that isn’t all! The State of Yucatan has even more “sup­ports” pro­grams planned for 2009. What a great way to jump-start a slow­ing econ­omy. Our con­grat­u­la­tions to the small busi­ness own­ers and ranch­ers of Tiz­imin and to the State Gov­ern­ment of Yucatan for a job well done!

Mov­ing On Up! Look at Mani Go!
Mani is a small munic­i­pal­ity to the south of Merida. Almost all of the fewer than 4,000 res­i­dents are Mayan and Mayan is the lan­guage that is spo­ken there. The res­i­dents of Mani applied to an inter­na­tional pro­gram that helps poor com­mu­ni­ties design a suc­cess­ful future for them­selves – and Mex­ico deter­mined that, of all the places in the nation, our Mani would be the ben­e­fi­ciary of this pilot pro­gram. The peo­ple of Mani wanted to become suc­cess­ful with­out hav­ing to depend on tourism to do it. Mem­bers of the IDP (Inter­na­tional Design Part­ner­ship) came to visit and saw the beau­ti­ful embroi­dery pro­duced in Mani. They sug­gested putting that same design in a vari­ety of linens and paper prod­ucts, such as sta­tion­ary and cards. Right now, eight top-class design­ers from South-Africa, Great Britain, Peru, Chile, Mex­ico, the USA, Ger­many and Aus­tralia are meet­ing in Mex­ico City to develop a mer­chan­dis­ing con­cept for tra­di­tional prod­ucts from the Maya cul­tural strong­hold of Mani in order to improve the local liv­ing con­di­tions. You can read the full story of this project and Yucatan Living’s story of the his­tory of Mani.

Mex­ico Joins List of Cli­mate Heroes
It has been announced that Mex­ico has made a com­mit­ment to cut green­house gasses by 50% by the year 2050 and will have a cap-and-trade emis­sions sys­tem in place by 2012. This is won­der­ful news for Mex­ico. The world is now watch­ing to see if the new admin­is­tra­tion in the U.S. can man­age to bring that coun­try, at long last, into the world-wide fam­ily of envi­ron­men­tally respon­si­ble nations.

Bimbo Buys George Weston, Ltd.
Mexico’s Bimbo is one of the world’s top bread­mak­ers. So is Canada’s Weston Foods. George Weston, Ltd. is the U.S. arm of Weston Foods. In 2002, Bimbo bought George Weston’s oper­a­tion in the west­ern U.S. Now, Bimbo has begun the process of buy­ing George Weston’s oper­a­tion in the east­ern U.S. This huge pur­chase will be com­pleted in a few months and will give Bimbo access to the Boboli, Brown­berry, Entenmann’s, Freihofer’s, Stroehmann and Thomas’ brands of breads, rolls, muffins and bagels. And if we will get those prod­ucts here in the Yucatan, that will make a lot of expats happy!

Casa Cather­wood and the Mesoamerida Foun­da­tion
Casa Catherwood’s involve­ment with the Mesoamer­ica Foun­da­tion has been a won­der­ful thing for the envi­ron­ment, for the peo­ple of Yucatan and Kenya, and for expats in Merida. We whole-heartedly rec­om­mend the Mesoamer­ica Foundation’s web­site as one of the best reads we have found in a long time. From there, you can read all about their pro­grams to pro­tect the bio­di­ver­sity of the region, as well as the sisal bags project that includes bags made by women in Kenya from henequen from Yucatan. These bags are sold at Casa Cather­wood and online. On the Mesoamer­ica Foundation’s web­site, you can also read about past events held at Casa Cather­wood and you can read the mate­r­ial that is to be dis­cussed at the weekly Salons. That mate­r­ial alone makes it well worth anyone’s time to visit the site! But what we really like is the oppor­tu­nity to direct your finan­cial sup­port into the pro­grams that are clos­est to your own heart. We hope that every­one will visit the web­sites of both Casa Cather­wood and the Mesoamer­ica Foun­da­tion.

Val­ladolid Wants to Go Global
When tourists fly into Merida, their expe­ri­ence of Yucatan too often ends up con­sist­ing of quick trips to Merida and Pro­greso. When tourists fly into Can­cun, their expe­ri­ence of Yucatan ends up con­sist­ing of Chichen Itza and maybe a quick trip to Merida. Those of us who live here know that it would take years to see every­thing there is to see and expe­ri­ence in the State of Yucatan and, indeed, even just in the Munic­i­pal­ity of Val­ladolid. Well, Val­ladolid wants to change that. Within the next 3 years, they are spiff­ing up their infra­struc­ture and ven­tur­ing into the global mar­ket­ing of their munic­i­pal­ity. For our read­ers who don’t know much about that area, the Val­ladolid web­site shows much of what they have to offer. They also have an excel­lent uni­ver­sity and hos­pi­tal. Explore the links and see just what’s avail­able in this cross­roads of the Mayan world. For those who are con­sid­er­ing invest­ing or retir­ing in Yucatan, Val­ladolid is one of the best bets around. With prop­erty val­ues still easy on the wal­let, Val­ladolid is the gate­way to Chichen Itza and will be both a tourist and retire­ment des­ti­na­tion in the very near future. For more infor­ma­tion, you can also read Yucatan Living’s recent Val­ladolid arti­cle.

Restau­rant Prof­its Down in Ticul
The Pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber of Com­merce in Ticul is report­ing that increases in the price of neces­si­ties has caused fam­i­lies to either slow down or stop spend­ing on things they want but do not nec­es­sar­ily need. The first vic­tims of this eco­nomic slow­down was restau­rants. Now, the slow­down in spend­ing is spread­ing to other areas. They are attempt­ing to get peo­ple out to shop by hold­ing raf­fles, but this is going to be a long process. As you shop for the hol­i­days, please think of the pro­duc­ers in the inte­rior of the state and “Buy Yucateco” as much as possible.

Kudos to Sis­ter Míriam Noemí Mex López
Got Dark? Get Light! The Sis­ters of the Light, a local order of nuns, were hav­ing elec­tri­cal prob­lems. It was tak­ing too long to find an elec­tri­cian and, even when they could, the cost was beyond what the Sis­ters could (or felt they should) pay. – and then the Fun­dación Box­ito began teach­ing a course called Insta­la­ciones Eléc­tri­cas Res­i­den­ciales and Sis­ter Míriam Noemí Mex López decided to take the class. Now, The Sis­ters of the Light are no longer in the dark and we sus­pect that the fam­i­lies they serve will ben­e­fit from the newly trained tal­ents of this extra­or­di­nary nun. We also sus­pect that Sis­ter Míriam Noemí Mex López will be an inspi­ra­tion to more than a few young, Yucateco ladies who may want to build a bet­ter life in a non-traditional occupation.

http://www.yucatanliving.com/news/news-4.htm