BY MOLLY GLENTZER

Hous­ton Chronicle

PUNTA MITA, MEXICO –

It’s hard to say exactly when Punta Mita charmed me in spite of myself.Maybe when I took that first sun­rise walk on an empty, pris­tine white beach. I picked up a free sou­venir: a speck­led blue spiny lob­ster shell. I climbed to the top of a huge rock and did a few sun salu­ta­tions. There were rose petals blow­ing around, the remains of a roman­tic din­ner the Four Sea­sons Resort had staged for some of its guests the night before.

Or maybe I was hooked that after­noon on another quiet beach, one with harder-packed, also pris­tine sand that was eas­ier to walk on, when I spied a great blue heron perched on a rock out in the surf.

Or maybe it was the moment Fer­nando handed me a beer in a tall plas­tic cup.

I sat was sit­ting with friends on the prow of a sailboat-for-hire. We felt like mod­els in a Nau­tica ad — hair blow­ing, soak­ing up the spray and the sun and let­ting our psy­ches rock with the boat as it crested big waves. And Fer­nando, a tan, thin, good-looking teenager with bleached blond hair, was chat­ting me up in bro­ken Eng­lish. I was think­ing that he prob­a­bly picks up a lot of busi­ness out here for later, after the boat docks.

You may like to play golf, or you may love loung­ing beside a pool in a trop­i­cal envi­ron­ment. But, ulti­mately, it’s the lure of its wild water that makes Punta Mita special.

About 45 min­utes north of Puerto Val­larta in the state of Nayarit, it occu­pies the end of a foot-shaped penin­sula cradling Ban­deras Bay, with its sole (and soul) mas­saged by the Pacific. The nine miles of shore­line here are nat­u­rally ”scal­loped” into coves and inlets, giv­ing the beaches an inti­mate scale.

Scrubbed and designed for U.S. vaca­tion­ers, the 1,500-acre devel­op­ment is a project of Dine, the real estate sub­sidiary of the Mex­i­can con­glom­er­ate DESC. (It’s not to be con­fused with the more acces­si­ble nearby town of Punta de Mita.)

Punta Mita is rel­a­tively undis­cov­ered for a good rea­son: Impos­ing gates mon­i­tor access to each of the dozen or so resort com­mu­ni­ties within the main entry.

The hum of con­struc­tion is con­stant. New vil­las and con­dos — which account for most of the lodg­ing choices — are com­ing on line fast. While this build­ing boom may not please every­one, the devel­op­ers do not plan to line the beaches with hotels.

The still-growing Four Sea­sons Resort Punta Mita is the only viable hotel choice for now. Open about six years, it’s a jewel in the chain, with four gourmet restau­rants, three beau­ti­ful pool com­plexes, a small spa and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course.

It’s almost a shame you have to retire to an indoor room at night, given the styl­ish pool­side cabanas that sur­round the adults-only pool area. They’re out­fit­ted with plasma-screen TVs, state-of-the-art sound sys­tems, wire­less Inter­net ser­vice and plush fur­ni­ture. Cham­pagne and caviar are served at the bars out­side early each evening.

You know a place has arrived when the fash­ion world moves in. Michelle Smith, the designer behind the upscale Milly line, this sum­mer unveiled her Punta Mita Col­lec­tion of chic dresses, swimwear, beach bags and sports­wear at the Four Seasons.

A St. Regis resort with another Nicklaus-designed course is due to open next July — although when I vis­ited in Feb­ru­ary, get­ting a beat on the lay­out required some imag­i­na­tion. The site con­sisted of strate­gi­cally piled mounds of dirt, with a cou­ple of concrete-block-construction offices.

I stayed at Las Pal­mas de Punta Mita, in one of 28 just-completed lux­ury vil­las along the Four Sea­sons’ golf course. I enjoyed the indoor-outdoor bath, the sunny entry atrium and the gourmet kitchen but grav­i­tated to the ter­race and its plunge pool. It over­looked the fourth fair­way, with a view of the Pacific and the golf course’s famous ”Tail of the Whale” green, which is perched dra­mat­i­cally on a small, rocky island. (Dur­ing high tide, play­ers access it by amphibi­ous vehicle.)

Punta Mita Res­i­den­tial Concierge ser­vices can stock the fridge or send in a per­sonal chef or a masseuse. Cheer­ful maids seemed to hover — each day, they sculpted the plush tow­els into ani­mal shapes and laid them out with fresh bougainvil­lea blossoms.

If you’d rather ven­ture out to eat, sev­eral Res­i­dents Beach Clubs on the penin­sula offer excel­lent water­front meals, includ­ing delec­table shrimp que­sadil­las, huge ham­burg­ers and drinks.

You wouldn’t know you were in Mex­ico if the friendly peo­ple didn’t speak Eng­lish with charm­ing accents.

The excep­tion is the small vil­lage where, accord­ing to our guides, Dine moved res­i­dents who were liv­ing on the government-owned penin­sula when devel­op­ment began. Vis­i­tors will find a few beach­front bars and restau­rants there.

Else­where, nat­ural won­ders aren’t hard to find, and out­door activ­i­ties are plentiful.

Walks along the beach turned up plen­ti­ful birds, the tracks of sand crabs and prints left by some kind of large cat — per­haps an ocelot. We also watched as a washed-up spot­ted box­fish became din­ner for a black vul­ture. One night, a small fox darted across the road.

On the sail­boat ride toward the nearby Mari­etas Islands, a sanc­tu­ary for marine life and birds that draws scuba divers and snorkel­ers, time-warp music blared over the boat’s speak­ers: The Beach Boys’ Good Vibra­tions, Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence. We were look­ing for hump­back whales, which visit in the winter.

It might have been the music’s weird influ­ence, but I became giddy when we spot­ted hump­backs breach­ing in the dis­tance — even though from our van­tage point, with­out binoc­u­lars, I could see only water­spouts and poorly out­lined tails.

Surfers have sev­eral good spots to catch the waves around Punta Mita. Sea kayak­ing, swim­ming with the dol­phins, jeep safaris and canopy tours along zip lines in the Sierra Madre also beckon. There are plenty of things to keep vaca­tion­ers busy for a week.

Or not. If relax­ation is your goal, you can lose track of time here, bliss­fully, in a weekend.

GOING TO PUNTA MITA

• Get­ting there: Sev­eral air­lines fly from Miami or Fort Laud­erdale to Puerto Val­larta, although none flies non­stop, so min­i­mum travel time is six hours. Punta Mita is about a 45-minute drive or cab ride from Puerto Vallarta.

• When to go: Sum­mers can be very hot. November-April is ideal.

• Four Sea­sons Punta Mita: Rooms start at $495 now to Dec. 21, then jump to $590 min­i­mum. Con­tact La Punta Realty at info@lapuntarealty.com or visit www.lapuntarealty.com

• Villa and condo rentals: Villa rentals aver­age $1,200-$12,000 per day December-April. Lux­ury con­dos aver­age $750-$1,850 per day in high sea­son. For more info call (213) 291‑7590 (From the United States) or e-mail info@lapuntarealty.com

Wednes­day, Novem­ber 21, 2007

CREDIT: Michael Shenker/special to the BURNABY NOW Tasty treats: Luis Erasmo Rangel pre­pares grilled chicken in La Penita.

Along the Pacific Coast north of Puerto Val­larta, vis­i­tors argue about which beach town is best. Is it one of the more devel­oped towns within shout­ing dis­tance of Puerto Val­larta, or do you have to head up the coast and far­ther away from the major resorts, to a place like Rin­con de Guayabitos? Or maybe the per­fect beach town is some­where else altogether.

Our goal was to find out. We weren’t look­ing for a lot: a sandy beach, fresh seafood, a laid-back atmos­phere and a gen­uine taste of Mexico.

We trav­elled by bus from Guadala­jara. We planned to get off at a lit­tle town called La Penita and then take a col­lec­tivo (a local van or small bus) to Guayabitos — a pop­u­lar beach des­ti­na­tion we’d read about in our guidebook.

But we hadn’t counted on the wind­ing coastal high­way. My motion sick­ness was so bad, I felt too woozy to leave La Penita right away. That turned out to be just as well. Our brief stopover turned into an eight-day love affair.

La Penita gets only a para­graph in our guide­book. The hard­work­ing neigh­bour to Guayabitos, it has the bank and post office. At first glance, La Penita is a dusty, unim­pres­sive town. The main street, Emil­iano Zap­ata, is lined with gro­cery stores, cloth­ing and gift shops, and small restau­rants, none of them chic. Some build­ings are in dis­re­pair, oth­ers are under con­struc­tion; some of the dirt roads are rut­ted and look, well, dirty. This isn’t Cape Cod.

But slowly, the place grew on us. As La Penita worked its charms — a friendly chat with one shop­keeper, a smile from a passerby and an exchange of e-mail addresses with a fel­low Cana­dian vis­i­tor — we began to relax and feel at home. Could there be a bet­ter beach town? Day after day, we decided to put off the search for just one more day.

And there was, of course, the beach. Most days, there are more pel­i­cans than peo­ple on the shore. The beach at the point where Emil­iano Zap­ata Street meets the sand is small, but there’s a wider stretch if you walk north for about 10 min­utes. We checked into Bun­ga­lows Don Jose, one of sev­eral small hotels offer­ing apart­ments with a bed­room, liv­ing room and kitch­enette. When we told the man­ager we might stay a few days, he reduced the nightly rate to $35 US.

If La Penita feels too sleepy, Rin­con de Guayabitos is just a 15-minute walk south along the beach. Guayabitos has dozens of hotels and restau­rants geared for tourists. It’s also a place to come for happy hour or to sun­bathe on a big­ger beach.

But if you want even more quiet, head in the other direc­tion. The vil­lage of Cha­cala is 30 kilo­me­tres north of La Penita. The beach is the star attrac­tion, its water per­fect for swim­ming. So we decided to pack up our bags and hang out there for a few days.

Susana and Pon­cie Esco­bido run Casa Paci­fica, a pretty B&B about a 10-minute walk from the beach.

“Cha­cala is what Hawaii was like 100 years ago — before the high­rises,” said Pon­cie, who was born in Hawaii.

Some vis­i­tors stay at one of the seven Techos de Mex­ico — mod­est lodg­ings inside local homes. The ini­tia­tive began in 1997 and allows vil­lagers to improve their homes and cre­ate a new source of rev­enue. Rentals of rooms or more cost between $25 and $45 a night.

Towns like Cha­cala are found up and down the Pacific coast of Mex­ico. Trav­ellers learn through word-of-mouth about lit­tle beach par­adises found off the beaten path. We were reminded of Playa Azul, north of Ixtapa. Or Puerto Angel, on the south­ern reaches of the Pacific coast.

But once you’re off the beach, there might be lit­tle to do and few con­ve­niences of home. While we had first-class digs at Casa Paci­fica, includ­ing a room dec­o­rated in antiques ripped from the pages of House & Gar­den, that’s not the norm in the more remote towns.

- — -

IF YOU GO

From Puerto Val­larta it’s a one-hour bus trip to La Penita. The bus trip from Guadala­jara takes four hours. Primero Plus buses leave sev­eral times a day from both cities and make stops at La Penita. To get to Cha­cala, you’ll need to take a col­lec­tivo or taxi from La Penita.

BANGALORE (Thom­son Finan­cial) — Fitch Rat­ings said the near-term out­look for the com­mer­cial real estate (CRE) indus­trial mar­ket in Mex­ico is positive.

Fitch noted that with its close prox­im­ity to the US and rel­a­tively edu­cated labor force, Mex­ico is a viable option for many North Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ers that seek new locales for their investments.

The rat­ings agency said the demand pro­file for CRE in Mex­ico is trend­ing upward, and financ­ing that employs com­mer­cial mortgage-backed secu­ri­ti­za­tion (CMBS) tech­nol­ogy is primed for local and cross-border growth in the near future.

Fitch said falling inter­est rates along­with liq­uid­ity pro­vided by for­eign and insti­tu­tional investors, have made the financ­ing of new devel­op­ments possible.

How­ever, there are still some hur­dles to clear before CMBS are to be employed in the Mex­i­can CRE mar­ket such as short-term nature of leases, pos­si­ble liq­uid­ity short­ages, fluc­tu­at­ing risk appetites and tighter under­writ­ing standards.

TFN.newsdesk@thomson.com

ash/pmi

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Ten years ago, a cruise ship would arrive in Val­larta every other day. At cer­tain times dur­ing the “high sea­son” of Novem­ber through May when the aver­age tem­per­a­ture is 73°F with vir­tu­ally no chance of rain, cruise ships would arrive two days in a row.

Five years ago, the pop­u­lar­ity of cruis­ing and specif­i­cally cruis­ing to the Mex­i­can Riv­iera, reached a point where you could find a cruise liner at the Puerto Val­larta Marine Ter­mi­nal almost every day, and some­times, a sec­ond cruise liner anchored in

Two years ago, you could count on at least one cruise ship every day in Val­larta and often find another one or two ships anchored in the bay. The traf­fic was so heavy at the Marine Ter­mi­nal that the author­i­ties in Val­larta started con­struc­tion on the new Mar­itime Terminal.

Con­struc­tion of the new Mar­itime Ter­mi­nal in

(As a side note of inter­est, the

Now that we have a feel for the vol­ume of cruis­ing tourists arriv­ing daily in Val­larta by com­mer­cial cruise lin­ers, let’s con­sider those arriv­ing by pri­vate yachts.

Ten years ago, Puerto Val­larta was the home to a beau­ti­ful 400 slip Marina for pri­vate yachts rang­ing in size from 30ft to well over 100ft. There was also a marina in Nuevo Val­larta with 380 slips for smaller boats up to 30ft long.

Due to the recent demand for addi­tional slips, larger slips, and yacht­ing related ser­vices, a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant new marina con­struc­tion projects have been under­taken; some of which have been com­pleted, some cur­rently under con­struc­tion, and some still in the plan­ning stages.

For exam­ple, the beau­ti­ful Nuevo Val­larta Marina now has nearly 250 slips for yachts rang­ing from 30ft to 120ft long. The mod­ern $50 mil­lion Marina Riv­iera Nayarit, located in La Cruz de Hua­nacax­tle, is approx­i­mately 40% com­plete with nearly 400 berths for yachts rang­ing from 30ft to 400ft. Fonatur, Mexico’s National Tourism Devel­op­ment Trust, has planned a 150 slip marina in their Phase 1 devel­op­ment pro­gram just north of Punta de Mita. These mari­nas will increase the moor­age capac­ity from 400 to well over 1,200 pri­vate yachts, thereby tripling the total vol­ume of tourists pri­vately cruis­ing to Vallarta.

Okay, now that we have a feel for the growth of the Val­larta area and the vol­ume of tourists cruis­ing to Val­larta, let’s explore just what hap­pens to these tourists as they arrive in

As the tourists dis­em­bark from the com­mer­cial cruise lin­ers or their pri­vate yachts, they are first greeted by the friendly faces of Eng­lish speak­ing Mex­i­cans. Because the local econ­omy is based solely on tourism, almost every­one is now speak­ing some degree of Eng­lish and there­fore com­mu­ni­ca­tion is never an obsta­cle in Val­larta. Friendly faces as revealed in the Conde Nast sur­vey of its read­ers, where Val­larta was voted the friend­liest resort des­ti­na­tion in the world.

Of all things, those arriv­ing by cruise ships first see a Sam’s Club, a Mega Wal-Mart, and a huge new mod­ern shop­ping cen­ter; prob­a­bly not what they would expect to see in a sleepy lit­tle Mex­i­can fish­ing vil­lage! They soon dis­cover that Val­larta is no longer sleepy or lit­tle, in that its pop­u­la­tion has exploded to 350,000 inhab­i­tants and is pro­jected to reach 600,000 by the year 2015.

Unfor­tu­nately, those arriv­ing by cruise ships are gen­er­ally allowed only about eight hours in town before the ship cruises out on its jour­ney to the next Mex­i­can Riv­iera port. While in town, they are given many options in the way of city activ­i­ties and tours. Some opt to play golf on any of the seven mag­nif­i­cent courses; oth­ers might want to take a four hour deep sea fish­ing trip or play ten­nis on any of the hun­dreds of ten­nis courts. Some take jun­gle safaris, ATV trips through the Sierra Madre Moun­tains, or go whale watch­ing, snor­kel­ing, or swim­ming with the dol­phins Those less ambi­tious tourists take sight see­ing bus tours through the city and then into the fine neigh­bor­hoods where the multi-million dol­lar hacien­das and vil­las are nes­tled among the hill­sides over­look­ing Ban­deras Bay.

The major­ity of these cruis­ers merely catch one of the thou­sands of taxis and head into town for a day of strolling along the Male­con by the beach, shop­ping the many bou­tique stores, or din­ing in any of the hun­dreds of fine restaurants.

Regard­less of what the cruis­ers do dur­ing their short stay in Val­larta, they are all treated with dig­nity, respect, and friend­li­ness and there­fore are eager to return for a longer visit the next time. The taste of Val­larta is so addic­tive, that in all prob­a­bil­ity, their next visit will be by air and will last for a week or longer.

Those that come in their pri­vate yachts gen­er­ally stay for longer peri­ods of time. In fact, the qual­ity of life is so great in Val­larta, that many of those for­tu­nate indi­vid­u­als, who could afford to live any­where in the world, have just docked their yachts in Val­larta and made this their win­ter res­i­dence. After all, Mex­ico was recently ranked the top retire­ment des­ti­na­tion in the world by Inter­na­tional Liv­ing Mag­a­zine and Puerto Val­larta is con­sid­ered by many to be the most desir­able city in

To sum it up; what hap­pens when tourists cruise to Val­larta is that they often become so infat­u­ated by the cli­mate, the scenery of moun­tains and ocean, the peo­ple, the clean­li­ness, the safety, the avail­able activ­i­ties, and the over­all qual­ity of life, that they either return as soon as pos­si­ble or they just stay, join­ing the other 50,000 North Amer­i­cans that have made Puerto Val­larta their retire­ment home in Paradise.

Jim Scher­rer has owned prop­erty in Puerto Val­larta, Mex­ico for 24 years and resided there for the past ten years. The mis­sion of his series of 27 arti­cles per­tain­ing to retire­ment in Puerto Val­larta is to reveal the recent changes that have occurred in Val­larta while dis­pelling the mis­con­cep­tions about liv­ing con­di­tions in Mex­ico. For the full series of arti­cles regard­ing travel to and retire­ment in Val­larta as well as per­ti­nent Puerto Val­larta links, please visit us at <a href=“http://www.pvreba.com”>Puerto Val­larta Real Estate Buy­ers‘ Agents</a> and click on ARTICLES.

They call it the “mar­garita syndrome.”

It refers to Amer­i­cans who go to Mex­ico and buy a house with­out doing their home­work. “Peo­ple go down there and dream. They leave their brains at the bor­der,” says Tom Kelly, author of books on buy­ing in Mexico.

Linda Neil, founder of the Set­tle­ment Co., a title and escrow firm in La Paz, Mex­ico, sees it all the time.

“Peo­ple see a beau­ti­ful piece of prop­erty, ask who owns it, maybe some Mex­i­can will rep­re­sent him­self as the owner. He for­gets to say his wife and 10 chil­dren have an inter­est, or it was inher­ited but never went through pro­bate,” Neil says. Buy­ers pay the alleged owner before mak­ing sure he has clear title.

Tim Hme­lar, pres­i­dent of real estate agency Intero, Mex­ico, says, “I spent two weeks dri­ving from San Diego south for 80 miles. I looked at 64 devel­op­ments. We came up with eight we felt com­fort­able attract­ing buy­ers for.” Some of the devel­op­ers didn’t have clear title, some wanted the buyer’s money before com­ple­tion, a few had shoddy con­struc­tion, and some had bad locations.

Here are some tips for avoid­ing trou­ble in Mexico:

– Own­er­ship: For­eign­ers can own res­i­den­tial prop­erty out­right in Mex­ico except in the restricted zone 62 miles from the bor­ders and 31 miles from coast­lines. In restricted areas, they can place prop­erty in a bank trust known as a fide­icomiso.

A Mex­i­can bank is trustee and the buyer is the ben­e­fi­ciary. The ben­e­fi­ciary can occupy, improve or sell the prop­erty. The trust is good for 50 years and can be renewed mul­ti­ple times.

The trust costs about $2,500 to set up and $350 to $700 per year, Neil says.

Plac­ing prop­erty in the trust does not guar­an­tee the owner has clear title to it. “If you have a dis­pute, the bank won’t help you. It’s lim­ited to hold­ing the prop­erty,” says Tijuana attor­ney Ruben Fer­nando Benitez.

– Hire a rep­utable attor­ney: “Look for some­one in prac­tice for at least five years spe­cial­iz­ing in real estate,” Ben­itez says.

– Search the title: Hire an attor­ney or local title-search com­pany to make sure the seller has clear title and there are no liens or debts.

– Con­sider title insur­ance: Stew­art Title Guar­anty, First Amer­i­can Title Insur­ance and Fidelity National Title Insur­ance sell poli­cies to Amer­i­cans on prop­erty in Mexico.

It costs about 1 per­cent of the pur­chase price in Mex­ico, more than dou­ble the cost in Cal­i­for­nia, says Mitch Creek­more, senior vice pres­i­dent of Stew­art International.

– Clos­ing escrow: Vir­tu­ally all prop­erty trans­ac­tions must go through a real estate lawyer called a notario. The notario “is an impar­tial party. He rep­re­sents nei­ther buyer nor seller,” Ben­itez says. He drafts the agree­ment and make sure taxes are paid.

– Clos­ing costs: Buy­ers typ­i­cally pay 6 to 8 per­cent of the pur­chase price in clos­ing costs, which includes the notario fee, trust setup and a 2 per­cent trans­fer tax. If you add a mort­gage, it’s more like to 8 to 12 percent.

– Mort­gage: Some banks, includ­ing GE Money and Cit­i­group sub­sidiary Banamex, will lend money secured by a Mex­i­can home, but these loans tend to be pricier than U.S. mortgages.

– Visas: Con­tact the near­est Mex­i­can con­sulate in the United States to see what visas you will need.

– research: Con­tact the near­est U.S. Embassy or Con­sulate in Mex­ico. It can give you names of local attor­neys and infor­mal infor­ma­tion about real estate.

– Rent­ing: If you plan to rent out your home, see what taxes you must pay and what per­mits you might need. If you will employ peo­ple in your home, make sure you com­ply with labor laws.

Ten years ago, Amer­i­cans who wanted to buy a vaca­tion or retire­ment home thought of places such as Florida, Ari­zona or Hawaii. Today, they’re just as likely to con­sider Mex­ico or Cen­tral America.

Last week, in the first part of this two-part series, I cited a num­ber of rea­sons why more Amer­i­cans are buy­ing real estate abroad.

Mex­ico and Cen­tral Amer­ica are attrac­tive, espe­cially for Cal­i­for­ni­ans, because they’re close and inexpensive.

Some coun­tries are eas­ing restric­tions on for­eign­ers own­ing prop­erty and actively court­ing North Americans.

Each year, Inter­na­tional Liv­ing mag­a­zine rates the best places to retire based on costs, health care, safety, taxes and other factors.

This year, it named Mex­ico No. 1, cit­ing its “per­fect mix of centuries-old tra­di­tions and con­tem­po­rary lifestyles.”

Panama, which had been No. 1 for six years, dropped to fourth place, mainly because of ris­ing prop­erty prices and new visa restrictions.

Buy­ing prop­erty in a devel­op­ing coun­try is not with­out risk. Many don’t have the same prop­erty rights and judi­cial sys­tem we do.

Amer­i­cans who failed to do their due dili­gence have bought homes from peo­ple who didn’t have the right to sell them.

Cor­rup­tion and bribery are not uncom­mon. Health care might not be up to U.S. stan­dards. And the infra­struc­ture we take for granted often doesn’t exist.

Amer­i­cans buy ocean­front prop­erty “and then find out the roads are bad, there’s not a mall five min­utes away. Right out­side their beau­ti­ful com­plex is a lot of poverty,” says Mar­garet Hussey, super­vis­ing pro­ducer with “House Hunters Inter­na­tional” on HGTV.

Here are sto­ries about North­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans who bought prop­erty in Mex­ico and Panama.

On the cheap in Panama

Glenn and Rein­hild Gam­boa were plan­ning to sell their restau­rant, home and cabin near Yosemite in five to eight years and retire some­where cheaper, per­haps India or Bul­garia. But when they vis­ited Panama last year, they real­ized they could do it immediately.

Panama had every­thing they wanted — warm weather year-round, cheap real estate and low liv­ing costs. Because Panama’s cur­rency is the U.S. dol­lar, there were no exchange-rate worries.

Find­ing a place, how­ever, took some sleuthing. “There are no Real­tors in Panama,” Glenn Gam­boa says. “You go through a lawyer or go to the mayor of the vil­lage and ask what’s for sale.”

Dri­ving around, the Gam­boas found a half-acre lot with a river on two sides in El Valle de Anton, a vil­lage in an extinct volcano.

“We found a lawyer (in Panama). The lawyer called the owner, we got together, made an offer and set­tled. It took about four days,” Glenn Gam­boa says.

They flew home and put their prop­er­ties on the mar­ket. They all sold within 90 days.

The Gam­boas paid $52,000 for the land and $90,000 to have a 3,400-square-foot cin­derblock home con­structed. Build­ing in Panama takes patience and a cer­tain inat­ten­tion to detail. “They don’t think it’s impor­tant to have the tiles line up,” Glenn Gam­boa says.

Amer­i­cans in Panama have to get used to see­ing guards with Uzis in store­fronts, and the food “is pretty bad,” he says.

But for $430 a month, the Gam­boas pay for a gar­dener; a maid; water; elec­tric­ity; garbage; Inter­net; and life, home­own­ers and car insur­ance. They don’t have health insur­ance. If they have med­ical prob­lems, they’ll pay out of pocket or, when they’re Medicare-eligible, return to the United States.

The Gam­boas have opened a cook­ing school, which brings in about $1,000 a month.

Panama is “safe, clean and the peo­ple are gen­er­ous, amaz­ing,” Glenn Gam­boa says. “I’ve been stopped five times (for traf­fic vio­la­tions) by the police. But I’ve never got­ten a ticket.”

Coastal Mex­ico

Bill Karr, an out­door writer from Plac­erville (El Dorado County), has been vis­it­ing Mex­ico for 40 years. He had long thought about buy­ing prop­erty on the Baja Penin­sula but was wor­ried about the restric­tions on for­eign ownership.

The Mex­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits for­eign­ers from own­ing prop­erty within roughly 62 miles of its bor­ders and 31 miles of its coastline.

In years past, Amer­i­cans tried to get around those restric­tions in var­i­ous ways, such as buy­ing prop­erty in a Mexican’s name, some­times with dis­as­trous results.

To encour­age for­eign invest­ment, the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment cre­ated a way for out­siders to own res­i­den­tial prop­erty in the restricted zone indi­rectly through a bank trust known as a fide­icomiso. The bank holds title to the prop­erty but the buyer has all the rights asso­ci­ated with ownership.

The trust has lured more North Amer­i­cans to Mex­ico, fuel­ing a run-up in prices.

“Things were esca­lat­ing in Los Cabos. I fig­ured they’d be out of hand before too long,” Karr says.

So last year, he decided to look for a place in Los Bar­riles, a once-sleepy fish­ing com­mu­nity south of La Paz on the west­ern shore of the Sea of Cortez.

He asked real estate agents whether there was any­thing under $200,000. They chuck­led and sent him to a place listed at $275,000.

En route, he saw a house for sale by owner. Inside he found the owner, who had dri­ven there from Florida with her 93-year-old mother. The owner was ask­ing $200,000 but Karr snagged it for $165,000.

Even though it had no air con­di­tion­ing and needed some work, “it was an absolute steal,” he says. It has three bed­rooms and three baths in 1,600 square feet, and it’s a one-minute walk from beach.

Karr hired a local title agent to assist with the clos­ing but han­dled escrow through a com­pany in Den­ver that spe­cial­izes in Mex­i­can property.

“Don’t even attempt to han­dle this your­self,” Karr warns. “There are just so many dif­fer­ent, intri­cate steps” involved in buy­ing prop­erty south of the border.

Karr has a car and a boat in Mex­ico and vis­its about six times a year. His neigh­bor­hood, Spa Buena Vista, is mostly Amer­i­cans. “I have Mike and Molly from Mon­tana next door and Ed and Ella from Stock­ton across the street,” he says.

What attracts them? The cost of liv­ing, for one. “I could live there for $500 a month eas­ily,” Karr says.

He pays $15 a week for a gar­dener, $15 for a half-day of house­keep­ing, $50 to $60 a month for elec­tric­ity and $300 a year in prop­erty tax. He pays a neigh­bor $15 a month to pay his bills.

“If you shop like a Mex­i­can, you can eat cheaply,” he says, although “the meat is very expen­sive and tough.”

Thanks to appre­ci­a­tion and improve­ments, the house is now worth about $300,000. Even so, “When you sit down and fig­ure out the cost of a (vaca­tion) house, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off stay­ing in a nice hotel and rent­ing a cruiser,” Karr says. “But I love the tran­quil­ity, the feel­ing that I now own some­thing out­right, fur­nished the way I want in a beau­ti­ful place.”

Inland Mex­ico

In 2003, Annie Reutinger and Jay Clark sold their home in the Oak­land hills and moved to San Miguel de Allende, an artsy, colo­nial town in cen­tral Mex­ico often com­pared to Santa Fe.

The cou­ple rented for two months before buy­ing a five-bedroom place in the cen­ter of town for $370,000 in cash. Because it was not in the restricted zone, they could own it outright.

Two years later, they sold it for $600,000 and put the money into a 4,000-square-foot house on a big­ger lot 2 miles from town. Prop­erty tax is only $400 a year.

Shortly after mov­ing to Mex­ico, Reutinger got the chance to buy a small busi­ness that rents prop­er­ties owned pri­mar­ily by North Amer­i­cans to vacationers.

Get­ting a work per­mit was not easy. She had to hire a lawyer and prove she was not tak­ing jobs from Mexicans.

Reutinger charges own­ers a com­mis­sion of 16.5 per­cent to han­dle vaca­tion renters only. Most own­ers hire a sep­a­rate prop­erty manger to over­see upkeep at a cost of $100 a month.

Reutinger says she makes a six-figure income from the business.

There are a few down­sides to liv­ing in Mex­ico. Heat­ing costs tend to be high. (San Miguel is at 6,500 feet.)

“There’s a lot of bureau­cracy,” she says, and “I miss fam­ily and friends. I love to go back and go shop­ping. I’m 5-foot-10, and it’s hard to find clothes here to fit me.”

Dur­ing the past 15 years, Inter­na­tional Liv­ing mag­a­zine has cal­cu­lated its Annual Global Retire­ment Index; a resource intended to assist retirees and future retirees in eval­u­at­ing and com­par­ing the world’s most pop­u­lar retire­ment des­ti­na­tions. It is based on a num­ber of cri­te­ria, giv­ing var­i­ous weights to each, depend­ing on its impor­tance to retirees. Listed below are those cri­te­ria con­sid­ered with their indi­vid­ual weighting:

• Cost of Living—20%
• Health Care—20%
• Spe­cial Benefits—20%
• Real Estate—15%
• Enter­tain­ment, Recre­ation, and Culture—10%
• Climate—5%
• Safety and Stability—5%
• Infrastructure—5%

Believe it or not, until this year,

 Now, for the num­ber one ranked coun­try in the world for retirement;

 (As a side note, a few years ago when the Cana­dian dol­lar was at its weakest,

 The major Mex­i­can inland retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are located in San Miguel de Allende, Gua­na­ju­ato, and the

 For those desir­ing mag­nif­i­cent ocean views, the Pacific coast­line offers many advan­tages over the

 Pacific Ocean coastal cities such as Mazat­lan, Man­zanillo, and

 La Paz and Todos San­tos in Baja, Ixtapa / Zihu­atanejo, and Puerto Escon­dido are more exposed to the ele­ments than Puerto Val­larta, which is tucked behind the Sierra Madre Moun­tains next to Ban­deras Bay, safely pro­tected from Pacific storms com­ing out of the south. Also, because Ixtapa / Zihu­atanejo is approx­i­mately 500 miles south of Val­larta and Puerto Escon­dido is 300 miles even fur­ther south, the “high sea­son”, or the  time dur­ing the year with per­fect weather con­di­tions, is reduced from 7–8 months to per­haps 6–7 months. A month extra per year in

 Using the above logic, it’s no won­der why so many retirees have migrated to

 Located at the same lat­i­tude as Hawaii,

 High speed inter­net, satel­lite TV, VOIP telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, and US news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines are all avail­able in Val­larta. Most of the mega-stores found in the US and Canada have come to Val­larta includ­ing Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot, Office Depot, Sta­ples, and of course, every fast food chain restau­rant imag­in­able! Val­larta now has seven world class golf courses with three more either in the plan­ning stage or cur­rently under con­struc­tion. There are hun­dreds of ten­nis courts, world class deep sea fish­ing, and every other activ­ity avail­able that you would expect in a city of this size. There are numer­ous new cin­e­mas, the­aters, and hun­dreds of fine restaurants.

 Due to the explo­sive growth of Val­larta and the influx of North Amer­i­cans, it is safe to say that its entire econ­omy is based on tourism and the retire­ment of North Amer­i­cans, thus cre­at­ing thou­sands of new con­struc­tion and ser­vice related jobs for the locals. It has also cre­ated an atmos­phere where speak­ing Eng­lish has become a pre­req­ui­site for a decent pay­ing job. There­fore, most of the younger Val­lartenses are now becom­ing quite flu­ent in Eng­lish. The inabil­ity to speak Span­ish is cer­tainly not an obsta­cle to retir­ing in Val­larta! Also, because the econ­omy is based on the North Amer­i­can dol­lar, safety is of prime con­cern to the locals. You will not find a safer, more hos­pitable city of this size any­where. In fact, this was clearly revealed in a sur­vey taken by Conde Nast mag­a­zine, where

 Now, let’s return to our quest for the top retire­ment haven in the world. If we can accept what the lat­est sur­veys, polls, and indices sug­gest, Mex­ico is the coun­try and

 We’ve owned prop­erty in Val­larta for almost 25 years and have lived here as per­ma­nent res­i­dents for over ten years and can attest to its mag­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics result­ing in a qual­ity of life that can’t be sur­passed any­where in the world. The growth that we’ve wit­nessed since 2000, when the PAN admin­is­tra­tion took power, has been truly amaz­ing; so much so, that the head of the local Cham­ber of Com­merce has pro­jected the pop­u­la­tion of Val­larta will reach 600,000 by the year 2015. There are cur­rently more than 7,000 new con­dos cur­rently under con­struc­tion with well over 20,000 more planned in the future by Fonatur, the Mex­i­can Tourism Board. Because real estate sales in Mex­ico are gen­er­ally done on a cash basis, this econ­omy has not been affected by the mort­gage related prob­lems seen in the

 If you’re a baby boomer, either recently retired or about to retire, you owe it to your­self; make PV your next vaca­tion des­ti­na­tion and con­sider all the qual­i­ties it has to offer. You’ll def­i­nitely be impressed with this glo­ri­ous Par­adise along the Mex­i­can Riv­iera and will prob­a­bly agree,