Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2007

By MARTIN ELDER, Spe­cial to the Daily Tran­script
Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2007

The demand for Mex­i­can real estate con­tin­ues to grow at the high end, lead­ing to wider avail­abil­ity of mort­gages and posi­tion­ing Mex­ico as one of the fastest ris­ing real estate des­ti­na­tions in Latin Amer­ica. This claim was made in a recent report by lead­ing finan­cial and real estate experts from Credit Suisse, Mex­ico Mort­gage Mar­ket and U.S.-based con­sul­tancy Ernst & Young.

An exam­ple of such real estate can be found at Punta Mita, a master-planned lux­ury resort and res­i­den­tial community.

“With the recent slow­ing down of the U.S. real estate mar­ket, savvy buy­ers are start­ing to look beyond the U.S. bor­der for new real estate options,” said Lynne Bairstow, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing and oper­a­tions for Punta Mita and its devel­oper, DINE. “Demand for real estate in Mex­ico and Punta Mita has increased dra­mat­i­cally as it becomes an ideal option for resort home ownership.”

The Four Sea­sons Punta Mita Pri­vate Vil­las, rang­ing in size from 6,475 to 7,995 square feet, are dis­tin­guished by pri­vate infin­ity edge plunge pools, gourmet kitchens and spa­cious cov­ered ter­races and patio areas.

Sev­eral fac­tors have played a key role in Punta Mita’s pop­u­lar­ity as a top-choice real estate invest­ment, includ­ing prox­im­ity and easy access, Mexico’s polit­i­cal and eco­nomic sta­bil­ity, and excel­lent real estate values.

Punta Mita is located 45 min­utes north­west of Puerto Val­larta, on the Pacific Coast of Mex­ico. It lies at the north­ern tip of Ban­deras Bay, Mexico’s deep­est nat­ural bay and is bor­dered by the rugged Sierra Madre Moun­tains to the east. The resort and res­i­den­tial com­mu­nity cov­ers more than 1,500 acres on a spear-shaped penin­sula sur­rounded on three sides by white sand beaches, Pacific Ocean waters and lush trop­i­cal flora.

The sur­round­ing area of Punta Mita and Puerto Val­larta are known for a wide range of inter­est­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing scuba div­ing, sail­ing and wind­surf­ing, swim­ming with dol­phins, whale watch­ing, jeep safaris, horse­back rid­ing, cul­tural tours, fine din­ing, shop­ping and nightlife. Punta Mita’s excel­lent infra­struc­ture is strictly held to U.S. stan­dards. It includes a secure water sup­ply, an on-site med­ical cen­ter, fiber optic cable phone ser­vice, an eco­log­i­cally sound waste­water treat­ment plant and other benefits.

It is cur­rently home to The Four Sea­sons Punta Mita Resort, var­i­ous res­i­den­tial homes and the Jack Nick­laus Sig­na­ture Golf Course at Punta Mita, ranked World’s Best Golf Resort by read­ers of Conde Nast Trav­eler in 2006 and one of the best golf courses by Travel + Leisure Golf in 2006. The mas­ter plan of Punta Mita includes sev­eral lux­ury devel­op­ments in the works, includ­ing the St. Regis Resort & Res­i­dences (Decem­ber 2007) with a sec­ond Jack Nick­laus Sig­na­ture golf course, the La Solana Resort (expected to open in 2009) and a vari­ety of exclu­sive res­i­den­tial offer­ings and estate lots to com­plete this very priv­i­leged resort community.

“While the Los Cabos area has been an estab­lished, well-accepted and pop­u­lar own­er­ship des­ti­na­tion for North Amer­i­can buy­ers, atten­tion is now shift­ing to Punta Mita, Mexico’s newest and most exclu­sive lux­ury real estate des­ti­na­tion,” Bairstow said. Over 95 per­cent of Punta Mita’s own­ers are U.S. citizens.

Punta Mita Prop­er­ties’ team of real estate experts can clearly explain all nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion and paper­work for Amer­i­cans and for­eign­ers to pur­chase real estate in Mex­ico, includ­ing trust deeds title insur­ance, real estate taxes and financing.

Punta Mita offers a wide selec­tion of own­er­ship options, includ­ing full-ownership con­do­mini­ums (start­ing at $575,000), town homes, vil­las and lux­ury beach­front estate lots (priced up to $7.2 mil­lion) at Kupuri, the destination’s newest res­i­den­tial community.

By Christo­pher Reynolds, Los Ange­les Times
Feb­ru­ary 24, 2007

Sure, there’s a great beach here, fresh fish, tall palms and only about 400 locals to share them with. But let’s start with the treach­ery and deception.“You wouldn’t believe the snakes. Snakes as big as your head,” says Ben Laird, a Wis­con­sonite who bought a vaca­tion home here last year.

“Peo­ple are poi­soned in Cha­cala every day,” dead­pans Richard Laskin of Hornby Island, Canada, who has been com­ing here for 10 years.“Are you sure that was a whale?” asks Laskin’s friend Stu Reid, gaz­ing off­shore. “Could have been drums of toxic material.”

Then — hav­ing done their best to deter the read­ing pub­lic from invad­ing their win­ter haven — these good-natured liars go back to their trop­i­cal idylls. Laskin and Reid tuck into their break­fast at the Mauna Kea Café, one of about 10 restau­rants in Cha­cala, as they gaze down upon a canopy of green, a deep blue sea, a deep blue sky and a few dozen pel­i­cans, swoop-commuting between the two.

Some­times, a lie is really just an invi­ta­tion. And the truth about Cha­cala is just as intrigu­ing, espe­cially for a trav­eler who wants to actu­ally meet Mex­i­cans while vaca­tion­ing in Mex­ico, who likes his coconuts straight from the tree, who doesn’t need the bright lights of Los Cabos or Cancún.

Cha­cala, a vil­lage 60 miles north of Puerto Val­larta on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, is built around the beach, a hand­some half-mile cres­cent of jungle-adjacent sand. At the south­ern end of the beach, black vol­canic rocks mur­mur in gen­tle surf. In the mid­dle of the cres­cent, half a dozen palm-shaded restau­rants serve fresh fish and shrimp (and keep a machete on hand for those new-fallen coconuts). To the north, two dozen bat­tered lit­tle fish­ing boats are tied up at a mod­est dock.

In town, sev­eral lodg­ings have popped up in the last few years, most offer­ing ocean views, mod­est ameni­ties and nightly rates from $50 to $90. A lit­tle far­ther north, more than two-dozen lux­ury vaca­tion homes, some of which rent by the night, have gone up in a gated com­pound called Marina Chacala.

But what sets Cha­cala apart from so many other mod­est but grow­ing Mex­i­can beach des­ti­na­tions is this: Thanks to the arrival of three hip­pie sib­lings here at the end of the 1970s, the town is awash in social exper­i­ments, many of them built around the idea that locals and tourists need to meet and learn from one another.

Under one 11-year-old pro­gram, called Techos de Méx­ico (Roofs of Mex­ico), half a dozen vil­lagers have added upstairs rooms and ter­races, most with ocean views, none more than a five-minute stroll from the beach. When not snapped up for the sea­son by win­ter­ing Cana­di­ans, most of these rooms rent for $22.50 to $60 a night.

Other tourists can vol­un­teer on com­mu­nity projects, attend yoga or med­i­ta­tion sem­i­nars or learn Span­ish as guests at a 24-year-old beach­front retreat called Mar de Jade (pro­nounced Hah-day), which in win­ter is usu­ally priced at $120 to $135 per per­son per night, dou­ble occu­pancy, meals included.

But you don’t have to vol­un­teer. Instead, you can spend $50 a night on a hotel room with an ocean view and lie around. Or spend $625 a night on a man­sion that sleeps 10 and lie around in splendor .

You can take a $10-per-person boat trip to snorkel by the rocks off Cha­calilla beach. You can fish for dorado or sierra or surf at La Caleta Point. You can kayak between rock for­ma­tions and secluded beaches, go bird­ing in a man­grove swamp to the north or drive half an hour east to the pet­ro­glyphs at Alta Vista. You can ride a horse through jun­gle to a secluded beach or drive about two hours into the hills and see Lake Santa María, its waters col­lected in the caldera of an ancient vol­cano. Or you can stroll back and forth, with refresh­ment breaks, on that grand cres­cent of sand.

Ahhh, seclu­sion

Until the first paved road con­nected the vil­lage to High­way 200 seven years ago, the only way into Cha­cala was by dirt road or boat. Now, busi­ness is pick­ing up and the occa­sional RV, rental car and taxi has joined the local traf­fic, includ­ing the cab that deliv­ered me to my lodg­ings at dusk one day.

It had been a three-hour flight from LAX to Puerto Val­larta, then a 90-minute ride, and my first thought, rolling into town, was, “Uh oh.” Two blocks of dirt roads, sleep­ing dogs and ram­shackle store­fronts. That was the com­mer­cial district.

Ahhh, but then I stepped out to the beach. It was nearly empty, a slight breeze blow­ing. The tall palms, the quiet, the loop of the beach between the rocky points at either end — this was a land­scape to ban­ish worry. In the restau­rants along the sand, a small band of Cana­dian snow­birds nursed seafood and cervezas. A lit­tle way up the beach , 20 RVs were parked in the palm grove next to the beach, their own­ers pay­ing $5 a night for the privilege.

Look­ing for a meal one night at about 7:30, I found nearly every restau­rant closed. They’ve had elec­tric­ity here for years, but from the look and sound of the beach­front after sun­set, you’d think they were still wait­ing for it.

Intrigued by the gated lux­ury homes of Marina Cha­cala, I greeted one home­owner from Seat­tle and soon was get­ting a tour of his nearly com­pleted villa, the onyx spi­ral stair­case as well as the 400-square-foot bath­room in the upstairs mas­ter bedroom.

Remem­ber, how­ever, that the near­est ATM is six miles up the road in Las Varas. Dozens of res­i­dents still live in dirt-floor houses, roost­ers greet each dawn, and the dom­i­nant archi­tec­tural style is brick box, not Span­ish Colo­nial. Out­side of Las Brisas restau­rant, the gated grounds of Marina Cha­cala and the lodg­ings Mar de Jade and Majahua (where I stayed), lit­tle Eng­lish is spoken.

But in four days, I never met any­body from South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, saw only one jet-powered ski in use and was never invited to go para­sail­ing or pur­chase a time share.

“It’s still real Mex­ico down there,” said Ben Laird, he of the imag­i­nary snakes, gaz­ing out at the town one after­noon from his hill­top home in Marina Cha­cala. “Chick­ens at your feet. And every­body knows everybody.”

Agents broaden their skills and knowl­edge of global meth­ods to attract clients

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mex­ico: The first U.S. PGA Tour event in Mex­ico doesn’t have Tiger Woods, Phil Mick­el­son or the pres­tige of the Match Play Cham­pi­onship that also is being held this weekend.

Instead, it boasts the “Devil’s Mouth.”

With white sand in front and mossy grass drip­ping over var­i­ous shades of lime­stone around the sides, the “mouth” actu­ally is the open­ing to an under­ground, cave-like pas­sage­way that comes out behind the sec­ond hole.

Known as a “cenote,” it’s the first of many nat­ural delights found on El Cama­leon, the Greg Norman-designed venue for this slice of U.S. PGA Tour his­tory, the Mayakoba Golf Clas­sic, which opens Thursday.

“It gives char­ac­ter right away,” Nor­man said. “It’s an open­ing state­ment: ‘Here it is!’”

Viewed from tee-to-green, the area is shaped like an upside-down egg. It is about 30 yards long and 20 yards wide. It’s steep, too, some­thing not truly appre­ci­ated until stand­ing on the green side and look­ing back toward the sandy front.

This week, it’s also marked as a haz­ard with three stakes and a painted cir­cle — all red, of course.

As strik­ing as it is, the intim­i­da­tion will be mostly for show this week.

The mouth is unlikely to swal­low many shots, see­ing as it is 320 yards from the tee of this 554-yard, par-5 hole. Pros should eas­ily be able to keep their dri­ves short or wide, then have lit­tle trou­ble clear­ing it with their sec­ond shots.

Still, dur­ing prac­tice rounds and per­haps even the real ones, carts parked all around the area and walk­ers came by, too, to take a peek and won­der about this nat­ural won­der.
“It’s a bad place to be when you’re play­ing golf, but it might be a fun place to be with your girl­friend,” joked one caddie.

Nor­man rec­om­mended doing more than just look­ing at it.

“You can walk through all the bats and bat (drop­pings),” he said with a smile befit­ting his Shark nick­name. “Go right ahead. I’ve done it.”

It doesn’t take going all the way through to appre­ci­ate the cenote.

From just a few feet in, thou­sands of sta­lac­tites are vis­i­ble, some still drip­ping water. There is more water gur­gling in pools, with plants grow­ing out of rocks and thick roots of trees that are hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of years old.

And, yes, there are a few shiny white golf balls.

“A lot of peo­ple don’t go down there because it’s hard to under­stand what exactly it is,” said Dou­glas Goubault, the course’s direc­tor of golf. “Once you get down there and start to see the depth of it, see how cool it is … it’s beautiful.”

The story of how it was dis­cov­ered is pretty cool, too.

Devel­op­ers knew all along about under­ground struc­tures because many of them were used to form a Venice-like canal sys­tem through­out this resort com­mu­nity along the Riv­iera Maya. But it wasn’t until the course already was laid out and bull­doz­ers were shap­ing the holes that this cenote pre­sented itself.

The intro­duc­tion came when a machine rolled over and the ground gave way. Once the rub­ble was cleared, work­ers saw the water-filled cave.

There was lit­tle thought given to fill­ing it in. Nor­man believes in dis­turb­ing the envi­ron­ment as lit­tle as pos­si­ble; besides, the key to all real estate is loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion, and a nat­ural obsta­cle like this is tough to beat.

“The whole design stayed exactly as it was,” Goubault said. “It was just per­fect. It’s just a won­der­ful char­ac­ter­is­tic to have.”

Goubault grudg­ingly calls the cenote the sig­na­ture piece of the course, not­ing that there are many more, such as the two holes fac­ing the Caribbean Sea and many more lined by man­groves, areas densely packed with trees and other veg­e­ta­tion. Any­one ven­tur­ing into the man­groves to find a way­ward shot is more likely to dis­cover an iguana or one of the course’s name­sake chameleons.

Although the world’s top 64 play­ers are at the Match Play in Ari­zona, the field for this event includes more than 40 U.S. PGA Tour win­ners. Those guys have com­bined for 148 vic­to­ries, includ­ing nine majors, two by Lee Janzen.

There are also entries from 12 coun­tries, with Latin Amer­ica rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Mex­ico, Paraguay and Argentina.

“This prob­a­bly already is or is going to be the biggest tour­na­ment, the most impor­tant tour­na­ment, in Latin Amer­ica,” said Car­los Franco of Paraguay.

Multi­na­tion­als pumped in $18.9 bil­lion in 2006, up 6.4%, accord­ing to gov­ern­ment projections.

Tom Kelly
Her­ald columnist

Who were the first snow­birds? It depends on where you ask the question.

His­tor­i­cally, snow­birds have been retirees who escape the cold of win­ter for a warmer cli­mate. Res­i­dents of the East Coast tend to say they were the first to dodge the snow by head­ing to Florida and the Caribbean. West-Coasters picked up the trend much later and invaded Ari­zona and south­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The term snow­bird also is given to a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Cana­di­ans who make Vic­to­ria, B.C., their home in Jan­u­ary and February.

Snow­birds usu­ally are able to be away from home for long peri­ods of time, often can afford to pur­chase a sec­ond home and have even been known to use their pri­mary and sec­ond homes for cre­ative tax pur­poses and income streams.

David Collins, chair­man of Active Liv­ing Inter­na­tional, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in the research and devel­op­ment of active adult com­mu­ni­ties, is an expert in pre­dict­ing where snow­birds will pre­fer to land. His company’s recent assign­ments have included a study of the 50-and-older hous­ing mar­ket for Mex­i­can devel­oper CEMEX and the con­struc­tion of a 150-unit retire­ment resort for Sen­sara Part­ners on Spain’s Costa del Sol. The Span­ish devel­op­ment, which opened in 2005, was hon­ored by the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Home Builders and was named the best retire­ment hous­ing project in Europe.

The Mex­i­can project, called Sen­sara Val­larta, is the first active adult com­mu­nity for peo­ple 50 and older to be devel­oped in Mex­ico. It con­tains 250 lux­ury con­do­mini­ums inside the grounds of the El Tigre Golf Course near Puerto Val­larta. The com­plex, designed by Mex­ico City archi­tect Jose Vigil, who con­ceived many of the homes in nearby exclu­sive Punta Mita area, is a 15-minute drive from the Puerto Val­larta airport.

Why Puerto Val­larta? What makes this des­ti­na­tion the choice over so many won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ties in the sun south of the border?

“In addi­tion to the sun, Puerto Val­larta is all about access,” Collins said. “There are more than 15,000 air flights a year now, and the prices are still rea­son­able for the type of per­son our devel­op­ments tar­get. Can­cun def­i­nitely is a mar­ket, but it’s more of a hotel mar­ket. Los Cabos is really more higher-end and not that easy for a lot of peo­ple to get to.”

Active Liv­ing International’s pres­ence has led to addi­tional inter­est in the Puerto Val­larta area for devel­op­ers of the over-50 mar­ket. Front Porch Devel­op­ment, a Bur­bank, Calif.-based com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in the senior mar­ket, is part­ner­ing with Mexico-based Plenus for a project called Luma, a 440-residence com­mu­nity on the ocean in Nuevo Vallarta.

Accord­ing to Active Liv­ing Inter­na­tional, active adults are defined as peo­ple older than 50 with an inde­pen­dent, com­fort­able and active social life. They are phys­i­cally fit and have a vari­ety of inter­ests, includ­ing travel, golf, ten­nis, swim­ming and social­iz­ing. Active adults think in terms of longevity rather than life expectancy. They typ­i­cally retain their own homes but plan to acquire a sec­ond home and may down­size their liv­ing arrange­ments with­out sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity or con­ve­nience. They want qual­ity, upscale options and ameni­ties for a vaca­tion or retire­ment lifestyle.

Sen­sara con­do­mini­ums start at approx­i­mately 1,312 square feet for one-bedroom units and range up to 2,786 square feet for three-bedroom homes. Luma’s con­dos start at 1,678 square feet for bed­room units and range up to 5,498 square feet for pent­houses. Prices for both devel­op­ments start in the $300,000 range, with the Luma pent­houses com­mand­ing more than $1.2 mil­lion. For more infor­ma­tion, go to www.mexicobuyersguide.com.

Active Liv­ing chair­man Collins said Sen­sara Val­larta is designed for the home­owner who wants a lux­u­ri­ous, trop­i­cal escape from the stress of the real world that also has access to an unmatched range of activ­i­ties and ameni­ties. In addi­tion to their own pools, club­house and restau­rant, res­i­dents of Sen­sara homes will have mem­ber­ships for Par­adise Village’s new sports club, plus entry to the Playa Royale Beach Club, which stretches along the Bay of Banderas.

Luma’s water­front res­i­dents also will have first-rate ameni­ties includ­ing high-tech secu­rity, American-style health care, high-speed Inter­net, English-speaking staff and a “per­sonal lifestyle” concierge program.

By def­i­n­i­tion, snow­birds take flight for the sun. How­ever, with second-home prices ris­ing in the U.S., the lure of the sun must include rea­son­able costs, avail­able health care and non-negotiable, qual­ity ameni­ties. The world’s lead­ers in over-50 projects are now bet­ting on Mex­ico, and other coun­tries south of the bor­der cer­tainly will follow.

Tom Kelly’s book “Cash­ing In on a Sec­ond Home in Mex­ico: How to Buy, Rent and Profit from Prop­erty South of the Bor­der” was writ­ten with Mitch Creek­more, senior vice pres­i­dent of Houston-based Stew­art Inter­na­tional. The book is avail­able in retail stores, on Amazon.com and on tomkelly.com.

Feb­ru­ary 15, 2007

Can­cun, Mex­ico, Feb 15 (Prensa Latina) Mex­ico wants to give a shot of 1.3 bil­lion dol­lars to its tourist sec­tor this year with impor­tant invest­ments, in order to become among the five most vis­ited coun­tries of the world in a short time, said national executives.

BALTIMORE, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ — Inter­na­tional Liv­ing mag­a­zine — a lead­ing resource for help­ing peo­ple live, travel, and pros­per over­seas –has released its first annual fore­cast of the hottest inter­na­tional realestate markets.

The report — Mar­kets to Watch in 2007 — focuses on seven emerg­in­greal estate mar­kets that cur­rently enjoy a spe­cial com­bi­na­tion of economic,political and other fac­tors that give them attrac­tive invest­ment potential.The report details the specifics of the seven mar­kets and how investors canbest seize avail­able oppor­tu­ni­ties, http://www.internationalliving.com/markets_to_watch.html.

“The price of real estate gen­er­ally goes up in line with infla­tion. Butin some pock­ets of the world, real estate will appre­ci­ate at a much faster rate,” says Inter­na­tional Living’s Leif Simon, in the report. “These are usu­ally des­ti­na­tions with unique, good value, lim­ited inven­tory. Beach, for exam­ple, or old — truly old — city cen­ters. The less there is of some­thing, the bet­ter for who­ever owns it.” The mar­kets Inter­na­tional Liv­ing is watch­ing for 2007:

– Mon­tene­gro: A hid­den yet spec­tac­u­lar Adri­atic gem. Lapped by a glit­ter­ing sea of translu­cent aqua­ma­rine, this is one of the loveli­est coun­tries in Europe — and one of the most forgotten.

— Carta­gena, Colom­bia: A walled city in “The For­got­ten Caribbean”. White-sand beaches, world-class div­ing and snor­kel­ing, and an ancient walled city crammed full of faith­fully restored and well-maintained exam­ples of Span­ish colo­nial architecture.

– Malaysia: This is South­east Asia’s top retire­ment haven, which pro­vides a Western-type lifestyle. This under­rated des­ti­na­tion is also under-priced.

— Cal­abria, Italy: A hid­den, sun-kissed cor­ner of Europe, it is encir­cled by clear silver-blue sea on three sides. Despite the region’s obvi­ous allure, almost nobody knows about it.

— Ciu­dad Vieja, Uruguay: One of the world’s top 10 cheap­est cities and still undis­cov­ered. The real estate in this city began a renais­sance back around 1995, and began to really hit its stride in 2004. The prop­erty mar­ket in this area is def­i­nitely on the move.

— Hon­duras Cloud For­est: A mys­ti­cal cloud forest-hidden in a trop­i­cal moun­tain par­adise. In addi­tion to the nat­ural beauty, these moun­tain forests are just min­utes from a charm­ing beach­side town with an inter­na­tional airport.

— Mexico’s Flamingo Coast: Dozens of quaint lit­tle beach towns, side-by-side. The Flamingo Cost offers warm weather, friendly locals, a safe atmos­phere, and great food; what’s more, the mad­den­ing crowds have not yet arrived.

Inter­na­tional Liv­ing has an estab­lished track record of pre­dict­ing which inter­na­tional real estate mar­kets are ready to increase in value, but this is the first time the orga­ni­za­tion has pro­duced a com­pre­hen­sive fore­cast report. Some of the real estate mar­kets that Inter­na­tional Liv­ing has cor­rectly pre­dicted would increase in value include:

— April 1988 — Dublin, Ire­land
— March 1989 — Costa Rica
– Octo­ber 1989 — Tus­cany, Italy
– March 1991 — Panama
– Novem­ber 1993 — Dor­dogne, France
– Feb­ru­ary 1994 — Roatan, Hon­duras
– Novem­ber 2002 — Buenos Aires, Argentina

Inter­na­tional Liv­ing (http://www.internationalliving.com) — founded in1979 — helps peo­ple live out their dreams by relo­cat­ing, trav­el­ing, and­in­vest­ing over­seas. Inter­na­tional Liv­ing pub­lishes a monthly mag­a­zine, a free daily e-letter(http://www.internationalliving.com/e-letter_signup3.html) which is read by more than 420,000 sub­scribers daily, and sev­eral coun­try– specifice-letters. The com­pany is head­quar­tered in Water­ford, Ire­land, with offices in Bal­ti­more, Md., Panama City, Panama, and Paris and local offices inMex­ico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Hon­duras, and Ecuador.

CONTACT: Daniel Lott, Web Mar­ket­ing Director,dlott@internationalliving.com, 410–895-7917.

Buy­ing prop­erty over­seas can be risky, but US and Cana­di­ans have access to a spe­cial ser­vice that can guard against loss.

It’s called title insur­ance — a stan­dard item for domes­tic prop­erty pur­chases for decades, and a grow­ing safety net for peo­ple buy­ing sec­ond and retire­ment homes abroad.

Com­pa­nies like First Amer­i­can Title Insur­ance Com­pany, Stew­art Title and a hand­ful of other North Amer­i­can insur­ers have a grow­ing net­work of real estate lawyers and agents abroad who research the chain of own­er­ship of a piece of prop­erty a client wants to buy.

First Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive Turalu Brady Mur­dock, who super­vises title research in 35 coun­tries in Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean, said her com­pany insures the buyer in Amer­i­can dol­lars after car­ry­ing out a “due dili­gence” title search. If there are ques­tions about own­er­ship, the com­pany might warn against a pur­chase or insure at a less-than-absolute level.

“If we say you own it, and it turns out you don’t, we have to indem­nify you against the loss,” she said in a tele­phone inter­view. “We’re insur­ing that you own it, no one else has a mort­gage on it, and no one else has the right to use it.”

If a chal­lenge is made down the road, the com­pany also pays for attor­neys to defend own­er­ship. Prop­erty buy­ers pay a one-time fee for title insur­ance. Typ­i­cal rates are 1,000 dol­lars for a 200,000-dollar land pur­chase in Mex­ico, or 850 dol­lars for 150,000-dollar prop­er­ties else­where in Latin America.

The fee goes up accord­ingly for more expen­sive prop­er­ties: a 5-dollar charge is added for each addi­tional 1,000 dol­lars in prop­erty value. Across Latin Amer­ica, some prop­erty is only held on a lease, or pos­ses­sory title sys­tem, and can only be titled to a poten­tial pur­chaser after the lease expires — a risky enter­prise, Brady Mur­dock said.

Other land might belong to the gov­ern­ment but have been occu­pied by squat­ters for decades who claim ownership.

And cit­i­zens from the US and Canada seem to attract friv­o­lous claims against their newly-acquired prop­erty because some locals believe they have deep pock­ets and will read­ily set­tle out of court to avoid has­sles, Brady Mur­dock noted.

With title insur­ance, how­ever, a lawyer would be engaged to com­bat such claims — although cases can be tied up for years in the courts.

“Most peo­ple are risk tak­ers when they are buy­ing over­seas,” Brady Mur­dock said. “I can’t imag­ine buy­ing a piece of prop­erty over­seas with­out title insurance.”

Symp­to­matic of the rock­et­ing real estate inter­est in Latin Amer­ica, First Amer­i­can only started its for­eign busi­ness in the 1970s in Mex­ico. In 1997, as the dot.com sec­tor was thriv­ing and US baby boomers were start­ing to think about retir­ing, demand increased expo­nen­tially, she said.

That’s when the com­pany started devel­op­ing its net­work of reli­able English-speaking real estate lawyers across Latin America.

From 1998 onwards, First Amer­i­can dou­bled its for­eign title busi­ness every year. In 2006, the busi­ness nearly tripled at a vol­ume of 160 per cent times the pre­vi­ous year. She declined to esti­mate actual num­bers of pur­chases pend­ing release of the 2006 annual report.

Brady Mur­dock noted that it’s not just wealthy or baby boomer Amer­i­cans buy­ing sec­ond homes in Latin America.

As land prices have sky­rock­eted in the US, many young Amer­i­can fam­i­lies with small chil­dren are mov­ing south to live for good, doing either home school­ing or send­ing chil­dren to local schools.

Many Amer­i­cans have been start­ing busi­nesses, or are con­nect­ing to busi­nesss at home via the inter­net. “It’s just amaz­ing,” she said.

By Pat Reber

Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness Jour­nal — 10:39 AM EST
Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 12, 2007
by Neil Adler
Staff Reporter

The Car­lyle Group has raised more than $130 mil­lion for an invest­ment fund focused south of the U.S. border.

The D.C.-based pri­vate equity firm says its new fund, Car­lyle Mex­ico Part­ners, has raised $134 mil­lion to com­mit to com­pa­nies pri­mar­ily in Carlyle’s seven areas of exper­tise, such as the aero­space, defense, energy, health care, tech­nol­ogy, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and media.

Car­lyle Mex­ico Part­ners cur­rently has five invest­ment pro­fes­sion­als based in Mex­ico City.

“As we’ve seen in mar­kets around the globe, Mex­ico presents an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to com­bine pri­vate equity invest­ments with qual­ity local busi­nesses to cre­ate first-class global com­peti­tors,” says David Ruben­stein, a co-founder of Car­lyle, in a statement.

Car­lyle, which invests in buy­outs, ven­ture and growth cap­i­tal, real estate and lever­aged finance, has $54.5 bil­lion under management.

The U.S. might share a nearly 2,000-mile bor­der with Mex­ico, a coun­try almost three times the size of Texas, but most Amer­i­can trav­el­ers are famil­iar with only a hand­ful of its destinations—Cancun, Puerto Val­larta, and other beach towns that cater to Amer­i­cans.
While a relax­ing vaca­tion at a beach resort never hurt any­one, vis­i­tors who avoid trav­el­ing else­where are miss­ing out on some of the best that Mex­ico has to offer: vir­gin beaches unspoiled by devel­op­ment, colo­nial cities that are older and more Euro­pean than any­thing in the States, and indige­nous cul­tures that still hold true to ancient tra­di­tions. All that, and lower prices, too.

In many colo­nial cities and small out-of-the-way beach towns, you’ll find B&Bs and inns charg­ing as lit­tle as $50 a night (or less) and lux­u­ri­ous accom­mo­da­tions in con­verted hacien­das and Span­ish estates for less than $150 a night. As for din­ing and shop­ping, you’ll always find cheaper and more authen­tic food and hand­i­crafts beyond the big tourist zones.

To expe­ri­ence Mex­ico out­side the resorts you’ll need to show a bit of inde­pen­dence and an open­ness to a less struc­tured style of travel. Dri­ving a rental car down crumbly roads, speak­ing some basic Span­ish, and shar­ing your room with a lizard or two may be involved. Nev­er­the­less, for the right kind of trav­eler, these ele­ments are part of the excite­ment of ven­tur­ing off the beaten path.

Here’s a glimpse at 10 afford­able, under-the-radar Mex­i­can cities and beach towns that can be added on to a beach resort vaca­tion or made the focus of a trip.

http://www.smartertravel.com/travel-advice/ten-affordable-under-the-radar-mexican-cities-and-beach-towns.html?id=2309064

For $10,000 a day, you can have the ulti­mate surf­ing sojourn in Indone­sia aboard the 110-foot Indies Trader IV, a sort of float­ing hotel with 15 cab­ins, a heli­pad and three-course meals with wine. A motor­ized ten­der takes you to the waves.

Sandy Huf­faker for The New York Times

Liv Gal­en­dez learn­ing to surf in Cal­i­for­nia. Cater­ing to wealth­ier surfers has become a big busi­ness.

Or for a daily rate, in addi­tion to the cost of his air­fare, Brad Ger­lach will give pri­vate instruc­tion to select clients any­where in the world. Mr. Ger­lach, who was ranked No. 1 on surfing’s world pro­fes­sional tour dur­ing the 1986 and 1991 sea­sons, termed the cost “not cheap at all.”

Surf­ing, once the sport of Hawai­ian kings, has come full cir­cle. After becom­ing a coun­ter­cul­ture activ­ity for beach bums and bohemi­ans, it has emerged as a sta­tus sport, like ski­ing and golf.

“It’s sort of lost that dirt­bag appeal,” said Isabelle Tihanyi, who with her twin, Car­o­line, started Surf Diva, a school based in La Jolla, Calif., that caters mostly to women, a grow­ing seg­ment of surfers. “Now you see more yup­pies in the water with a brand-new board and a brand-new S.U.V. — all the lat­est tech­ni­cal gear.”

This new species of surfer con­tributes to a boom­ing mar­ket for vaca­tion pack­ages, instruc­tion, equip­ment and real estate near some of the world’s best surf breaks. Like golf, surf­ing has become an ideal activ­ity around which to dis­cuss busi­ness. Surfers find plenty of time for talk while dri­ving in search of good spots, while chang­ing into and out of wet­suits in the park­ing lot, and espe­cially while wait­ing between sets of waves.

“There’s more down time in surf­ing than any other sport,” said Chris Mauro, the edi­tor of Surfer Magazine.

It was not always this way. “In the 1970s, you would stop at 25 and went to work or you were going straight to loser­dom,” Mr. Mauro said. “It used to be a strike against you if you were a surfer.”

In those days, con­tin­u­ing to surf while car­ry­ing on a career was a mat­ter best left secret. “If you were a surfer and you wore a suit and tie to work, you tried to hide the fact you surfed,” Mr. Mauro said. “Now, it’s like you’re the star on the com­pany bas­ket­ball team.”

Todd Juneau, a real estate con­sul­tant in San Diego and a long­time surfer, trolls for busi­ness in local line­ups. “I’ll sit in the water and lis­ten to con­ver­sa­tions, and if some­one says some­thing about real estate, I’ll find a way to inter­ject,” he said. “And it pays off.

“In San Diego, you never know if the guy next to you could be a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire, or a judge or an exec­u­tive, and he’s surf­ing.”

Dionne Mochon, 32, a pros­e­cu­tor in San Diego, began tak­ing surf lessons last year. “Surf­ing has opened so many doors to meet peo­ple, net­work and just enjoy being a woman inter­act­ing with other pro­fes­sion­als on a social level,” she wrote in a recent e-mail mes­sage. “Judges I appear with surf, oppos­ing coun­sel surf, my col­leagues surf, and I made so many friends who surf as well.”

Enrique Huerta, who is known as Moose, said he landed a job in Manhattan’s fash­ion indus­try partly because of surf­ing. A for­mer pro­fes­sional long­boarder, Huerta, 28, works in inter­na­tional sales and mer­chan­dis­ing for a denim com­pany. He got to know two of the company’s founders dur­ing surf ses­sions off Long Island.

“That was kind of the ice­breaker,” Mr. Huerta said.

Jeff Kolodny, a tal­ent agent for the William Mor­ris Agency in Bev­erly Hills, Calif., said he had seen a surge in inter­est in surf­ing at work. Mr. Kolodny began surf­ing at 12 and worked as an asso­ciate edi­tor at Surf­ing Mag­a­zine before join­ing William Mor­ris, a com­pany with a grow­ing num­ber of surf­ing devotees.

“Only in the last few years has any­one cared that I’m a surfer,” he said. “Now I’m really pop­u­lar. Peo­ple you would never imag­ine in your life are going to the beach, senior exec­u­tives at my company.”

It is unclear why surf­ing has found a broader respectabil­ity. Some point to the ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing of Quik­sil­ver, the board apparel and acces­sories com­pany, in 1986 as a catalyst.

Per­haps reflect­ing surfing’s laid-back roots, con­crete fig­ures on par­tic­i­pa­tion are hard to come by. Two mil­lion peo­ple con­sider them­selves active surfers in the United States, twice as many as 20 years ago, accord­ing to Action Sports Retailer, the lead­ing board-sports indus­try trade show. An active surfer is con­sid­ered some­one who goes out at least eight times a year.

Surfing’s pop­u­lar­ity has helped drive inter­na­tional real estate sales, with prop­erty along remote coast­lines being bought and devel­oped into resorts and vaca­tion homes. Parts of Costa Rica are con­sid­ered so crowded that some surfers have pushed north to Nicaragua. And in Mex­ico, rumors abound about devel­op­ment in a remote area of Baja Cal­i­for­nia known as Scor­pion Bay.

A drive of more than 800 miles from San Diego, Scor­pion Bay can be dif­fi­cult to reach, and it lacks most ameni­ties. Only pri­vate air­planes can land there, and those who drive must cover a few hun­dred miles along dirt roads through the desert. For years, most peo­ple stayed at a cold-shower camp­site on a rocky bluff above the beach. On their Web site, Scorpionbay.net, the campground’s oper­a­tors denied that they would sell out.

Surf schools have become another growth indus­try. San Diego had so many that the city began to reg­u­late them.

Richard Schmidt, a renowned big-wave surfer, started giv­ing lessons part time in 1978, while work­ing as a life­guard in Santa Cruz, Calif. Six years ago, his surf school began tak­ing clients to Costa Rica dur­ing the win­ter. They stay near the beach in a house where Mr. Schmidt’s wife teaches yoga. They also retain a masseuse.

Sandy Huf­faker for The New York Times

Todd Juneau, left, a real estate con­sul­tant, and Dave Sims com­mut­ing to Pacific Beach in San Diego. Juneau lis­tens in the surf for busi­ness talk.

In addi­tion to trips to Costa Rica, Surf Diva holds about 50 cor­po­rate clin­ics a year in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Pack­ages can include accom­mo­da­tions, trans­porta­tion, golf and spas.

Many of Surf Diva’s clients are from New York City; they work on Wall Street or in the enter­tain­ment or fash­ion indus­tries. Some stay at La Valen­cia Hotel in La Jolla, where rooms start at more than $300 a night.

“It’s more than just a vaca­tion,” Isabelle Tihanyi said. “It’s a girls’ adven­ture trip.”

But for more adven­ture, surfers can take boat trips to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Indone­sia and East Timor.

“Good surf is pre­dom­i­nantly a third-world deal,” said Jake Bur­ton Car­pen­ter, founder and owner of Bur­ton Snow­boards. “In surf­ing, you’re try­ing to get away from the crowd.”

Mr. Car­pen­ter, 52, whose com­pany bought Chan­nel Islands Surf­boards in June, began surf­ing as an adult and now rides waves an aver­age of 60 days a year. He plans to take a boat trip to the Mal­dives in the Indian Ocean this summer.

“A big part of what’s hap­pened,” he said, “is that the mar­ket has aged, and not in a neg­a­tive way. I would run into so many peo­ple who say, ‘Oh, I used to surf.’ But peo­ple are stay­ing with it more. These board sports you can do the rest of your life.”

As a result, high-end boat char­ters in des­ti­na­tions like Indone­sia have begun to serve older, more afflu­ent clients. “With boat trips, it’s an older demo­graphic because these trips are so expen­sive,” Mr. Car­pen­ter said.

Through Sur­fAid Inter­na­tional, a non­profit pub­lic health orga­ni­za­tion started in the Mentawai Islands, Indone­sia, by a doc­tor who is also a surfer, Mr. Ger­lach met one of his well-heeled clients. That client intro­duced him to oth­ers. They fly him to places like Costa Rica for lessons.
As a surf coach, Mr. Ger­lach func­tions like a golf pro, offer­ing insight on the mechan­ics of catch­ing and rid­ing waves, and shar­ing some shortcuts.

“You’ve got to pick the right surf­board for the con­di­tions,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to play 18 holes with a wedge, and you wouldn’t want to play 18 holes with a driver.”

Mon­tauk, a prime East Coast surf­ing spot at the tip of Long Island, serves as a sym­bol for the sport’s evolv­ing status.

Last sum­mer, in a dirt park­ing lot near Ditch Plains, a bot­tle­necked surf break, Mr. Huerta said he over­heard a com­ment that spoke to the state of surf­ing today. Through a breeze, he heard a voice say, “I can get ser­vice on my Treo at Scor­pion Bay.”

The law recog­nises that all legit­i­mate debts are valid oblig­a­tions of any debtor. The debtor shall ful­fill its oblig­a­tion, using all its assets where necessary.

Secu­ri­ties in Méx­ico are leg­is­lated by the Law of Secu­ri­ties and Credit Oper­a­tions (Ley de Títu­los y Opera­ciones de Crédito). Accord­ing to this law secu­ri­ties can be nom­i­na­tives or to the bearer.

Usu­ally, if debt is incurred in the ordi­nary course of busi­ness, and is not exe­cuted in the form of a secu­rity (“título de crédito”) such as a promis­sory note, the cred­i­tor will need to demand pay­ment through an ordi­nary com­mer­cial pro­ce­dure. In such pro­ce­dure, the cred­i­tor must prove the exis­tence of the debt and the fact that the debt has matured but has not been paid.

If there is evi­dence that the debt is secured, the cred­i­tor could try an exec­u­tive com­mer­cial pro­ce­dure before the court. Under this alter­na­tive, when the court receives the claim, it not only informs the debtor about the pro­ce­dure but also requires the debtor to either: (i) make the pay­ment to the court or (ii) imme­di­ately pro­duce evi­dence to the court offi­cial that pay­ment has been made.

If the debtor does not do either (i) or (ii), then the assets would be seized by the court to ensure and guar­an­tee that if at the end of the trial the debt has to be hon­ored, the court has enough assets upon which to col­lect and recover the debt.

In the sit­u­a­tion where the debt has been exe­cuted in the form of a secu­rity the pro­ce­dure varies, depend­ing on the type of secu­rity as follows:

Trust Arrange­ment – At the time when the debtor incurs the debt, it trans­fer cer­tain assets to a third party (a trustee), which is usu­ally a bank, with irrev­o­ca­ble instruc­tions. These instruc­tions pro­vide that if pay­ment is not made, the trustee can liq­ui­date the assets and make the pay­ment. This mech­a­nism has proved to be very suc­cess­ful, although there are some prece­dents, where the courts have issued injunc­tions to trustee to pre­vent them form liq­ui­dat­ing assets until the court has had time to review the fair­ness of the arrangement.

Mort­gages – There is a sep­a­rate court pro­ce­dure for mort­gages. The court ver­i­fies that the pay­ment is due and autho­rises the sale of the asset. The sale is made through pub­lic auc­tion car­ried out by the court itself. Pay­ment is made from the pro­ceeds. If pro­ceeds are insuf­fi­cient to pay the debt, the bal­ance will be an unse­cured claim.

Lien – The law allows liens on goods to be cre­ated; there are two alternatives:

i) The pos­ses­sion of the goods is trans­ferred from the debtor to a third party, or under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, to the cred­i­tor. In the event of default, the cred­i­tor may ask the court to approve the sale of the goods under lien. In such case, the judge noti­fies the debtor and gives them a 15 days to show evi­dence of the pay­ment. If no evi­dence of pay­ment is pro­duced, the judge will approve the sale of goods. The cor­re­spond­ing con­sid­er­a­tion or price will be kept under lien until the judge approves the payment.

If the pro­ceeds are insuf­fi­cient to pay the debt, the bal­ance will be an unse­cured claim.

ii) In the case of a grant of a lien with­out the trans­fer of goods to either a third party or the cred­i­tor, the debtor can con­tinue to enjoy the pos­ses­sion and the use of goods.
The debtor would then be able to con­tinue its busi­ness oper­a­tion, while simul­ta­ne­ously being able to grant a secu­rity to its creditor.

Cor­po­rate Bank­ruptcy and liq­ui­da­tion process­esAs in many other juris­dic­tions, infor­mal processes may be nego­ti­ated to res­cue a com­pany or to liq­ui­date it.

In Mex­ico, the major­ity of restruc­tur­ing processes are actu­ally out of court. Usu­ally, the dif­fer­ent inter­ested par­ties organ­ise them­selves into a com­mit­tee. The com­mit­tee works among the dif­fer­ent cred­i­tors in order to effec­tively nego­ti­ate with creditors.

The nego­ti­a­tion attempts to esti­mate the sce­nario in which the debtor can recover its finan­cial debt and in which cred­i­tors max­imise recov­ery and limit their losses. If the debtor is not finan­cially viable, then the com­mit­tee may agree to an orderly liquidation.

When an infor­mal process is unsuc­cess­ful, the dif­fer­ent par­ties related to the com­pany can ini­ti­ate a for­mal pro­ce­dure. For­mal pro­ce­dure can also be ini­ti­ated if the finan­cial con­di­tion of the debtor has dete­ri­o­rated significantly.

In May 12, 2000, a new Law on Mer­can­tile Insol­vency Pro­ceed­ings (“LMIP”) was issued and pub­lished in the offi­cial Jour­nal of the Fed­er­a­tion, thus becom­ing effec­tive in May 15, 2000.
The LMIP states a one full process in two main phases:

Con­cil­i­a­tion – The first phase pro­vides the basis for the mer­can­tile cor­po­rate entity to attempt to reach a restruc­tur­ing agree­ment with its cred­i­tors. Although any cred­i­tor that enters this type of agree­ment will loose its rights dur­ing the insol­vency pro­ceed­ings. The fig­ure of con­cil­ia­tor may dis­rupt the con­cil­i­a­tion phase and com­mence the bankruptcy/liquidation phase, when no agree­ment has been reached by both parties.

Con­cil­i­a­tion agree­ments are only effec­tive when approved by the Debtor and more than 50% of the total sum of creditors.

Bankruptcy/liquidation – The sec­ond phase pro­vides for the liq­ui­da­tion of the com­pany if it is unable to con­clude an agree­ment with its cred­i­tors dur­ing the con­cil­i­a­tion phase.

Three sup­po­si­tions have to occur before declar­ing the bank­ruptcy, which include that the debtor requests bank­ruptcy, that the time limit for reach­ing an agree­ment in the con­cil­i­a­tion phase has past and that the Con­cil­ia­tor requests for bank­ruptcy after con­sid­er­ing that no agree­ment will be reached.

When bank­ruptcy is declared, man­age­ment will be taken by a trustee-in-bankruptcy and a Judge will make orders to occupy prop­erty and busi­ness. The Con­cil­ia­tor, when autho­rised by the Fed­eral Insti­tute of Spe­cial­ist in Mer­can­tile Pro­ce­dures, can act as the trustee-in-bankruptcy.

The liq­ui­da­tion must be agreed with the company’s cred­i­tors and all the liq­uida­tors actions would be coor­di­nated by a creditor’s com­mit­tee. The liq­ui­da­tion actions and trans­ac­tions should be approved by the creditor’s com­mit­tee but also by the liq­uida­tors appointed by the company’s share­hold­ers. In some cases approval from the share­hold­ers must also be obtained.

If the liq­uida­tors are actu­ally trustees appointed by the court and are act­ing in a for­mal pro­ce­dure, the liq­ui­da­tion has to be approved by the court. The trustee must sub­mit details of the sale of goods, the con­di­tion of the assets still owned by the com­pany and the rela­tion of those cred­i­tors who will receive pay­ments. This report has to be pre­sented to the court at least every two months. Key play­ers in an insol­vency pro­ce­dureThe key play­ers and their respon­si­bil­i­ties are as follows:

Vis­i­tor: Which once an action for mer­can­tile insol­vency has taken place will be des­ig­nated by the Insti­tute when requested by a judge.

Con­cil­ia­tor: Once a sen­tence has been issued regard­ing an insol­vency pro­ce­dure the judge will request from the Insti­tute to des­ig­nate a Con­cil­ia­tor to be in charge of the Company’s man­age­ment and recog­ni­tion of uniden­ti­fied cred­i­tors. Another task of the Con­cil­ia­tor will be to rearrange options for a new agreement.

Trustee-in-bankruptcy: Once a bank­ruptcy is declared the judge will request the Insti­tute to des­ig­nate a Trustee or con­firm the Con­cil­ia­tor as trustee-in-bankruptcy for the Company’s appraisal and sale of assets.

Inter­ven­ers: This is des­ig­nated by the cred­i­tors to super­vise the con­cil­ia­tor and the trustee.
Hier­ar­chy in the pay­ment of cred­its­Cred­i­tors are paid over any other cred­its when:
Are part of the cred­its listed in the arti­cle 123 para­graph A, sec­tion XXIII of the Mexico’s Polit­i­cal Constitution

Cred­its incurred dur­ing the con­trol of the con­cil­ia­tor with pre­vi­ous autho­ri­sa­tion
Cred­its used for the pro­tec­tion of the prop­er­ties
For the pay­ing of Inspector’s fees and cred­its result­ing from judi­cial pro­ceed­ings for the ben­e­fit of the Com­pany in con­trol of a Conciliator

The rest of the cred­its are paid in the fol­low­ing order:

Cred­i­tors used for funeral or ill­ness expenses

Cred­i­tors with war­ranties or pledges

Spe­cial priv­i­lege creditors

All other cred­i­tors not men­tioned above

Infor­ma­tion for bankruptcy/liquidation process

Infor­ma­tion avail­able in a cor­po­rate bankruptcy/liquidation, for­mal or infor­mal res­cue includes the finan­cial state­ments for the last 3 years, mem­o­ran­dum of events that caused breach between cred­i­tors and the debtor, a sched­ule of the Company’s debtors and a inven­tory of all the Company’s assets.

Insol­vency pro­ce­dures in for­eign juris­dic­tion­sIn the case that insol­vency pro­ce­dures are started in another juris­dic­tion, a Mex­i­can court will recog­nise the effect of any pro­ceed­ing ini­ti­ated in a for­eign juris­dic­tion, if such for­eign juris­dic­tion recog­nises the pro­ce­dures ini­ti­ated in Mex­ico. The for­eign court or the for­eign trustee of the for­eign pro­ceed­ings should request recog­ni­tion and assis­tance from the Mex­i­can courts in any proceeding.

Per­spec­tives

In 2004, the Mex­i­can econ­omy grew a 4.4% as result of greater demand. The out­look for the fol­low­ing year is sim­i­lar with an esti­mated 4.0% growth derived from the eco­nomic activ­ity dri­ven by con­sump­tion, invest­ment and a mod­er­ate behav­iour of exports. Exports would be affected from the USA expected slim eco­nomic slow­down dur­ing 2005. The Mex­i­can eco­nomic growth would be based in acces­si­ble inter­na­tional financ­ing, income from oil exports and fam­ily remit­tance, thus pro­vid­ing some resources to sup­port the aggre­gate expend­ing. It is impor­tant to acknowl­edge that the growth would be lim­ited until the struc­tural reforms take place.

How­ever, in the short term ana­lyst do not see any impor­tant reform to take place as the cur­rent polit­i­cal inter­ests are focus in the 2006 elec­tions. The Mex­i­can econ­omy is closely related to the USA econ­omy. Mex­i­can infla­tion is expected to be sta­ble; how­ever, not at the 3% yearly goal due to the fact that the USA Fed­eral Reserve will con­tinue increas­ing its inter­est rates, thus increas­ing the infla­tion­ary pres­sures to the Mex­i­can econ­omy. Other fac­tors to con­sider are those within the Mex­i­can econ­omy such as the price of goods and ser­vices. The prices of goods are expected to remain sta­ble. How­ever, the prices of ser­vices are expected to increase as some of them have fall behind in the last cou­ple of years, there­fore increas­ing infla­tion­ary pres­sures. The exchange rate is expected to remain sta­ble with a light depre­ci­a­tion to a real level. The strength of the Peso is based by oil exports and remit­tance Mex­i­cans work­ing in the USA.

Another fac­tor that would con­tribute to the peso sta­bil­ity is the deval­u­a­tion of the dol­lar against other currencies.An impor­tant fac­tor to con­sider is the elec­tions cam­paign. Ana­lysts do not expect great changes in the Mex­i­can econ­omy over the fol­low­ing months since the early cam­paigns would lessen the uncer­tainty of the can­di­dates con­tend­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, the uncer­tainty would increase as the July 2006 elec­tions get closer and the can­di­date of each party is defined.

Stay­ing ahead of the crowd on the Nayarit coast
Keep head­ing north of Puerto Val­larta to find tran­quil towns

Chris­tine Del­sol, Chron­i­cle Staff Writer
Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 4, 2007

(02–04) 04:00 PST San Fran­cisco, Mex­ico — By the time I got to Sayulita, on the Pacific coast north of Puerto Val­larta, it was almost too late. San Pan­cho was the new Sayulita, and Lo de Marco, a few miles far­ther north, stood ready to become the next San Pancho.

Con­fused yet? It’s all part of the effort by Mar­gar­i­taville seek­ers to stay one step ahead of the new mega-resort ris­ing on the beach in the state of Nayarit, which Mex­ico intends to trans­form into the next Can­cún. As hotels rise and bull­doz­ers rum­ble across the dunes, bare­foot trav­el­ers whose taste runs more to fish tacos and ham­mocks are migrat­ing to vil­lages far­ther and far­ther up the coast.

To achieve Mar­gar­i­taville sta­tus, a place must be relax­ing but in some way stim­u­lat­ing; unspoiled yet equipped with good restau­rants and com­fort­able digs; within reach of the city’s bou­tiques, super­mar­kets, clubs and ATMs, but at a safe remove from the north­ward march of gated resorts and lux­ury villas.

By all accounts, Sayulita pos­sesses the req­ui­site qual­i­ties. It has built up a fanatic fol­low­ing, as evi­denced by the cries of alarm pro­voked by last year’s announce­ment that the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment tourist devel­op­ment agency was build­ing infra­struc­ture for its next project, on the coast about 15 min­utes south of Sayulita (see side­bar, Page G8). Vet­eran vis­i­tors were dis­mayed to learn the golf courses and lav­ish hotels they’d been try­ing to avoid were fol­low­ing them along the coast.

By the time my sis­ter, Diane, and I arrived last fall, U.S.-level prices in Sayulita were crowd­ing out the bar­gains. Con­dos and vil­las boast­ing infin­ity pools and New York loft decor were stack­ing up in the hills on the edge of town. It was still pic­turesque and mostly authen­tic, and it still had gnarly surf breaks — only now it had more lodg­ing choices, more shop­ping, more English-speaking locals. Com­fort had over­taken discovery.

A model village

Descrip­tions of San Fran­cisco, pop­u­larly known as San Pan­cho (just as we know rev­o­lu­tion­ary gen­eral Fran­cisco Villa as “Pan­cho”), sound much like the ear­lier reports from Sayulita: a small, clean vil­lage sur­rounded by jun­gle and moun­tains that wears its tra­di­tions on its sleeve. But it also has water­color sun­sets, a sea tur­tle nest­ing ground and pos­si­bly the best surf­ing on Mexico’s west coast. So we took the exit north of Sayulita on High­way 200 and bumped into town in the dark of night.

Despite the old-fashioned cob­ble­stone that rat­tled our teeth, San Pan­cho has been a town only since the 1970s, when the fish­ing set­tle­ment con­sist­ing of maybe four extended fam­i­lies cap­tured the fancy of then pres­i­dent Luis Echev­er­ría. Echev­er­ría swooped in by heli­copter once a week or so to drink cof­fee and eat home­made tor­tillas with fish­er­men and farm­ers, even­tu­ally build­ing a beach­front palace on the edge of today’s town.

The pres­i­dent began cre­at­ing a self-sufficient model vil­lage. Work­ers lured by promises of land and a home laid the cob­ble­stone, plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal sys­tems. They built houses, a church and plaza, schools and a hos­pi­tal. They planted orchards and built fac­to­ries to process the fruit.
Instead of gar­ner­ing acco­lades for his efforts, Echev­er­ría ended up flee­ing Mex­ico to avoid pros­e­cu­tion for the killings of stu­dent demon­stra­tors in 1968 and 1971. San Pan­cho had to take com­mand of its own fate, sub­sist­ing on mango pro­cess­ing until North Amer­i­can tourists and expa­tri­ates started arriv­ing in the mid-1990s.

At the turn of the mil­len­nium San Pancho’s only hotel was the Costa Azul, an “adven­ture resort,” started by a surfer in 1991, which offers guided kayak­ing, bik­ing, surf­ing, snor­kel­ing and horse­back trips on the beach and in the jun­gle. Today, rental bun­ga­lows pro­lif­er­ate, and one of Pacific Mexico’s top-rated bed and break­fasts com­mands a hill­side perch at the jungle’s doorstep, just beyond the Costa Azul.

Lan­guid pleasures

Hotel Cielo Rojo, where we stayed, is a happy com­bi­na­tion of com­fort and econ­omy. Recently ren­o­vated after acquir­ing new own­ers, it sports spare yet art­ful design with gleam­ing white walls, terra cotta floors, gen­er­ous wooden shelves and painted bath­room tiles. A quirky col­lec­tion of antique fix­tures and art­work includes a head­less, life-size padre at the patio door­way. Rooms are not air con­di­tioned, but the ceil­ing fans acquit­ted them­selves well dur­ing late Octo­ber days that refused to sur­ren­der the mug­gi­ness of summer.

We fell into a lan­guid rou­tine: break­fast in the palm-shaded court­yard; a walk around town to stock up on water, snacks and sun­dries; then lunch under a palapa at Las Pal­mas, where the main street’s cob­ble­stones dis­ap­pear into sand.

Lunch pretty much fin­ished off the day, invari­ably turn­ing into hours of gos­sip and phi­los­o­phy with other trav­el­ers and locals, bro­ken up by dips in the ocean or walks to the end of the long, uncrowded, white-sand beach. For inter­mis­sion, the lemon-yellow Val­larta Adven­tures jun­gle bug­gies rolled up in mid-afternoon, dis­gorg­ing an unpre­dictable assort­ment of jeep safari pas­sen­gers to storm the bath­rooms, tank up on beer and splash in the waves.

For a small pueblo, San Pan­cho has a wealth of fine restau­rants. La Ola Rica, started sev­eral years ago by two local women, opened for the sea­son on our last night in town. Diane ate the justly famous carne asada and I had chicken fla­vored with lime, in the midst of a cel­e­bra­tory fer­vor usu­ally seen only on New Year’s Eve.

None of our full-service din­ners was more sat­is­fy­ing than the fare at the taco stand that sprung up each night on our street cor­ner. The slen­der, serious-looking young man who wel­comed us to “Tacos Miguelito” filled soft tor­tillas with suc­cu­lent pork shaved from a spit and strips of beef from a grill the size of a foos­ball table. The burst of fla­vor made our eyes roll back, and the tab on our most glut­to­nous visit came to less than $3 each, includ­ing soda.

From rest­ful to raucous

The rou­tine left plenty of room for impro­vi­sa­tion, which allowed us to scout a Margaritaville-in-waiting as well as sam­ple Nayarit’s exclu­sive side.

Edson, our solic­i­tous young waiter at Las Pal­mas, was one of the few Mex­i­cans we met in town whose Eng­lish was bet­ter than my Span­ish. He had lived in Guadala­jara, Seat­tle, New Mex­ico and, more recently, Los Cabos before return­ing to San Pan­cho to get away from “too many peo­ple, too many cars, too much stress.”

Edson per­suaded us to explore Lo de Marco, tout­ing its creamy white beach, pretty town plaza and dearth of tourists. Ven­tur­ing another high­way exit north, we walked a pris­tine beach even longer than San Pancho’s, waded in the surf and gath­ered coconuts shed by a line of palms that sep­a­rate pri­vate homes and rental bun­ga­lows from the sand. At the plaza end of the beach, chil­dren body surfed under par­ents’ watch­ful eyes. We didn’t see a gringo all morn­ing, and though there were fewer restau­rants than in San Pan­cho, we eas­ily found a palapa and took up residence.

We also felt duty-bound to spend an evening in Puerto Val­larta. Despite the per­sis­tent myth that San Pan­cho is 30 min­utes from the city, it took us closer to an hour to drive each way. Still, we were early enough to sneak in with­out din­ner reser­va­tions at Trio, an endur­ing down­town favorite with a Mediterranean-influenced menu and strolling musi­cians. Din­ner was as fab­u­lous as the set­ting, and it was the first time I’ve had an arti­choke (as an appe­tizer with cheese, red pep­per and arugula) in Mexico.

After din­ner, we joined the throngs of fam­i­lies, cou­ples, musi­cians, street per­form­ers, artists and thrill-seekers lin­ing up to ride a car­ni­val bungee swing on the malecón, or seafront. Across the traffic-choked boule­vard, hawk­ers flung pitches at us from the door­ways of shops open late. An illu­mi­nated ele­phant fig­ure topped one tall build­ing; bars and dis­cos opened their jun­gle and space­port themes to the street, look­ing like the dark rides at Dis­ney­land. The whole scene, in fact, felt as sur­real as Down­town Disney.

It was loads of fun — and it sucked the Mar­gar­i­taville right out of us. Jounc­ing down our cob­ble­stoned main street was relax­ing by comparison.

Liv­ing the luxe life

To wal­low in lux­ury — the air-conditioned, swim-up bar kind of lux­ury — we spent our last two nights in San Pan­cho at Casa Obelisco. Built in 1999 by two U.S. cou­ples in Mediter­ranean villa style, it sits on a hill­side north of the Costa Azul resort. It has a foot­path to the beach and lies a few steps from the jungle.

Opu­lence was addic­tive. One day, we donned skirts and drove to Punta Mita, the penin­sula at the north­ern tip of the Bay of Ban­deras, between Puerto Val­larta and Sayulita. Sign after sign hawk­ing exist­ing and planned lux­ury devel­op­ments inter­rupted the ver­dant, rolling land­scape. I won­dered why the alarm went out only after the fed­eral tourism agency announced its inten­tions, con­sid­er­ing that Punta Mita, which dwarfs Litibú, has been tak­ing shape right next door since the late 1990s.

So far, Punta Mita’s queen bee is the Four Sea­sons (with Jack Nick­laus Sig­na­ture Golf Course; rooms from $545 per night), the only hotel among multimillion-dollar pri­vate vil­las and con­do­mini­ums. The St. Regis will join the party as early as this Decem­ber, fol­lowed by La Solana Resort, a Four Sea­sons sib­ling. A sec­ond Nick­laus golf course is under construction.

Slightly stu­pe­fied by the groomed per­fec­tion around us, we almost missed the plain brown gate sim­ply marked “Punta Mita.” After we asked the gate­keep­ers to make us lunch reser­va­tions at the Four Sea­sons, the gate opened to allow us to drive through more green and blue splen­dor to the hotel’s portico.

The two valets allowed us a few min­utes to gawk at the lobby’s dizzy­ing view of palapa umbrel­las, flow­er­ing vines and end­less blue water, then installed us in an elec­tric cart for a nar­rated drive down to the open-air restau­rant. We shared an appe­tizer, a salad and a grilled veg­etable pizza and con­sid­ered it $54 well spent. After all, the sur­round­ings were sub­lime, the restroom pro­vided linen tow­els and we’d been Very Impor­tant Peo­ple for a cou­ple of hours.

We asked if we could walk, rather than ride, back uphill. As the cart sped away, our escort accom­pa­nied us up the path, gen­tly steer­ing us away from the pool and lounge area we were des­per­ate to see. He sounded gen­uinely apolo­getic when he explained the hotel’s com­mit­ment to guests’ privacy.

Locals appeared less dis­tressed than vis­i­tors by devel­op­ment plans. Mer­chants hold out hope of increased busi­ness. Bill Kirk­wood, one of Casa Obelisco’s own­ers, said he thought Litibú might even ben­e­fit the more mod­est lodg­ings in the area.

“Peo­ple who visit places like Four Sea­sons and Litibú will even­tu­ally want to get out of the man­i­cured envi­ron­ment and explore,” he said. “They want to find out about places like San Pancho.”

On our last day in town, a new sign mate­ri­al­ized on the beach at Las Pal­mas, read­ing “Surf boards for rent.” An arrow pointed to two surf­boards planted upright in the sand. When Edson came to take our orders, he admit­ted to being the entrepreneur.

“We don’t have any­one giv­ing lessons in San Pan­cho,” he said, “but peo­ple should know they don’t have to go to Sayulita to surf.”

It was another step on San Pancho’s road to becom­ing the next Sayulita. I thought of the half-finished houses between the Se Vende (“For sale”) signs nailed to trees in the jun­gle, and the pri­vate golf course and vil­las going up across from the Costa Azul on Echeverría’s old estate.
Lo de Marco was look­ing bet­ter and bet­ter for the next trip. And from there, the recon­nais­sance run to Rincón de Guayabitos is only a 10-minute drive north.

If you go

All loca­tions are in Mexico’s Nayarit state. Prices are in U.S. dol­lars unless noted.

Get­ting there

San Fran­cisco, known as San Pan­cho, is 25 miles, or about 45 min­utes, north of Puerto Vallarta’s air­port on coastal High­way 200. Taxis from the air­port cost about $50 to $80.

Where to eat

Taco stands tend to be good. Restau­rants we tried included:
La Ola Rica, Ter­cer Mundo, San Fran­cisco. Entrees, 80–185 pesos (about $7.25-$17 US).
Mar Plata, Ter­cer Mundo, San Fran­cisco. New restau­rant with a Bel­gian chef. Entrees, $16-$22.
Las Pal­mas, Ter­cer Mundo at the beach, San Fran­cisco. Lunch for two, 130 pesos ($11.80).
Trio Restau­rant Bar Cafe, Guer­rero No. 264, Puerto Val­larta. Entrees, 160–295 pesos ($14.50-$27).
For more infor­ma­tion
Sayulita Life, (541) 359‑1945 (U.S. num­ber), http://www.sayulitalife.com/.

Moon Hand­books Puerto Val­larta, by Bruce Whip­per­man, has more detail on Nayarit’s coastal vil­lages than most guides.

The online guide http://www.sanpancho.com/ is in “under con­struc­tion” limbo but was help­ful in its pre­vi­ous incarnation.

To com­ment, e-mail Deputy Travel Edi­tor Chris­tine Del­sol at travel@sfchronicle.com.

By Car­olina Buia
Pub­lished Decem­ber 2003

Why set­tle for a coun­try house when you can set­tle in a for­eign coun­try?
Car­olina Buia reports on mak­ing your­self at home in nine to-die-for destinations

Spend­ing a month in the coun­try used to mean load­ing up the sta­tion wagon and dri­ving an hour to the fam­ily cabin. But these days, more and more Amer­i­cans are leav­ing their SUVs in the garage, grab­bing their global phones, and head­ing to their coun­try house…in Tuscany.

The spike in single-family sec­ond homes—domestically, sales have risen 27.4 per­cent since 1995, accord­ing to the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors (no sta­tis­tics exist for sales abroad)—coincides with changes in the tax code that all but did away with the cap­i­tal gains tax for home­own­ers wish­ing to trade down to a smaller pri­mary res­i­dence, and then use some of their equity to pur­chase a sec­ond prop­erty. Low mort­gage rates and a lack­lus­ter stock mar­ket are fur­ther fuel­ing the fervor.

Every­one has a dif­fer­ent rea­son for buy­ing abroad. There’s the inter­na­tional banker who tires of being boxed up in Lon­don hotels and snaps up a flat over­look­ing Hyde Park; the Mid­west­ern cou­ple who stud­ied Span­ish in col­lege but never had an oppor­tu­nity to use it—until they threw cau­tion to the wind and retired part-time to Puerto Val­larta; and the über-intellectuals with 2.5 kids who spend spring break in a Paris town house dis­cussing Impres­sion­ist art over croque mon­sieurs and Orang­i­nas. Who hasn’t trav­eled to a for­eign coun­try and toyed with the idea of scoop­ing up some exotic piece of real estate?

But before you make such a dream your real­ity, there are a few crit­i­cal details to attend to. First, famil­iar­ize your­self with the laws and cus­toms of your host coun­try. Inves­ti­gate the tax codes, cur­rency restric­tions, and the types of visas handed out to for­eign­ers. Regard­less of your age and phys­i­cal well-being, inquire about health-care facil­i­ties and local insur­ance providers (and note that Medicare will not cover you out­side the United States).

Still inter­ested in a year-round com­mit­ment? A num­ber of use­ful Inter­net sites (see “Resources,” below) will clue you in on the par­tic­u­lars of var­i­ous areas—from local pol­i­tics to the price of a gal­lon of gaso­line. And don’t for­get to check the U.S. State Department’s home page (http://www.state.gov/) for an up-to-date account of the country’s eco­nomic and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. The last thing you want is to sink money into a place that’s on the brink of a coup.

Once you’re ready to look at homes, you’ll need to track down a local real estate agent. In the past five years, Amer­i­cans’ grow­ing appetite for prop­erty abroad has prompted U.S. realty com­pa­nies to expand their over­seas oper­a­tions. Such rep­utable firms as Cold­well Banker (973–428-9700), Re/Max (800–525-7452), and Sotheby’s (800–848-2541) will either match you with one of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives abroad or direct you to a pre­screened affiliate.

In many coun­tries, real estate agents work for the seller and hence have lit­tle incen­tive to nego­ti­ate a bet­ter price for the buyer. That is why Amer­i­cans often hire a “prop­erty finder,” a spe­cialty agent who assists buy­ers for roughly a two per­cent fee. Be par­tic­u­larly care­ful in places like Bali and Mex­ico, how­ever, where real estate agents are not required to hold a license and scam artists prey on starry-eyed foreigners.

While hir­ing your own real estate agent may be a good idea, get­ting a lawyer is a neces­sity. Ask your agent or a fel­low expat to rec­om­mend an attor­ney. The local Amer­i­can con­sulate and most major law firms in the States can also pro­vide refer­rals. If you’re in a coun­try where Eng­lish is not the offi­cial lan­guage, you will want a bilin­gual lawyer to trans­late all your doc­u­ments. Depend­ing on the coun­try and the com­plex­ity of your pur­chase, legal fees should range from one to five per­cent of the sale price.

But this is no time to skimp—something Alfonso and Mercy Cordero learned the hard way. Five years ago, the State­line, Nevada, cou­ple were look­ing to build a win­ter retreat. Serendip­i­tously, they received a brochure in the mail pro­mot­ing cliff­side estates in Careyes, Mex­ico. “The pho­tos looked so beau­ti­ful that we flew down to Careyes,” says Alfonso Cordero, a recently retired entre­pre­neur. It was exactly what he wanted: a quiet town of about 3,000 inhab­i­tants, an azure sea, and a nos­tal­gic return to the coun­try he had left as a child. A real estate agent helped him pur­chase restricted ocean­front land by estab­lish­ing a 50-year trust in the name of a Mex­i­can bank, with the Corderos as the beneficiaries.

Ready to build his 22,000-square-foot, 9-bedroom stucco man­sion over­look­ing the Pacific, Cordero hired a con­trac­tor and an architect—but didn’t con­sult with an attor­ney. “It was a night­mare,” he says. “The con­trac­tor took me for a ride. We’d agree to cer­tain dead­lines and prices, and then I’d return to Mex­ico to find that all the agree­ments had been bro­ken. In hind­sight, I wish I’d hired a lawyer.”

While every city—and every home purchase—is unique, there is a basic blue­print to buy­ing abroad. The first step is for the buyer and the seller to agree on a price (at which point a secu­rity deposit of, say, ten per­cent may be required to take the house off the mar­ket). Your attor­ney should then receive a copy of the prop­erty title from the seller and ver­ify that the prop­erty is free from any liens or encum­brances. He or she should also advise you of any strange his­tor­i­cal covenants, like those in Eng­land and France that per­mit sheep to tra­verse your back­yard, or con­struc­tion bans that pre­vent you from bull­doz­ing an ugly land­mark to put in a pool.

“If you are buy­ing any­thing that’s more than a hun­dred years old, pay for a struc­tural sur­vey,” warns Paul Tayler, direc­tor of Sotheby’s in Lon­don. “You want to make sure that the roof is not going to cave in and that the pipes and drains are in good con­di­tion.” The cost is usu­ally an inci­den­tal half-percent of the pur­chase price.

Once the deal is sealed, the search for financ­ing begins. Don’t rely on your bank back home to lend you the money for a chateau in Brittany—unless you’re will­ing to bor­row against another asset, like a cer­tifi­cate of deposit or a bro­ker­age account. If you’re skit­tish about doing that, many banks abroad will extend a mort­gage once you’ve opened an account. Then again, don’t be sur­prised if you can’t secure a mort­gage for the same long term as in the States (a 30-year mort­gage is often unheard-of else­where) or if a for­eign bank adds a pre­mium to the inter­est rate it charges locals.

You might tell your­self that you’ll pay off the mort­gage by rent­ing out your new home. But while the steady stream of income is nice, coun­tries such as France and Mex­ico have set up tough evic­tion laws to pro­tect ten­ants. “I’ve seen many Amer­i­cans rent out their prop­erty in France only to have their ten­ants decide to stay with­out pay­ing,” says Jack Ander­son, a tax attor­ney for Ernst & Young in Paris. “It can take up to three years to evict ten­ants, unless you’re able to prove to the courts that you’ve found them a sim­i­lar apart­ment to move into.”

If you do decide to take on renters, you must report the income on your U.S. tax return, in addi­tion to fil­ing with your host coun­try. Don’t worry about double-taxation, though: The United States has rec­i­p­ro­cal tax treaties with 61 nations, so any amount paid abroad will be cred­ited against your U.S. taxes. You may even be able to dodge Uncle Sam alto­gether by writ­ing off the main­te­nance expense. You should also draft a local will if you want the prop­erty to pass to your heirs. If you decide to sell it, be aware that cap­i­tal gains taxes in some coun­tries can reach as high as 40 per­cent, although your accoun­tant or tax attor­ney may be able to ease the sting.

Legalese, strange covenants, and squat­ters may make that coun­try house in Tus­cany seem like more trou­ble than it’s worth. But hire the right peo­ple, keep a cool head—and read on for how to buy in nine to-die-for destinations—and your home abroad could be just a board­ing pass away.

RESOURCES

Books

Buy­ing a Home Abroad, by David Hamp­shire (Sur­vival Books, $18).

The Grown-Up’s Guide to Retir­ing Abroad, by Rosanne Knorr (Ten Speed Press, $15).

The World’s Top Retire­ment Havens, by Mar­garet J. Gold­stein (John Muir Pub­li­ca­tions, $17).

Web Sites

embassyworld.com: Lists for­eign and U.S. con­sulates and embassies every­where in the world, inter­na­tional dial­ing codes, volt­ages, and visa requirements.

escapeartist.com: A smor­gas­bord of a site with run­downs on most major coun­tries, as well as real estate list­ings and infor­ma­tion on inter­na­tional hos­pi­tals, health insur­ance, and taxes.

expatforum.com: Con­tains a use­ful cost-of-living index for 45 espe­cially pop­u­lar coun­tries, and exten­sive mes­sage boards that allow you to com­mu­ni­cate with expats and oth­ers who are con­sid­er­ing relocating.

internationalliving.com: The online com­pan­ion to the rep­utable niche pub­li­ca­tion Inter­na­tional Liv­ing. While you’ll be able to scan clas­si­fieds for prop­er­ties to buy, lease, and even swap, access to pre­mium con­tent is off-limits to non­mem­bers; a one-year mem­ber­ship is $89 and includes a sub­scrip­tion to the magazine.

oanda.com: The Net’s sta­ple cur­rency con­verter allows you to com­pare green­backs with 164 other cur­ren­cies with one click.

peoplegoingglobal.com: Country-specific cheat sheets address every­thing from how to dress in your host coun­try to how to address a local.

state.gov: The U.S. State Department’s offi­cial site is a must—especially its “Travel and Liv­ing Abroad” sec­tion, which offers exten­sive coun­try pro­files and warn­ings on which ones to shy away from.

Want a home (far) away from home? Fol­low Car­olina Buia’s direc­tions through swamps of bureau­cracy and knotty financing:

Buy­ing the Dream: Intro­duc­tion
Buy­ing the Dream: Bali
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Buy­ing the Dream: Mex­ico
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Sat, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2007

At home in Mex­ico — Buy­ing prop­erty in Mex­ico requires a trust

By ALAN CAPLAN

BUCERIAS, Mex­ico — Going way back, for­mal trusts are a British inven­tion cre­ated to pro­tect rich folks’ assets. Over the cen­turies, though, they were adapted in many diverse forms through­out the world for var­i­ous reasons.

In Mex­ico, in the mid-1990s, they became a legal way to allow for­eign­ers to get around severe restric­tions on own­ing land.

In prin­ci­ple, all trusts have two things in com­mon: a trustee and a ben­e­fi­ciary. The trustee is charged with hold­ing assets in the trust and admin­is­ters them for the sole advan­tage of the beneficiary.

In 1972, the Mex­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion was amended to allow for­eign­ers to pur­chase land, but it still pro­hib­ited for­eign­ers from own­ing within 50 kilo­me­tres of the high tide mark in coastal areas and 100 km from any bor­der or any­where on the Baja Peninsula.

Since most for­eign­ers wanted to have access to Mexico’s exquis­itely sunny beaches or to have prop­erty in closer prox­im­ity to their home coun­tries, for­eign real estate invest­ment ground to a standstill.

It took another cou­ple of decades to find a rem­edy. That solu­tion was a bank trust sys­tem known as fide­icomiso (the sim­ple trans­la­tion is “fidu­ciary trust.”

The fide­icomiso sys­tem is a fairly sim­ple premise. An offi­cially reg­is­tered bank trustee holds the deed for the prop­erty in trust for the pur­chaser. The bank does not own it, nor is it, as some folks think, a lease. The bank can’t use it for its own pur­poses under any circumstances.

There’s a myth that the fide­icomiso sys­tem was set up to allow the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment the power of con­fis­ca­tion at the end of the trust term. But the intent of the law is exactly the reverse. It’s a pro­tec­tion for for­eign owners.

LEGAL POSSESSION

The ben­e­fi­ciary actu­ally has legal pos­ses­sion, and own­er­ship rights on the land allow him to mort­gage, sell, lease or pass to heirs. The 50-year trust term is allowed mul­ti­ple renewals under law and pur­chasers can set up a new trust or have an exist­ing trust trans­ferred to them in a pur­chase transaction.

It’s pos­si­ble for a fam­ily or busi­ness to con­trol a prop­erty in per­pe­tu­ity, sub­ject only to local zon­ing and plan­ning reg­u­la­tions or con­do­minium rules.

Non-residential prop­er­ties — for instance a hotel or restau­rant — actu­ally can be pur­chased in a fee-simple form sim­i­lar to hold­ing direct title in Canada, John K. Glaab, vice-president of Inter­na­tional Mar­ket­ing for The Set­tle­ment Com­pany, www.settlement-co.com, told me.

The firm was set up to super­vise clos­ings and reg­is­tra­tions of real estate for non-Mexicans. Unlike the Cana­dian sys­tem, for­eign­ers aren’t buy­ing “real prop­erty” at all. They’re actu­ally trans­fer­ring or acquir­ing per­sonal property.

“Instead of using the words ‘trans­fer of title,’ a for­eigner should refer to ‘trans­fer or assign­ment of trust rights,’ ” accord­ing to the company’s founder, Linda Neil.

“The effect is neg­li­gi­ble,” she says, “and the for­eign owner has the same rights of domin­ion as any Mex­i­can cit­i­zen who has direct title to the property.”

It costs about $500 US to set up a bank trust and there are fairly mod­est annual fees for administration.

It’s a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket (there are a lot of banks in Mex­ico, some of them foreign-owned, like HSBC and Sco­tia­bank), so it pays to shop around for a fide­icomiso contract.

AVOID PENALTIES

Unfor­tu­nately, some banks don’t pro­vide auto­matic renewal state­ments. The onus is on the ben­e­fi­ciary to request one at least 90 days before the anniver­sary of the trust.

Pri­vate firms such as the set­tle­ment com­pany pro­vide a ser­vice to ensure pay­ment is on time to avoid penalties.

Next week, we’ll delve into the role that a unique real estate facil­i­ta­tor, the Mex­i­can Notary Pub­lic, plays in the pur­chase process.

By Thomas Black

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — The Related Group Inc., a closely held builder of lux­ury con­do­mini­ums based in Miami, plans to invest more than $1 bil­lion in Mex­i­can real estate to tap into U.S. demand for sec­ond homes on the beach.

The com­pany has acquired land with Mex­i­can part­ners and plans to build branded hotels and con­do­mini­ums in Puerto Val­larta, Aca­pulco, Cabo San Lucas, Playa del Car­men and Zihu­atanejo, Jorge Perez, pres­i­dent and owner of The Related Group, said in a tele­phone interview.

The Related Group, which has projects under devel­op­ment worth more than $10.7 bil­lion, has been prepar­ing for its push into Mex­ico for two years as the mar­ket for sec­ond homes from U.S. baby boomers heats up because of lower prices in Mex­ico and the country’s prox­im­ity to the U.S., Perez said.

“Mex­ico is the nat­ural exten­sion for the sec­ond home owner and tourist from the U.S.,” Perez said. “It has incred­i­ble weather and incred­i­ble beaches and landscape.”

A lux­ury beach con­do­minium that costs $300 a square foot in Puerto Val­larta will sell for five times higher in Los Ange­les or San Diego.

The com­pany will begin con­struc­tion in six months on 336 con­do­mini­ums in Puerto Val­larta worth more than $200 mil­lion, mark­ing the first prop­erty as lead devel­oper in Mex­ico, he said.

Aca­pulco Plans

In Aca­pulco, the com­pany will begin build­ing this year a 150-room hotel under the W brand from Star­wood Hotel & Resorts World­wide Inc. and 300 con­do­mini­ums with a beach club. The devel­op­ments in Zihu­atanejo, which also may begin con­struc­tion this year, Playa del Car­men and Cabo San Lucas will all be man­aged by “well-known inter­na­tional brands,” he said.

Mex­i­can part­ners, who mostly con­tributed land, will own equity stakes from 20 per­cent to 50 per­cent in the projects, he said.

“We’re hop­ing to become def­i­nitely one of the lead­ing devel­op­ers if not the lead­ing devel­oper in Mex­ico,” he said.

The Related Group, which had sales of $3.2 bil­lion in 2005, also is prepar­ing devel­op­ments in Costa Rica, Panama, Colom­bia, Argentina and Uruguay, Perez said.

The Costa Rica project, which includes a 200-room hotel, 700 con­do­mini­ums and a Greg Norman-designed golf course, may begin con­struc­tion next year, he said.

(02–04) 04:00 PST Sayulita , Mex­ico — From the far south­ern long­board breaks of Punta Mita to the beach-breaking tubes at San Pan­cho to the boat-accessed reefs of Cha­cala, the state of Nayarit deliv­ers con­sis­tent, warm-water surf for all lev­els. It is renowned as one of the best surf coasts on the planet.

Sayulita offers a great right break for begin­ners and long­board rid­ers, and a speedy left break for rip­pers. Nayarit’s waves are smaller in the sum­mer months — the area’s off sea­son — but even 3-foot waves can pro­vide 20-second rides.

The swells swell in the win­ter, when waves can reach triple over­head heights. The win­ter is when the hump­back whales crest in Sayulita’s small bay, deliv­er­ing a buoy­ant expe­ri­ence for surfers wait­ing for that per­fect wave. Sayulita abounds with surf­board rentals rang­ing from $15 to $25 a day, depend­ing on the qual­ity of board.

Don Pedro’s board rentals (Calle Mar­lin No. 2) on the beach, run by the diminu­tive surfer Davy, offers deals for week-long rentals of qual­ity rides.

Punta Mita offers six slowly peel­ing breaks per­fect for lazy-day long­board­ing. The beach-pounding breaks at San Fran­cisco — known locally as San Pan­cho — and Lo de Marco are much less crowded but demand a bit more skill (hint: Bail early or eat sand).

Some surfers hire a panga boat in Sayulita ($45 for a quick ses­sion to $150 for all-day hunt­ing) to ferry them to dis­tant reef breaks and more remote waves along the Nayarit coast.

Pad­dle softly around the Sayulita local surfers, and def­i­nitely don’t drop in on them. Sayulita begin­ners are bet­ter off learn­ing the art in the early-morning hours before the aggres­sive, tal­ented and tourist-weary local surfers take over the break. For a show, watch the locals put on a dis­play of surf­ing prowess. Some of those young rip­pers are inter­na­tional surf stars, and their skills are unrivaled.

For lessons, check out:

– Duende Vista’s Surf Dawgs on the beach­front pro­vides two-hour lessons with board rental for about $25.

– Tigre Surf School, owned and oper­ated by inter­na­tional surf cham­pion and Sayulita local Tigre Cadena and his broth­ers Diego and Regis, pro­vides top-ranked tuto­ri­als for sim­i­lar prices.

– Bev Sander’s Las Olas surf camps pro­vides women-only surf instruc­tion, promis­ing to “turn women into girls” (lasolas.com).

While Sayulita — and most of Nayarit for that mat­ter — is pri­mar­ily a surf­ing play­ground, there are many options for play beyond board-wrestling.

Fidel Ponce’s Blue Mar­lin Fish­ing Tours in Sayulita (Cara­col and Manuel Navar­rete, although his office is really his boat, so ask for him among the pan­gas on the beach) is renowned for fer­ry­ing pole-wielding vaca­tion­ers to the sweet­est fish­ing spots in the region. Fidel charges roughly $30 an hour and offers snor­kel­ing and surf-break tours, as well.

Snor­kel­ing can be a chal­lenge along the coast of Nayarit, and espe­cially in Sayulita, because of the relent­less waves. But a short stroll south and west of Sayulita’s square to the Playa de los Muer­tos can pro­vide some excep­tional snor­kel­ing. The tiny cove is pro­tected from the waves, and a series of large, pelican-painted rocks in the cove pro­vide refuge for an array of mul­ti­hued ocean crit­ters, includ­ing lazy blow­fish and dart­ing dorado. Best to bring your own gear if you plan to snorkel. The Playa de los Muer­tos — there’s a ceme­tery next to the beach, hence the name — is a pop­u­lar escape from the often zany Sayulita beach scene.

Horse­back gal­lop­ing along white sand, har­nessed zip-lining through dense jun­gle canopy and monkey-spotting moun­tain tours are offered by Ran­cho Mi Chap­ar­rita. The horse-tending crew at Ran­cho pro­vides well-salted and –sanded vis­i­tors some respite with steamy excur­sions into Nayarit’s for­bid­ding jun­gle. Stop by their offices across from the base­ball field in Sayulita.