Speedy Trans­fers  is com­mit­ted to giv­ing you the infor­ma­tion and tools you need to con­fi­dently build the best pos­si­ble trans­porta­tion.Speedy Trans­fers offers trasnpor­ta­tion from Vallarta’s air­port to any hotel, condo or addresses in Val­larta and its sur­round­ings with an optional round trip and vicev­ersa. All our ser­vices are with air conditioned.

REGULAR  ser­vice:
Our  REGULAR ser­vice takes you directly to your hotel. Our wait­ing times are very short because we have a sched­ule to fol­low. Please note that in order to be able to offer you this ser­vice we need max­i­mum 3 pas­sen­gers per car and 8 pas­sen­gers per van. In the spe­cial zones the price is per van, so you have a limit of 8 passengers. 

VIP ser­vice:
Our VIP ser­vice takes you directly to your hotel. Enjoy the ben­e­fits like bev­er­ages and gen­eral infor­ma­tion about the city dur­ing the ride to your hotel with eng­lish spo­ken. A max­i­mum of 6 per­sons to fit com­fort­ably per vehicle.

Note: All the trans­porta­tion to spe­cial places the price is per van, so you can use it for 8 pas­sen­gers max­i­mum. Our staff at the air­port will mon­i­tor your flight to ensure that your shut­tle will be ready when­ever you arrive. You never have to worry if your flight is delayed or arrives ahead of sched­ule. We will know, and most impor­tantly, we will be wait­ing for you at what­ever time your flight arrives.

Impor­tant: Please reserve at least 2 days in advance, if you can­cel the ser­vice, it  will have a cost of 15% over the price of your ser­vice and the 75% will be refund it to you.

New fig­ures show home prices in major U.S. cities dropped this past year to what they were in the sum­mer of 2004.

That news has devel­op­ers lur­ing Amer­i­cans across the bor­der to buy and some of the hottest prop­er­ties are along Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

It’s known as a “fly and buy”.

The Riv­iera Nayarit, just north of Puerto Val­larta, is one of the hot areas.

The process is part sell, part sight­see­ing and part seminar.

It’s doing so well that a risk man­ager for a San Anto­nio real estate com­pany trav­eled south of the bor­der to learn more.

“I heard an astro­nom­i­cal fig­ure about how many, I for­get what it was, about how many U.S. cit­i­zens will be retir­ing to Mex­ico in the next ten years,” said Hank Braun­stein with Keller Williams Her­itage Realty.

Devel­op­ers antic­i­pate more Amer­i­cans look­ing for the next big place to buy will cross the border.

About 78 mil­lion baby boomers are expected to retire in Mex­ico in the next 15 years.

“At the end of the day, I want to be sit­ting on my patio with a mar­garita in my hand watch­ing the sun dive into the ocean,” Stu­art McGre­gor says as he sur­veys his new vaca­tion home.

He’s not sur­prised to have a lux­ury vaca­tion prop­erty — after all, he worked for years in Cal­gary to be able to afford to spend his later years in the sun with wife Bar­bara. What sur­prises him is his vaca­tion villa is in Punta Mita, Mexico.

“We’d spent a lot of time in South­east Asia and Thai­land and we’d checked out Hawaii and, of course, we kind of knew Palm Springs and Phoenix. But then a friend from Cal­gary said we should check out Punta Mita. We thought — oh, Mex­ico, we just don’t know about Mex­ico,” Bar­bara McGre­gor recalls.

It’s a com­mon response by Cana­di­ans, given the spate of bad pub­lic­ity about Mex­ico in the Cana­dian news. It’s rare to see a pos­i­tive review of a Mex­i­can destination.

That’s what makes Punta Mita, a 200-hectare devel­op­ment on a penin­sula pok­ing into the Pacific, such an unusual place, where every other hol­i­day prop­erty owner you bump into is a Cana­dian — mostly from Calgary. 

This is a vaca­tion com­mu­nity of a type that’s unusual for Mex­ico, one that resem­bles high-end devel­op­ments on upscale Caribbean islands like Nevis and Barbados.

It was built around a Jack Nick­laus sig­na­ture golf course that was ranked world’s best golf resort by read­ers of Conde Nast Trav­eller 2006 and one of the world’s best courses by Travel + Leisure Golf in 2006.

Sur­rounded on three sides by white sand beaches, Punta Mita is a col­lec­tion of exclu­sive hotels and high-end, pri­vately owned vaca­tion homes, often rented to Canadians.

It’s also a vaca­tion des­ti­na­tion for Mex­i­cans that is work­ing to pre­serve the envi­ron­ment and the flavour of the small fish­ing vil­lage next to which it has been built.

Leave your lux­u­ri­ous villa and drive five min­utes to the wharf, where a vari­ety of tour boats wait to take you to the island of birds. In the har­bour, brown pel­i­cans rock on the gun­wales of small fish­ing craft while seag­ulls cir­cle and cry.

While these seabirds are a com­mon sight to many North Amer­i­cans, the some­what more exotic blue-footed booby can be spot­ted at the Mari­eta Islands Marine Reserve, 20 min­utes out.

Humans are strictly pro­hib­ited from land­ing on the sanc­tu­ary, where hun­dreds of boobys, whose blue feet are thought to attract the oppo­site sex, call to the pass­ing boats.

It’s that com­bi­na­tion of pro­tected envi­ron­men­tal beauty and cul­ture that attracted the McGre­gors, Stu­art says.

“The cli­mate is vir­tu­ally per­fect for golf. The sun shines every day. Obvi­ously that’s a big bonus, but we love the cul­ture. The Mex­i­can peo­ple are won­der­ful. The cul­tural change from where we come from is incredible.”

Are the McGre­gors likely to return to Cal­gary full time?

“I go back occa­sion­ally for in-person meet­ings,” Stu­art says, “but beyond that I’m as com­fort­able here from a busi­ness per­spec­tive as I am in Cal­gary. I do all my busi­ness by Inter­net and phone. Given the dif­fer­ences in cli­mate, why would we go home?

A project for one of our staff mem­bers was to iden­tify all of the real estate projects cur­rently in devel­op­ment in and around Puerto Val­larta, find out how many units the project con­sists of and how many are cur­rently avail­able for sale. I posted ear­lier some of our find­ings. We also gath­ered infor­ma­tion regard­ing the price ranges for each devel­op­ment. With this infor­ma­tion we cal­cu­lated the aver­age price and then mul­ti­plied it by the num­ber of units in the devel­op­ment to get a rough idea of what the total gross sale value would be for the devel­op­ment. We did this for each devel­op­ment and then added them up. The total? $5 Bil­lion dol­lars. No mat­ter which way you look at it, that’s a lot of money invested in new real estate cur­rently on the mar­ket!  Tak­ing the aver­age price in this man­ner prob­a­bly has put this value higher than it really is, as there is usu­ally more prod­uct at the lower end than at the higher end. If we based this on the lower end, this would come in closer to $4 Bil­lion — still a large number. 

New York: As the con­se­quences of the sub-prime mort­gage melt­down in the United States spread through global mar­kets, will one of the most pos­i­tive trends in Latin Amer­ica – the expan­sion of local credit mar­kets, which has dra­mat­i­cally expanded access to home­own­er­ship through­out the region, be jeopardised?

Big multi­na­tional banks and mort­gage lenders have moved into mar­kets across Latin Amer­ica, pro­vid­ing finan­cial ser­vices that allow lenders to bet­ter man­age risk. Banks are cre­atively tap­ping into migrant worker remit­tances, multiple-family house­holds, and other pre­vi­ously over­looked sources of poten­tial income and cred­it­wor­thi­ness. Sim­i­larly, the spread of micro­fi­nance lend­ing has made cap­i­tal avail­able to bor­row­ers who until recently were not seen as creditworthy.

So far, the sub-prime cri­sis has had a lim­ited direct impact on Latin America’s mort­gage mar­kets. In Mex­ico, the mar­ket for new low-and middle-income hous­ing has grown rapidly, thanks to the cre­ation of a mar­ket for res­i­den­tial mort­gage secu­ri­ties in 2003. In the last quar­ter of 2007 alone, Mex­i­can issuers sold $1.5 bil­lion in new mortgage-backed secu­ri­ties, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of $4.4 bil­lion out­stand­ing, with only a slight drop in prices to reflect glob­ally induced risk, accord­ing to the pub­li­ca­tion Asset Secu­ri­ti­za­tion Report. Chilean mar­kets also have stayed rel­a­tively calm.

These mar­kets have been insu­lated in part because most invest­ment in real estate-backed secu­ri­ties has come from local investors who often need to invest in local-currency mar­kets. Most impor­tant, Latin America’s mort­gage mar­kets and home­own­ers are very dif­fer­ent from those in the US. “It’s nat­ural that the state of global mar­kets will have some kind of rip­ple effect,” says Greg Kabance, man­ag­ing direc­tor for Latin Amer­i­can struc­tured finance at Fitch Rat­ings, the inter­na­tional credit rat­ings agency. “But Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, from a credit stand­point, are a lot bet­ter off than they have ever been to with­stand tur­bu­lence and weather global mar­ket problems.”

To their ben­e­fit, Latin Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments have applied the lessons of the past. Mexico’s “tequila cri­sis” of 1994–1995 forced many home­own­ers into default when the peso fell by 70 per­cent and inter­est rates soared. In Mex­ico, all mort­gages carry fixed inter­est rates, unlike the infa­mous “explod­ing ARMs” that left US home­own­ers ruing their choice of adjustable-rate mort­gages when inter­est rates rose. Mex­i­can mort­gages are indexed to infla­tion, but the state mort­gage agency links that index to the min­i­mum wage and makes up the dif­fer­ence if mort­gage inter­est adjust­ments for infla­tion out­pace wage growth. This pro­tects both bor­row­ers and lenders.

Thus, although delin­quency rates have risen slightly in Mex­ico since the mort­gage mar­ket was cre­ated in 2003, only about 5 per­cent of mort­gages are between 31 and 60 days late. Only 2 per­cent are between 61 and 90 days late. In the US, by con­trast, 21 per­cent of adjustable-rate sub-prime mort­gages are 90 days late or in foreclosure.

Stan­dard & Poor’s ana­lyst Juan Pablo de Mollein points out that Mex­ico does not have a liq­uid sec­ondary mar­ket where mort­gage secu­ri­ties can be traded to buy­ers who are far removed from the orig­i­nal issuer. That tends to make buy­ers more cautious.

The sil­ver lin­ing of past finan­cial crises in Latin Amer­ica is that most indi­vid­u­als carry far less debt than do Amer­i­cans. In Mex­ico, for exam­ple, mort­gage debt rep­re­sents less than 10 per­cent of GDP, com­pared to about 50 per­cent of GDP in Europe and 82 per­cent of GDP in the US – a ratio that has increased more than four­fold in the last two decades.

Latin America’s low per­sonal debt lev­els have cre­ated an oppor­tu­nity to build a con­struc­tive cul­ture of bor­row­ing while expand­ing eco­nomic oppor­tu­nity. There is no doubt that the expan­sion of access to finan­cial ser­vices has enor­mous pos­i­tive poten­tial, when han­dled responsibly.

In his 2000 book The Mys­tery of Cap­i­tal, Peru­vian econ­o­mist Her­nando de Soto argued that access to credit is a pow­er­ful under-used force for devel­op­ment. He empha­sized the cru­cial role of hous­ing in allow­ing low-income indi­vid­u­als to raise cap­i­tal that can be used for invest­ment in small busi­nesses, in edu­ca­tion, or in other projects that can sig­nif­i­cantly improve stan­dards of liv­ing over the medium to long term.

But as the array of finan­cial ser­vices avail­able in Latin Amer­ica expands, the dan­ger of mis­use rises. There is a clear les­son to be learned from the US, where easy credit cre­ated com­pla­cency on the part of author­i­ties, oppor­tu­nity for char­la­tans, and tragedy for those who lost or will lose their homes. Amer­i­cans home­own­ers came to treat their houses as cash machines from which they with­drew equity lines of credit for con­sump­tion instead of invest­ment. The dra­matic run-up of home prices made it too easy to count on real estate val­ues to con­tinue to rise.

Latin Amer­i­cans have long regarded real estate as a long-term asset and as pro­tec­tion against infla­tion. With much lower infla­tion over the past two decades, other invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties were bet­ter options, which helped to keep real estate val­ues in check. At the same time, expanded access to credit has sup­ported a build­ing boom to meet vast untapped demand. Mex­ico alone is esti­mated to have a hous­ing deficit of six mil­lion units.

As the US and Europe lower inter­est rates to try to revive their economies and calm finan­cial mar­kets, the most sig­nif­i­cant impact of the sub-prime mort­gage cri­sis for Latin Amer­ica may turn out to be infla­tion. Iron­i­cally, then, the expanded access to mort­gage lend­ing that cre­ates new home­own­ers in Latin Amer­ica may end up pro­tect­ing the region from the dis­as­ter that too-loose credit cre­ated in the US.

Rede­fine Leisure Travel.

With today’s evolv­ing vaca­tion home mar­ket, con­sumers are faced with an increas­ingly diverse mar­ket­place and options in leisure travel, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Resort Devel­op­ment Asso­ci­a­tion (ARDA). To select the vaca­tion home best suited to their lifestyle needs and vaca­tion dreams, con­sumers must edu­cate them­selves about the mar­ket ter­mi­nol­ogy and own­er­ship options, and assess their vaca­tion pref­er­ences, travel goals and budget.

“Terms such as ‘deeded,’ ‘frac­tional own­er­ship res­i­dences,’ ‘des­ti­na­tion clubs’ and ‘time­shares’ are fre­quently heard because of a surg­ing inter­est in vaca­tion prop­er­ties that move beyond the tra­di­tional vaca­tion accom­mo­da­tions or sec­ond home,” said Howard Nus­baum, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of ARDA. “Sort­ing through exactly what these prod­ucts offer and for whom they are best suited can puz­zle even the most sophis­ti­cated consumer.”

Four out of every 10 pur­chases are a sec­ond home, being used for either an invest­ment or vaca­tion prop­erty, accord­ing to the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors, and this trend is expected to grow as Baby Boomers enter their peak earn­ing years. The grow­ing vari­ety of vaca­tion home options is redefin­ing leisure travel, with the fol­low­ing prod­uct categories.

Time­share / Vaca­tion Own­er­ship
Overview: Vaca­tion own­er­ship may be pur­chased through deeded prop­erty own­er­ship, right-to-use, or a points-based pro­gram. Own­ers pur­chase a vaca­tion villa for one or more weeks within a fixed or “float­ing time” sys­tem, which allows sched­ul­ing each year’s vaca­tion dur­ing the most con­ve­nient week within a spec­i­fied sea­son. With time­share, con­sumers have the oppor­tu­nity to pur­chase time at resorts offer­ing a wide range of ameni­ties at dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tions. While many vaca­tion own­er­ship vil­las have two bed­rooms and two baths, floor plans range from stu­dios to three or more bedrooms.

Pric­ing: With vaca­tion own­er­ship, con­sumers buy in incre­ments of one week. It is a one-time pur­chase, and own­ers also pay an annual main­te­nance fee, depend­ing on the unit size, loca­tion and ameni­ties of the resort. Time­share is not intended to be an invest­ment oppor­tu­nity, rather an alter­na­tive to tra­di­tional vaca­tion accom­mo­da­tions and a way to hedge against “vaca­tion infla­tion.” Accord­ing to a recently released Ernst & Young study, the weighted aver­age price of a time­share inter­val, or week, sold dur­ing 2005 was $17,797 USD.

Frac­tional Own­er­ship / Pri­vate Res­i­dence Clubs
Overview: Frac­tional own­er­ship buy­ers typ­i­cally have a recorded deed and title. Frac­tional own­er­ship has the ben­e­fits of sec­ond home own­er­ship, but for a frac­tion of the cost and with­out the main­te­nance respon­si­bil­i­ties. Con­sid­er­ing the aver­age vaca­tion home buyer uses the prop­erty just three to four weeks a year, frac­tional own­er­ship tends to be com­men­su­rate with actual use of a vaca­tion home. Addi­tion­ally, frac­tional prop­er­ties are gen­er­ally affil­i­ated with high-end hotel com­pa­nies or high-end bou­tique oper­a­tors, so own­ers have the ben­e­fits of per­son­al­ized ser­vices and amenities.

Pric­ing: Accord­ing to the 2006 Frac­tional Inter­ests Leisure Real Estate Mar­ket Report, frac­tional pric­ing ranges from $60,750 to $649,564 USD per inter­est, based on floor plan, loca­tion and size of the frac­tion. In addi­tion to the pur­chase price, there are annual main­te­nance fees, which in 2005 aver­aged $5,575 USD.

Des­ti­na­tion Clubs
Overview: Mem­bers of a des­ti­na­tion club are not buy­ing a spe­cific prop­erty, but rather the right to use any of a port­fo­lio of homes owned or oper­ated by the club com­pany. With few excep­tions, they offer a non-equity-based mem­ber­ship empha­siz­ing a broad selec­tion of vaca­tion home expe­ri­ences. Most des­ti­na­tion clubs also offer mem­bers concierge services.

Pric­ing: The Frac­tional Inter­ests study also states that the aver­age length of stay at des­ti­na­tion clubs ranges from one to nine weeks, with costs includ­ing a one-time fee of $20,000 to $1.5 mil­lion USD, which is typ­i­cally between 80 and 100 per­cent refund­able if they choose to exit the pro­gram. Annual dues range from $1,500 to $30,000 USD. The club may also charge a nightly fee while guests are in residence.

Condo Hotels
Overview: Condo hotels offer a por­tion of their hotel room inven­tory for sale to the pub­lic. The owner may use it for vaca­tion or cor­po­rate hous­ing needs, or place it in a rental pro­gram, typ­i­cally man­aged by the hotel. Own­ers then receive pro­ceeds from the rentals. Buy­ers enjoy the ben­e­fits of own­ing real estate in a desir­able loca­tion cou­pled with hotel ameni­ties and ser­vices. Annual dues also apply.

Pric­ing: Condo hotel pric­ing varies by real estate mar­ket trends; cur­rently there are a few options avail­able for condo hotels in Vallarta.

Tra­di­tional Sec­ond Home Own­er­ship
Overview: Viewed as a lucra­tive finan­cial invest­ment, tra­di­tional sec­ond home own­er­ship appeals to those seek­ing a vaca­tion set­ting to share with fam­ily and friends and/or use for busi­ness when­ever they choose. Own­ers have full respon­si­bil­ity for main­tain­ing the prop­erty, which can include hir­ing a man­age­ment com­pany. Homes pur­chased in pop­u­lar tourist regions can gen­er­ate rev­enue for the owner because of the will­ing­ness of tourists to pay high rental rates.

Pric­ing: In Val­larta, con­do­mini­ums can range from $100,000 to over $1 mil­lion USD and homes com­monly from $250,000 to over $2 million.

Vaca­tion Assess­ment Ques­tion­naire
“There are sev­eral key fac­tors to con­sider when eval­u­at­ing vaca­tion home options,” explained Nus­baum. “ARDA rec­om­mends ask­ing lifestyle assess­ment ques­tions to help con­sumers match the best vaca­tion home to meet their needs and budget.”

It is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that for­eign­ers can­not own real estate in Mex­ico, but the real­ity is that they can. It is per­fectly legal for a for­eigner or for­eign cor­po­ra­tion to acquire any type of real estate, hold­ing the prop­erty as a direct owner, with the excep­tion of prop­er­ties located in the Restricted Zone.

The Mex­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion reg­u­lates the own­er­ship of land and estab­lishes that “… in a zone of 100 kilo­me­ters along the bor­der or 50 kilo­me­ters along the coast, a for­eigner can­not acquire direct own­er­ship of the land”. These areas are known as the “Restricted Zones” or “Pro­hib­ited Zones”.

Nev­er­the­less, the lat­est Mex­i­can For­eign Invest­ment Law, enacted Decem­ber 28, 1993, pro­vides a solu­tion. Within the Restricted Zone, a for­eigner or for­eign cor­po­ra­tion can obtain all the rights of own­er­ship with a bank trust, known as a Fideicomiso.

Any for­eigner or Mex­i­can National can estab­lish a Fide­icomiso (the equiv­a­lent of an Amer­i­can ben­e­fi­cial trust) through a Mex­i­can bank to pur­chase real estate any­where in Mex­ico, includ­ing the Restricted Zone. For prac­ti­cal rea­sons, even in unre­stricted zones, many for­eign­ers and Mex­i­can nation­als pre­fer to hold their prop­erty under a Fide­icomiso. To do so, the buyer requests a Mex­i­can bank of his choice to act as a trustee on his behalf. The bank, as a mat­ter of nor­mal course, obtains the per­mit from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs to acquire the cho­sen prop­erty in trust.

The Fide­icomiso can be estab­lished for a max­i­mum term of 50 years and can be auto­mat­i­cally renewed for another 50-year period. Dur­ing these peri­ods you have the right to trans­fer the title to any other party, includ­ing a mem­ber of your family.The bank becomes the legal owner of the prop­erty for the exclu­sive use of the buyer/beneficiary, who has all the ben­e­fits of a direct owner, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of leas­ing or trans­fer­ring his rights to the prop­erty to a third party.

The trustee is respon­si­ble to the buyer/beneficiary to ensure pre­cise ful­fill­ment of the trust, accord­ing to Mex­i­can law, assum­ing full tech­ni­cal, legal and admin­is­tra­tive super­vi­sion in order to pro­tect the inter­ests of the buyer/beneficiary. Fide­icomisos are not held by the trustee as an asset of the bank.

Another alter­na­tive is to pur­chase non-residential prop­erty through a Mex­i­can cor­po­ra­tion, which under cer­tain con­di­tions can be 100% foreign-owned, with a pro­vi­sion in its by-laws that the for­eign­ers accept being sub­ject to Mex­i­can laws and agree not to invoke the laws of their own coun­try. Also, they agree that the real estate acquired be reg­is­tered with the For­eign Affairs Min­istry and be used for non-residential activ­i­ties. In other words, under these con­di­tions for­eign­ers can directly acquire prop­er­ties des­tined for tourist, com­mer­cial and indus­trial use.

The Real Estate Indus­try
The real estate indus­try in Mex­ico is sim­i­lar in many ways to that of the United States, which is prob­a­bly the most advanced in the world. It is devel­op­ing quickly, tak­ing advan­tage of today’s tech­nol­ogy; how­ever, it seems to be par­al­lel­ing the sys­tem as it exists in the US.

Licens­ing
The Asso­ciación Mex­i­cana de Pro­fe­sion­ales Inmo­bil­iar­ios (Mex­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Real Estate Pro­fes­sion­als), or AMPI, is a rep­utable national pro­fes­sional real estate orga­ni­za­tion with many chap­ters through­out Mex­ico. This orga­ni­za­tion is sim­i­lar to the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors (NAR) in the US, and in fact has a joint ven­ture with the NAR, such that AMPI mem­ber­ship auto­mat­i­cally con­fers mem­ber­ship in the NAR, as well. In the Val­larta area, there are three AMPI chap­ters, AMPI Val­larta, AMPI Riv­iera Nayarita and AMPI Com­postela. At this time, there are no gov­ern­ment license laws reg­u­lat­ing real estate bro­ker­age and sales in Mex­ico. Any­body can, in effect, offer prop­er­ties for sale. There­fore, cau­tion should be taken to select an estab­lished and rep­utable real estate com­pany. A poten­tial buyer may want to have a look at www.virtualvallarta.com/puertovallarta/realestate/multi-list/index.shtml, which is updated to show AMPI-member agen­cies in the area with access to the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Service.

Financ­ing
His­tor­i­cally, due to lack of cap­i­tal mar­kets and high Mex­i­can inter­est rates, most trans­ac­tions were made in cash. That is chang­ing rapidly, how­ever, and many local and for­eign banks are now offer­ing financ­ing options. Loan terms can vary sig­nif­i­cantly, so it pays to shop around a bit.

Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice
Pro­duc­ciones Viva, the com­pany that pub­lishes the Real Estate Guide, also oper­ates the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice that serves all of Costa Val­larta, and has been doing so since 1989. These MLS prop­er­ties are avail­able to real estate pro­fes­sion­als in a monthly cat­a­log and as well to the pub­lic in gen­eral at www.mlsvallarta.com. There is another site that offers both MLS searches plus searches for devel­op­ment prop­er­ties at www.vallartarealestateguide.com.

Escrow, Title Insur­ance and Home Insur­ance
It is rec­om­mended to use an escrow account for real estate trans­ac­tions. There are a few com­pa­nies avail­able, one of them being Stew­art Title, with offices in Puerto Val­larta. They also offer title insur­ance, which is rel­a­tively new to Mex­ico. Many insur­ance com­pa­nies pro­vide full home cov­er­age. Your bro­ker can rec­om­mend some good options. When you decide to buy a prop­erty you must be cer­tain that after the sale has been com­pleted you will be the true owner of the prop­erty. You need to be con­fi­dent that no liens, encum­brances or other imped­i­ments will pre­vent your free use and enjoy­ment of the property.

What does a title guar­anty pro­vide?
• Pro­tec­tion against mon­e­tary losses, brought about by hid­den own­er­ship claims that may be made against the prop­erty title.
• Pay­ment of legal expenses if the com­pany must defend your prop­erty title against a claim cov­ered by the Title Guar­anty in the local courts.
• Pay­ment of valid claims against your prop­erty title, up to the amount of the Title Guaranty.

Purchase-Sale
Most real estate trans­ac­tions are “opened” after a writ­ten pur­chase offer is accepted by the seller and when a purchase-sale agree­ment (promis­sory con­tract) is signed by both par­ties. A deposit is required by the bro­ker to trans­mit the offer to the seller. (If the trans­ac­tion is being con­ducted directly with the seller, it is highly rec­om­mended that a real estate bro­ker or lawyer be con­sulted before sign­ing any papers or hand­ing over any money.) It is com­mon prac­tice to deliver to the seller, as an advance pay­ment, the equiv­a­lent of 10–30% (includ­ing the ini­tial deposit) of the total price upon sign­ing the purchase-sale agree­ment, which should con­tain a penalty clause applic­a­ble in case there is a breach of con­tract by any of the par­ties. Nor­mally, when sign­ing the escrit­ura (the offi­cial deed, which needs to be cer­ti­fied by a Pub­lic Notary) the bal­ance is paid and the prop­erty is deliv­ered. This should not take more than 45 days. It is rec­om­mended that an escrow account be used for all real estate transactions.

The Notary Pub­lic
A Pub­lic Notary is a government-appointed lawyer who processes and cer­ti­fies all real estate trans­ac­tions, includ­ing the draw­ing and review of all real estate clos­ing doc­u­ments, thus ensur­ing their proper trans­fer. Fur­ther­more, all pow­ers of attor­ney, the for­ma­tion of cor­po­ra­tions, wills, offi­cial wit­ness­ing, etc. are han­dled and duly reg­is­tered through the office of the Pub­lic Notary, who is respon­si­ble to the gov­ern­ment for the col­lec­tion of all taxes involved. In con­nec­tion with real estate trans­ac­tions, the Pub­lic Notary, upon request, receives the fol­low­ing offi­cial doc­u­ments, which are required by law for any trans­fer:
• A non-lien cer­tifi­cate from the pub­lic prop­erty reg­istry, based on a com­plete title search;
• A state­ment from the trea­sury or munic­i­pal­ity regard­ing prop­erty assess­ments, water bills and other per­ti­nent taxes that might be due;
• An appraisal of the prop­erty for tax purposes.

Clos­ing Costs
It is com­mon prac­tice that the buyer pays the trans­fer of acqui­si­tion tax and all other clos­ing costs, includ­ing the Notary’s fees and expenses, while the seller pays his cap­i­tal gains tax and the broker’s com­mis­sion. Pre­vi­ously, the real estate trans­fer tax was 2% nation­ally. But in 1996, the law changed, giv­ing indi­vid­ual states the right to set this tax level. The range now varies from 1–4% of the tax appraisal value, which is gen­er­ally less than the sales value.

The rest of the clos­ing costs, which exclude the trans­fer cost men­tioned above, vary from 3–5% or more of the appraised tax value, depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar state. These per­cent­ages are applied to the high­est value of the fol­low­ing:
• The amount for which the prop­erty is sold,
• The value of the offi­cial tax appraisal,
• The value des­ig­nated by the prop­erty assess­ment authorities.

Cost of the Fide­icomiso
Based on the present tar­iff, the bank charges the per­son desir­ing the Fide­icomiso an ini­tial fee ($400–500 USD) for draw­ing up the agree­ment and estab­lish­ing the trust, plus a per­cent­age based on the value of the prop­erty. In addi­tion, the bank charges an annual fee to cover its ser­vices as a trustee.

Real Estate Broker’s Com­mi­sion
AMPI/MLS real estate com­pa­nies charge 8% com­mis­sion (plus tax) for an exclu­sive list­ing, cal­cu­lated on the actual sale price of the property.

Cap­i­tal Gains Tax
In Mex­ico, the con­cept of cap­i­tal gains tax does not apply in the same way it is deter­mined in the United States. Here, the gain from the sale of prop­erty is treated as nor­mal income. To deter­mine the gain, the fol­low­ing costs and expenses are deducted from the amount for which the prop­erty is offi­cially sold:
• The orig­i­nal land cost and the depre­ci­ated con­struc­tion cost, based on the num­ber of years the prop­erty was held and adjusted for infla­tion accord­ing to the offi­cial con­sumer price indexes;
• Addi­tions, mod­i­fi­ca­tions and improve­ments, but not main­te­nance, made on the prop­erty (con­struc­tion), adjusted as above;
• Com­mis­sions paid to real estate bro­kers by the seller;
• The clos­ing costs, includ­ing all expenses, taxes and fees paid by the seller.

The Notary will retain the cal­cu­lated gain after deduc­tions, for­ward­ing it to the Mex­i­can tax author­i­ties. The seller will then deduct this amount against his annual tax return, which can become an adjustable tax credit in the U.S.A.

On the other hand, there is no cap­i­tal gains tax in Mex­ico if there is con­clu­sive proof the seller has used the prop­erty as his pri­mary res­i­dence. Restric­tions apply, and it is strongly advised to con­sult a tax lawyer and/or a pro­fes­sional real estate bro­ker. In coor­di­na­tion with a Pub­lic Notary, these pro­fes­sion­als can cal­cu­late the taxes due on any real estate transaction.

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%
• Ent., Recr. and Culture—10%
• Climate—5%
• Safety and Stability—5%
• Infrastructure—5%

Believe it or not, until this year, Panama had topped the list for the past six years. It still has plenty to offer retirees, how­ever this year, with 30 coun­tries being ana­lyzed and ranked, it fell to fourth posi­tion. Ahead of Panama in third posi­tion, was Italy with its beau­ti­ful cities, its fine weather, and of course, its his­toric sites. In sec­ond posi­tion was, of all coun­tries, Ecuador, which moved all the way up from the tenth posi­tion last year. Ecuador offers an extremely low cost of liv­ing, great weather, beau­ti­ful land, a grow­ing econ­omy tied to the US dol­lar, and a sta­ble polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. It might be a well kept secret, but Ecuador is becom­ing a land of oppor­tu­nity and retirees are tak­ing advan­tage of it.

Now, for the num­ber one ranked coun­try in the world for retire­ment; MEXICO! Aside from the fact that Mex­ico is extremely con­ve­nient to the US and Canada, that Mexico’s Senior Cit­i­zens´ Ben­e­fits Pro­gram offers up to 50% dis­counts on many ser­vices to retirees over the age of 60, that the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has enacted many new laws encour­ag­ing for­eign invest­ment, Mex­ico has become an incred­i­ble place to enjoy retire­ment, offer­ing the qual­ity of life that North Amer­i­cans are accus­tomed to with numer­ous extra benefits.

(As a side note, a few years ago when the Cana­dian dol­lar was at its weak­est, Canada ranked in the top ten. How­ever as the loonie has strength­ened, Canada has slipped well out of the top ten this year. For ref­er­ence sake only, the US ranked 19th this year!)

The major Mex­i­can inland retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are located in San Miguel de Allende, Gua­na­ju­ato, and the Lake Cha­pala / Aji­jic area. For the most part, these inland retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are located in beau­ti­ful colo­nial cities with mod­er­ate tem­per­a­tures year round. Most of the mod­ern ameni­ties and activ­i­ties are avail­able to retirees in these retire­ment cities with a very attrac­tive cost of liv­ing. Being located inland, these retirees can pur­chase and own real estate with title as they would in the US or Canada.

For those desir­ing mag­nif­i­cent ocean views, the Pacific coast­line offers many advan­tages over the Gulf of Mex­ico coast­line; the major one being pro­tec­tion from storms. The entire Yucatan Penin­sula area, includ­ing the Can­cun and Cozumel areas are great for vaca­tions; but due to its expo­sure to hur­ri­canes, it is not con­sid­ered by many to be ideal for retire­ment. On the other hand, the Pacific Ocean coast­line sel­dom sees trou­ble­some storms and offers more than a thou­sand miles of incred­i­ble Peb­ble Beach like views with a cli­mate sim­i­lar to that of Hawaii.

Pacific Ocean coastal cities such as Mazat­lan, Man­zanillo, and Aca­pulco are some­what pop­u­lar for tourists, but have become quite indus­tri­al­ized and com­mer­cial­ized and there­fore not really con­sid­ered as ideal retire­ment cities. The most desir­able retire­ment loca­tions from north to south along the Pacific Ocean are La Paz and Todos San­tos in Baja, Puerto Val­larta, Ixtapa / Zihu­atanejo, and Puerto Escondido.

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 Par­adise is often con­sid­ered to be sub­stan­tial to retirees!

Using the above logic, it’s no won­der why so many retirees have migrated to Puerto Val­larta. This beau­ti­ful tourist resort area has become home to thou­sands of North Amer­i­cans that have trav­eled the world, could afford to live any­where on the planet, and have cho­sen Val­larta as their win­ter, if not full time, retire­ment destination.

Located at the same lat­i­tude as Hawaii, Puerto Val­larta has a per­fect cli­mate with an aver­age daily tem­per­a­ture of 73°F from Novem­ber through May with vir­tu­ally no chance of rain. With a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mately 350,000 inhab­i­tants, Val­larta now has a new and grow­ing infra­struc­ture includ­ing roads, water treat­ment plants and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, power plants and dis­tri­b­u­tion grid, air­port, mar­itime ter­mi­nal, hos­pi­tals, uni­ver­sity, etc.

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 Puerto Val­larta was ranked the friend­liest resort des­ti­na­tion in the world.

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 Puerto Val­larta is the city.

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 US. Real estate val­ues have tripled since 2000 and con­tinue to appre­ci­ate daily. Own­ing prop­erty here has surely been an invest­ment of a life­time for us.

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, Puerto Val­larta is the best place in the world to retire.

Tools Avail­able to Become Famil­iar with the Val­larta Real Estate Market

If you are read­ing this, chances are that you have a vested inter­est in real estate in the Val­larta region. You are most likely a buyer or a seller (or both) or a pro­fes­sional involved in the indus­try, and you need sources of clear and cur­rent infor­ma­tion about the state of the market.

Con­grat­u­la­tions.
You have made an excel­lent choice in pick­ing up this copy of the Real Estate Guide. Along with infor­ma­tion on most real estate devel­op­ments, it also con­tains the MLS data­base of resale prop­er­ties of the Val­larta chap­ters of the Mex­i­can Real Estate Pro­fes­sion­als Asso­ci­a­tions (or AMPI, for its ini­tials in Span­ish). Every month, the Real Estate Guide con­tains how-to arti­cles on spe­cific aspects of the mar­ket, as well as infor­ma­tion from adver­tis­ers in such areas as home dec­o­ra­tion, real estate ser­vices and prop­erty rentals, among others.

Real Estate Guide Online
But the Real Estate Guide is really just one of a num­ber of tools avail­able to keep abreast of the mar­ket. The Real Estate Guide’s online com­pan­ion, found at www.vallartarealestateguide.com makes use of the most inno­v­a­tive Web tech­niques, includ­ing the United States NAVSTAR Global Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS), to assist you in becom­ing acquainted with the land­scape, and the many options avail­able for prop­erty buy­ers and sell­ers. Take a tour through VREG Online and learn how to best take advan­tage of this Website’s offer­ings. There is no more detailed source — online or in print — to learn what is going on in Puerto Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket. Impor­tantly, you can access this infor­ma­tion from all over the world, so you can stay informed about what’s hap­pen­ing here while you are trav­el­ing anywhere.

One sec­tion of the site is ded­i­cated to show­ing, area by area, the most inter­est­ing places in the region for real estate. Each area is shown via an aer­ial pho­to­graph, a short arti­cle describ­ing the area from a real estate point of view, a small ref­er­ence map of the entire bay that shows the area’s loca­tion within it, and a list of presently avail­able real estate devel­op­ments. Read­ing about each one of these areas and their pros and cons will help you find sec­tions of the bay that best suit your needs.

Other sec­tions explore what is avail­able in the var­i­ous devel­op­ments around the bay, show­case some of Mexico’s finest lux­ury homes (many of which have been fea­tured in world-renowned archi­tec­tural pub­li­ca­tions), and offer var­i­ous ways to search for prop­erty on the mar­ket. To accom­mo­date the dif­fer­ent needs poten­tial buy­ers or sell­ers may have, VREG Online offers three dis­tinct meth­ods of search­ing for prop­er­ties in both the Multi-List Val­larta data­base for resale prop­er­ties and the Multi-Dev Val­larta data­base for pre-construction properties.

You can choose the clas­sic, text-based search, or, if you are a more visual per­son, VREG Online has a map-based graph­i­cal search that orga­nizes prop­er­ties first by loca­tion and then by price, type of prop­erty, and other vari­ables that you can use as fil­ters. Finally, you can get an up-close look at where the devel­op­ments are located around the bay using the new Google search, which incor­po­rates Google Maps’ satel­lite images.

Val­larta Lifestyles
Val­larta Lifestyles cov­ers the real estate mar­ket in every one of its quar­terly edi­tions, along with news items, arti­cles, peo­ple pro­files, restau­rant reviews, shop­ping, activ­i­ties and art gal­leries — all of the lifestyle ameni­ties that are so impor­tant to any­one con­tem­plat­ing liv­ing here full time or part time. Lifestyles is avail­able on news­stands through­out the Val­larta region, and a vir­tual edi­tion of Lifestyles is now avail­able on the web and around the world. Visit www.virtualvallarta.com/digital-lifestyles to sub­scribe free-of-charge for a lim­ited time.

Vir­tu­al­Val­larta
The online por­tal www.virtualvallarta.com is one of the most pop­u­lar sites for Puerto Val­larta on the inter­net. It offers more infor­ma­tion about Puerto Val­larta than any other web­site, with hun­dreds of arti­cles and lots of pho­tos and images.

Costa Val­larta
Costa Val­larta mag­a­zine is semi­an­nual guide focused on every­thing lux­u­ri­ously styl­ish along this coast. It pro­vides detailed cov­er­age of home dec­o­ra­tion, gourmet restau­rants, art gal­leries, custom-made jew­elry and of course, top-tier real estate opportunities.

The time has come. Whether after one brief trip or fol­low­ing years of vis­it­ing Costa Val­larta, you have decided that you want to pur­chase your very own piece of par­adise on the beach.

Back home, choos­ing a real estate pro­fes­sional to help in the process is fairly straight­for­ward. You prob­a­bly have some­one you have already worked with or, at the very least, friends and fam­ily can make rec­om­men­da­tions. But how to get started here, with­out the ben­e­fit of that local knowl­edge and experience?

There is an easy way. Much like an ISO des­ig­na­tion for indus­trial processes or the USDA tat­too that you see on a nice cut of beef in the States, the Mex­i­can real estate indus­try has its very own seal of qual­ity – the Mex­i­can Real Estate Professional’s Asso­ci­a­tion, known as AMPI for its ini­tials in Spanish.

“Mer­can­tile law does not cover the range of fidu­ciary and eth­i­cal stan­dards for the real estate cat­e­gory of work. AMPI has estab­lished its owns stan­dards in these sub­jects for its mem­bers,” said Har­riet Mur­ray with Cochran Real Estate.

AMPI is a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion that is work­ing to fill that gap. AMPI has pub­lished eth­i­cal and fidu­ciary stan­dards that its mem­bers are required to main­tain. Those stan­dards pro­vide some assur­ance that the often com­plex process of a real estate trans­ac­tion is less likely to go awry through a lack of due dili­gence on the part of the real estate professionals.

In addi­tion, AMPI stan­dards require that their asso­ciates be involved in the com­mu­nity they are ser­vic­ing. Among the require­ments for mem­ber­ship in AMPI, there is a need for 100 hours of con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion and test­ing, and for­eign­ers work­ing in real estate must be approved to do so by immi­gra­tion. In a real estate mar­ket as active as the Puerto Val­larta area, it is impor­tant to know that your realty agent will still be around the day after the ink has dried on the sales agreement.

Another key advan­tage that AMPI bro­kers have over their non-AMPI col­leagues in this mar­ket is access to the Multi-List Val­larta ser­vice. This mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice was devel­oped and is man­aged by Pro­duc­ciones Viva, the com­pany that pub­lishes this mag­a­zine. With more than 650 qual­i­fied prop­er­ties cur­rently in the data­base, it is the most advanced mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice in the coun­try. Through the MLS, area bro­kers have access to a much wider range of prop­er­ties than would oth­er­wise be the case.

AMPI bro­kers are listed on www.mlsvallarta.com, the online ver­sion of the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Service.

Real Estate Licens­ing One Step Closer
Unlike in the United States or Canada, real estate pro­fes­sion­als in Mex­ico are not offi­cially licensed or accred­ited by the government.

But that may be about to change soon.
Mexico’s pro­fes­sional test­ing agency, the Cen­ter for the Assess­ment of Higher Edu­ca­tion (know as CENEVAL for its ini­tials in Span­ish), is cur­rently devel­op­ing a stan­dard­ized test for real estate professionals.

“Those who have met the require­ments estab­lished by the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion will be eli­gi­ble to take this test,” said Tere Kim­ball with Pru­den­tial, pres­i­dent of AMPI Riv­iera Nayarita. “This test will be the equiv­a­lent to the degree or cer­tifi­cate that any pro­fes­sional (doc­tor, archi­tect, lawyer, engi­neer) would receive from their col­lege studies.”

When the test becomes avail­able (expected for the first quar­ter of 2008), AMPI intends

When pur­chas­ing a prop­erty one of the most impor­tant issues to address for both a buyer and seller is how and under what con­di­tions the funds will be safely trans­ferred. In an inter­na­tional trans­ac­tion this issue is even more impor­tant as it is often com­pli­cated, as both the pur­chaser and seller may not be famil­iar or com­fort­able hav­ing funds deposited in an unfa­mil­iar juris­dic­tion or with an unfa­mil­iar attor­ney or bank.

What is an Escrow Agreement?

An escrow agree­ment is a writ­ten instru­ment which by its terms imports a legal oblig­a­tion. The buyer, seller and the escrow agent all sign the escrow agree­ment, which states the con­di­tions upon which the deposited items/funds may be dis­trib­uted. The escrow agree­ment also stip­u­lates, how, to whom and for which amounts the deposited funds/items will be distributed.

The escrow agree­ment can­not be changed unless all par­ties agree in writ­ing. The deliv­ery in escrow is with­out reser­va­tion of power to recall; which means that an escrow agent must act accord­ing to the agreed-upon escrow con­di­tions and dis­burse­ment instructions.

Involv­ing a third party, such as an inter­na­tional title com­pany, who can pro­vide an inter­na­tional escrow agree­ment and inter­na­tional bank accounts, pro­vides a cost effec­tive solu­tion. An inde­pen­dent escrow agent for real estate trans­ac­tions gives both the buyer and seller addi­tional com­fort, know­ing that a non-partisan party who main­tains both local and global pres­ence is mon­i­tor­ing the deposit.

Every­one Benefits

Escrow ser­vices pro­vide secu­rity to both par­ties to the trans­ac­tion; the seller retains a prop­erty inter­est to assure per­for­mance by the buyer and the buyer obtains secu­rity that the prop­erty will be his/hers if the con­di­tions in the escrow agree­ment are met.

Because both buyer and seller agree to the escrow terms before the trans­ac­tion, each party is clear of how the trans­ac­tion will tran­spire, and when funds will be dis­trib­uted and to whom. Stewart’s escrow agree­ments can be applied for any type of real estate trans­ac­tion, and can be mod­i­fied to address issues like con­struc­tion draws, real estate com­mis­sions, attorney/notary fees, etc.

Action begins Jan. 31 at Marina del Rey.
MARINA DEL REY — Del Rey Yacht Club is nav­i­gat­ing uncharted waters in 2009 with its 20th bien­nial com­pe­ti­tion to Puerto Val­larta. PV09 is no longer just an “Inter­na­tional Yacht Race,” but will become a series of four sep­a­rate races in suc­ces­sion between South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the Mex­i­can main­land, start­ing Jan. 31, 2009.

 
The object: to pro­vide seri­ous rac­ers an oppor­tu­nity to sail their brains out and still kick back to enjoy the Mex­i­can ambiance at three lay­overs along the way, while offer­ing oth­ers an off­shore sail­ing expe­ri­ence to col­or­ful places, with com­pe­ti­tion and com­pan­ion­ship stirred in.
Also, if five or more boats sign up there will still be the tra­di­tional non­stop for­mat of “the longest and old­est endur­ing race to Mex­ico” — so Mag­ni­tude 80’s record of 3 days, 15 hours, 51 min­utes, 39 sec­onds that top­pled Joss’ durable 22-year-old stan­dard last year is not entirely safe.
There are already 24 pre­lim­i­nary entries. The final entry list will be lim­ited to 40, because of moor­ing lim­i­ta­tions at San Jose del Cabo and Marina Val­larta.
The races will be 376 nau­ti­cal miles from Marina del Rey to Cedros Island out­side of Tur­tle Bay, where fresh lob­ster is la espe­cial­i­dad del día on any day; 220 miles to Mag­dalena Bay, famous for its friendly migrat­ing whales; 152 miles to lively Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja Penin­sula; and the last 286 miles across the Sea of Cortez to Puerto Val­larta, on the main­land.
The for­mat, divided into spin­naker “per­for­mance” boats and non-spinnaker “racer-cruisers,” expands the event’s “Salsa” con­cept of the last few years into “Hot Salsa” and “Milder Salsa” divi­sions. The over­all win­ner will be deter­mined not by accu­mu­lated time but by com­bined fin­ish­ing posi­tions in the four races, as in a regatta — but with no throwouts.
  James Puck­ett of Pacific Pal­isades sailed his dad Allen’s well-known Farr 55, Amaz­ing Grace, to sec­ond place in Spin­naker A class of the Salsa Divi­sion in 2007.
“One thing I enjoyed was that you get to know the peo­ple you’re rac­ing against,” Puck­ett said. 
Mickey Schein­baum of Del Rey YC sailed on another boat and noted, “For the first stop at Tur­tle Bay, the crews sort of kept to them­selves on shore. Then at Mag­dalena Bay it was bet­ter, and at Cabo San Lucas every­one was totally min­gling together.”
Hard­core rac­ers could be envi­ous. A pro­mo­tional flyer reads: “If you are a fre­quent gung-ho blue­wa­ter racer but are tired of doing the same old Mex­i­can races, then this race series is for you. Instead of rac­ing past some of the most beau­ti­ful des­ti­na­tions that Mex­ico has to offer, this series allows you to stop at three pic­turesque anchor­ages and enjoy the cama­raderie of social­iz­ing with com­peti­tors. In addi­tion, you have the oppor­tu­nity to com­pete in four races and to win four sep­a­rate tro­phies, includ­ing an ele­gant CORUM Admiral’s Cup time­piece for the over­all win­ner in each class.”
Entries aren’t required to sail all the way to Puerto Val­larta. 
CORUM rac­ing mar­ket­ing direc­tor Mike Guc­cione said, “A lot of peo­ple stopped doing P.V. races because they took too much time or were too expen­sive. But you can do the 376 miles to Tur­tle Bay and be back in less than a week.”
Or, as race com­mit­tee chair­man Tom Redler said, “When you get to Tur­tle Bay, you just might want to go another 220 miles to see the mag­nif­i­cent gray whale migra­tion in Mag Bay … espe­cially after you find out how much fun the post-race par­ties are!”
Also, for less-experienced off­shore sailors, there is the com­fort fac­tor of sail­ing in a group with a race com­mit­tee escort ves­sel accom­pa­ny­ing them all the way.
To ensure that all par­tic­i­pants will be able to fin­ish a race in time to enjoy the lay­over and the start of the next race, they may use motors if the winds become so light that their sail­ing speeds drop below their des­ig­nated “crossover” speeds. The crossover speed is defined as “that boat speed at which the appli­ca­tion of the motor penalty will have no detri­men­tal effect on the final com­puted cor­rected time.”
Prepa­ra­tion sem­i­nars sched­uled Oct. 23 and Dec. 4 will serve as tuto­ri­als for entries and prospec­tive entries.

When you decide to buy a prop­erty you must be cer­tain that after the sale has been com­pleted you will be the true owner of the prop­erty. You need to be con­fi­dent that no liens, encum­brances or other imped­i­ments will pre­vent your free use and enjoy­ment of the property.

Guar­anty for the prop­erty owner

The same way you pur­chase life insur­ance to pro­tect your inter­ests, a Title Guar­anty should be pur­chased to pro­tect your prop­erty title inter­ests. Your real estate invest­ment will prob­a­bly be the biggest invest­ment you will ever make and loss of this invest­ment can be finan­cially dev­as­tat­ing. You need to be cer­tain that you are finan­cially pro­tected from poten­tial losses.

What does a title guar­anty provide?

• Pro­tec­tion against mon­e­tary losses, brought about by hid­den own­er­ship claims that may be made against the prop­erty title;
• Pay­ment of legal expenses if the com­pany must defend your prop­erty title against a claim cov­ered by the Title Guar­anty in the local courts;
• Pay­ment of valid claims against your prop­erty title, up to the amount of the Title Guaranty.

Some of the risks cov­ered by a Title Guaranty

• Invalid doc­u­ments exe­cuted under expired or no exis­tent power.
• False assump­tion of iden­tify of legit­i­mate prop­erty owner.
• Fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments, legal power, and other papers related to the trans­fer of prop­erty title.
• Liens or other finan­cial bur­dens charged to the pre­vi­ous prop­erty owner.
• Non-registered prop­erty ease­ments.
• Hid­den heirs of pre­vi­ous prop­erty own­ers.
• Doc­u­ments exe­cuted by minors of age.
• Invalid Doc­u­ments deliv­ered after death of pre­vi­ous owner.

Peace of mind

Once acquired, a Title Guar­anty remains in place as long as you own the prop­erty giv­ing you a life­time of secu­rity and peace of mind backed by finan­cial sta­bil­ity. Because only one pay­ment is required a Title Guar­anty is a cost effec­tive method of pro­tect­ing your real estate invest­ment and enhanc­ing the value of your property.

Choos­ing a com­pany to pro­tect your investment

Rec­og­nized as a leader in the title insur­ance indus­try, Stew­art Title’s rep­u­ta­tion is backed by a century-old tra­di­tion of solid finan­cial strength. Attor­neys, devel­op­ers, investors, lenders and com­mer­cial buy­ers and sell­ers through­out the world look for finan­cial sta­bil­ity when select­ing a title insur­ance com­pany. As the only title insurer to increase reserves and sur­plus con­sec­u­tively for more than 29 years, Stew­art Title pro­vides pol­i­cy­hold­ers the own­er­ship secu­rity essen­tial to land transactions.

Rank­ing among the largest title insur­ers in the world, Stew­art Title, con­sis­tently receives exem­plary rat­ings from com­pa­nies who define the indus­try stan­dards. In Octo­ber of 2001, Stew­art was added to Stan­dard and Poor’s Small­Cap Index, and returned to the Forbes Plat­inum 400 List of the “The Best Big Com­pa­nies in Amer­ica” in 2002 and 2003.

STAR Sys­tem:

In the grow­ing mar­kets of Latin Amer­ica, Stew­art has formed strate­gic rela­tion­ships with local lawyers to develop a unique alliance that pro­vides buy­ers, sell­ers, and lenders the added pro­tec­tion of title guar­anty and escrow ser­vices. Through the STAR Sys­tem, (Stew­art Title Attor­ney Refer­ral Sys­tem), local STAR lawyers con­tinue their role in the real estate trans­ac­tion but have the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide their cus­tomers the added ben­e­fits of title guar­anty and escrow ser­vice. This unique com­bi­na­tion of local mar­ket exper­tise and the inter­na­tional finan­cial pro­tec­tion pro­vided by a Stew­art Title adds sig­nif­i­cant secu­rity and peace of mind to poten­tial real estate investors through­out the Latin Amer­i­can region.

15 Good Rea­sons to by Real Estate in PV

While Los Cabos and Can­cun seem to always be in the news as appeal­ing Mex­i­can des­ti­na­tions, Puerto Val­larta has been keep­ing a low pro­file in the back­ground. And while the spotlight’s on them, it is actu­ally Puerto Val­larta that has cre­ated this country’s largest resort real estate mar­ket – more Amer­i­cans own homes in “PV” than in the other two cities com­bined! It offers moun­tains as well as ocean, more mari­nas and golf courses, the best din­ing of any Mex­i­can resort, and more vari­ety in the pric­ing, type and style of the real estate offered than either of the other des­ti­na­tions. All that, and yet the cost of real estate is much less expen­sive in Puerto Vallarta!

Prob­a­bly the most active real estate mar­ket south of the Amer­i­can bor­der is in and around the famous tourist des­ti­na­tion of Puerto Val­larta. In 2004 it was esti­mated that $400 mil­lion USD of resort real estate was sold, with most of that pur­chased by Amer­i­can second-home buy­ers. In 2005 this increased to $550 mil­lion USD, with 2006 begin­ning with very promis­ing num­bers. So this year’s sales should eas­ily sur­pass last year’s.

Why Puerto Val­larta?
Since the early ‘60s Amer­i­cans have been com­ing to Puerto Val­larta, not only for a hol­i­day, but to stay in their vaca­tion homes. And since those early years the area has grown to where the Amer­i­can com­mu­nity is now more than 20,000 strong, Puerto Val­larta much more than a sleepy lit­tle fish­ing vil­lage today. Val­larta now encom­passes a coast­line of over 150 miles that includes many other small coastal towns, large res­i­den­tial resort devel­op­ments and spec­tac­u­lar beaches.

While there are numer­ous rea­sons one should con­sider Puerto Val­larta for a pri­mary or vaca­tion home, listed below are some impor­tant ones:

Pric­ing
The mar­ket is def­i­nitely hot, but pric­ing is still seen as very rea­son­able, espe­cially when com­pared to sim­i­lar mar­kets such as Los Cabos or Hawaii or along the Cal­i­for­nia coast. Con­do­minium prices start at around $150,000 USD and go up to nearly $1.5 mil­lion for lux­ury beach­front prop­er­ties. Homes start at $250,000, which is the low end of the mar­ket, with the most pop­u­lar price range between $500,000 to $1 mil­lion while homes rang­ing between $1 mil­lion and $5 mil­lion are increas­ingly common.

Financ­ing
Up until just recently obtain­ing financ­ing was vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble in Mex­ico. How­ever, that is quickly chang­ing. Today there are both Amer­i­can and Mex­i­can mort­gage com­pa­nies offer­ing financ­ing at rea­son­able rates for up to 20 years. Many real estate devel­op­ers also offer financ­ing, but it is usu­ally short-term.

Cost of Liv­ing
It is still less expen­sive to live in Mex­ico than in the United States and most likely will con­tinue to be. Prop­erty taxes are a frac­tion of what they are to the north and the cost of sup­port staff for your home is very reasonable.

Loca­tion
Puerto Val­larta is just a two– or three-hour flight from most loca­tions in the south­ern US, mak­ing it very acces­si­ble. Many second-home own­ers are known to com­mute for the week­end; return­ing on Sun­day or Mon­day. Some peo­ple actu­ally pre­fer to drive down from Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona and Texas, so if you don’t mind the 24-hour trip, that’s an option. Puerto Val­larta is less than four hours from Guadala­jara, Mexico’s sec­ond largest city, which offers great home dec­o­ra­tion shops, gal­leries, work­shops, and a fas­ci­nat­ing world of colo­nial archi­tec­ture and heritage.

Topog­ra­phy
Sit­u­ated within one of the largest bays on the Amer­i­cas’ Pacific coast­line, the South Shore is draped in dense trop­i­cal for­est as the Sierra Madre moun­tain range meets the coast. Prop­er­ties here offer spec­tac­u­lar views of the city and bay and easy access to Val­larta. The North Shore is less moun­tain­ous and the cli­mate dryer; some years lit­tle or no rain­fall is recorded. Fur­ther north still, the land­scape returns to trop­i­cal for­est, with dra­matic hill­sides back­drop­ping pris­tine coves and beaches.

Vari­ety
Puerto Val­larta is blessed with a vari­ety of real estate oppor­tu­ni­ties and there really is some­thing for every­one. Because of its unique topog­ra­phy it offers homes and con­do­mini­ums on the hill­side over­look­ing the bay, beach­front prop­er­ties all along the coast­line to the south of Puerto Val­larta, and marina and golf homes and con­do­mini­ums in the cen­tral part of the bay. The most recent expan­sion has taken place to the north, with small, bou­tique con­do­minium projects and high-end lux­ury homes.

Appre­ci­a­tion
Real estate prices have con­tin­ued to rise as demand has increased. Strong appre­ci­a­tion in value has been real­ized in nearly every mar­ket sec­tor since the early ‘90s. Beach­front prop­er­ties, of course, have seen the strongest growth.

Sta­bil­ity
Mexico’s econ­omy is strong, espe­cially with recent high oil prices, as Mex­ico has one of the world’s largest oil reserves. This, along with a strong trade with its neigh­bors to the north and a robust tourism mar­ket, have helped sus­tain Mexico’s eco­nomic growth.

Restau­rants
Puerto Val­larta is said by many to have the finest restau­rants in the coun­try out­side of Mex­ico City. And the large full– and part-time Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion sup­plies a strong client base. Val­larta is famous both nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally for its excep­tional culi­nary vari­ety and qual­ity, the town’s pres­ti­gious gourmet fes­ti­val every Novem­ber draw­ing epi­cures from around the globe.

Art & Gal­leries
The color and magic of Val­larta is a mag­net for artists, allow­ing numer­ous gal­leries to pros­per. The art from these gal­leries can be seen fea­tured in many Val­larta homes. Dur­ing the high sea­son art walks, very pop­u­lar social events, are held each week and usu­ally fol­lowed by din­ner out on the town.

Soci­ety
Where Aca­pulco is famous for its nightlife Puerto Val­larta is more sub­dued, peo­ple prefer­ing to social­ize over din­ner at the many fine restau­rants in town, relax­ing after­wards at a lounge to enjoy Latin jazz or clas­si­cal music.

Golf
There are seven golf courses with three more planned short-term. Three are in the imme­di­ate Val­larta area, three in the cen­tral area of the bay shore­line, and two at its north­ern tip at Punta Mita. The three planned courses will all be located on the north shore of the bay. Last year Puerto Val­larta sur­passed Los Cabos for the num­ber of games played by vis­it­ing golfers, and Jack Nick­laus returns in 2006 to build yet another of his sig­na­ture courses at Punta Mita.

Boat­ing
There are three major mari­nas within the bay, with another in the build­ing stage. Puerto Val­larta offers more dock space than any other des­ti­na­tion in Mex­ico. The bay is won­der­ful for fish­ing and div­ing and good sail­ing winds are avail­able all year round.

The Peo­ple

If you were to ask Val­larta home­own­ers what the best rea­son is to choose this area, many would tell you it’s because of the peo­ple. Val­lartenses are happy and giv­ing, which cre­ates a won­der­fully wel­com­ing com­mu­nity atmos­phere where for­eign­ers and expats really feel like they belong.

The pro­ce­dure for a real estate clos­ing for for­eign­ers in Mex­ico is dif­fer­ent than the process north of the bor­der. This check­list helps demys­tify the process of buy­ing prop­erty and cre­at­ing a bank trust in Mex­ico through a cash sale, still the most com­mon type of transaction.

1.   Buyer and Seller agree to a pur­chase price and pur­chase terms for a given prop­erty. This may be done infor­mally as an “Offer to Pur­chase” or, option­ally, as a for­mal pur­chase con­tract cre­ated by an attor­ney of the par­ties. The appro­pri­ate­ness and need for a for­mal pur­chase con­tract is a deci­sion of the par­ties involved. For­mal con­tracts in Mex­ico, just as in the United States and other coun­tries, are enforce­able only through court action. Nei­ther a Buyer nor a Seller should take a con­tract as a guar­an­tee of any­thing; it is sim­ply a promise to ful­fill obligations.

2.   Buyer and Seller cre­ate and sign escrow instruc­tions and send them to an escrow com­pany for approval, along with a copy of the pur­chase agreement/contract. Once the escrow agree­ment is approved the escrow com­pany noti­fies all the parties.

3.   Buyer funds the escrow account with the ini­tial deposit (agreed upon by the par­ties) plus an escrow fee. Once this deposit has been made the escrow com­pany noti­fies the parties.

4.   Buyer com­pletes a bank trust appli­ca­tion packet and pays up-front fees to start the bank trust process. These fees cover gov­ern­ment per­mits and stan­dard fidu­ciary bank fees.

5.   (OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED) Buyer applies for title insur­ance. This has its own forms and asso­ci­ated fees. The cost of the insur­ance pol­icy is approx­i­mately 0.55% of the pur­chase price plus attor­ney research fees. This esti­mate includes “gap” insur­ance that cov­ers the Buyer from the moment of sign­ing before a Mex­i­can Notary until the Notary reg­is­ters the bank trust with the city – a gap of up to 90 days.

6.   Buyer applies for an FM3 res­i­dent visa at the most con­ve­nient Mex­ico con­sulate office, or at a Mex­ico for­eign affairs office in a Mex­i­can state such as Baja Cal­i­for­nia. The pro­cess­ing of a visa appli­ca­tion usu­ally takes a few days to ten days, after the Buyer has pro­vided the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment with the proper doc­u­men­ta­tion. Some Notaries allow the use of tourist visas (FMT) to prove legal sta­tus in the coun­try, but FM3 res­i­dent visas are rec­om­mended for tax purposes.

7.   The par­ties select a Mex­i­can Notary to draft their bank trust. All Mex­i­can Notaries have equal author­ity to do this yet fees can vary slightly in a given area. The Notary will require upfront fees to cover their work, sur­veyor fees, appraisals, var­i­ous cer­tifi­cates, etc. The par­ties may request a review of the bank trust doc­u­ment a few days before clos­ing but such a review is not auto­matic to the process; it nor­mally has to be explic­itly requested by the parties.

8.   A few days before clos­ing, the Buyer will nor­mally need to deposit the bal­ance of the pur­chase funds into the escrow account.

9.   On the clos­ing day, the Buyer will pay final clos­ings costs (trans­fer taxes, reg­is­tra­tion fees, etc.). The fidu­ciary bank will likely attend or will have already signed the doc­u­men­ta­tion. Proof of Buyer title insur­ance will be there if the Buyer has ordered and paid for it.

10.  At the clos­ing, the par­ties sign escrow dis­burse­ment instruc­tions that tell how the pur­chase funds will be dis­trib­uted by the escrow com­pany. Wire trans­fers are nor­mally exe­cuted by the escrow com­pany within one to two busi­ness days.

11.  The Buyer can nor­mally take phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion of the prop­erty imme­di­ately after the clos­ing. At this point any­where from 30 to 90 days – or even more – has tran­spired since the orig­i­nal offer agree­ment depend­ing on many fac­tors. (Clos­ing peri­ods in Mex­ico are noto­ri­ously longer than in the US.)

12.  The Buyer may request a copy of the bank trust from the Notary within a few weeks to three months, depend­ing on the Notary and their workload.

13.  Although the Notary takes care of reg­is­ter­ing the bank trust in the prop­erty reg­istry, the Buyer should sep­a­rately ensure that the prop­erty is also reg­is­tered in the city’s urban depart­ment (Cat­a­stro) so that the Buyer gets proper credit for prop­erty tax bills, and so that the pre­vi­ous owner’s name is removed from allcity records relat­ing to the property.

Bank or seller-backed financed clos­ing pro­ce­dures are very sim­i­lar to a cash trans­ac­tion, yet they add their own set of forms and fees that vary accord­ing to the lender.

Invest­ing in Real Estate Overseas

Gary Garrabrant, the CEO and co-founder of Equity Inter­na­tional joined me for an exclu­sive two part inter­view the other day. If the name is not famil­iar, look him up. He is Sam Zell’s part­ner and has cre­ated a pri­vate equity empire that invests in inter­na­tional real estate. The invest­ments that Gary and Sam have made in over­seas com­pa­nies like Homex have given them 34% annu­al­ized returns year over year for the past 10 years. 34% gains annu­ally! That is OUTSTANDING!!!!

Last week we got together for lunch, a rit­ual that we like to do when time per­mits to talk about the global econ­omy, over­seas invest­ment, over­seas per­cep­tion of the U.S. econ­omy (Gary is on mul­ti­ple planes a week trav­el­ing in mul­ti­ple coun­tries) and whether U.S. real estate is cheap. We had so much fun and cov­ered so many top­ics that I begged him to join me in stu­dio for a live interview.

Take a look at what he had to say about the mer­its of invest­ments in places like Brazil and Mex­ico, the imped­i­ments to over­seas invest­ments and whether the U.S. is ripe for the picking.

For the past five years, we have pre­pared a list of trends we per­ceived to be tak­ing place in the Val­larta real estate mar­ket. Infor­ma­tion is gath­ered through inter­views with real estate agents and devel­op­ers, then com­piled and reviewed for trends. Each year, inter­est­ingly enough, brings new trends, which per­haps shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the activ­ity Val­larta has expe­ri­enced since 2002. What fol­lows are those trends we con­sider to be the most promi­nent and impor­tant for 2007 — 2008.

US Real Estate Turn­down – How Does This Affect Val­larta?
What seems to be on the mind of every­one I’ve talked to is how the slow­down north of the bor­der will influ­ence our local mar­ket. Many areas of the United States have been affected by a fall-out in key real estate mar­kets, trig­gered by the abuse of sub­prime and other adjustable-rate mort­gages. Bor­row­ers either bought or refi­nanced homes with sub­prime loans that offered arti­fi­cially low intro­duc­tory rates. Now fac­ing re-pricing, bor­row­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing their pay­ments dou­bling or are hav­ing to pay off large bal­loon pay­ments, just as their homes val­ues are declining.

So how is that affect­ing Vallarta’s mar­ket? First, Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket has been dri­ven pri­mar­ily as “cash-only” – mort­gage financ­ing yet to become really pop­u­lar or nec­es­sary for many pur­chasers. Most real­tors we spoke to said that less than 10% of their sales involve financ­ing, except for new prod­uct devel­op­ments, which may offer short-term financ­ing. So, Val­larta doesn’t have to worry about a sub­prime melt­down; it doesn’t exist here.

What has proven to be the pri­mary rea­son for the turn­down north of the bor­der has actu­ally pro­tected our local mar­ket, because of the fact that financ­ing is still dif­fi­cult to get in Val­larta. Real­tors report that it still takes too long to obtain approved financ­ing and not enough has been done to improve the over­all appli­ca­tion process. There are good bro­kers, and there are not-so-good bro­kers, and find­ing the right one can make a world of dif­fer­ence. But it still is not work­ing as effi­ciently as all would like to see it.

Sec­ond, the peo­ple caught up in this sub­prime melt­down got there because they couldn’t afford the terms of a reg­u­lar mort­gage or even the down pay­ment. This has never been, nor will it be any time soon, the pro­file of the typ­i­cal Val­larta home­buyer. Amer­i­cans who have the money to buy a sec­ond home still have that money – this turn in the mar­ket has not affected them to any great extent.

When asked if the mar­ket has slowed down, most real­tors expressed that it is slower than last year, but then last year’s mar­ket was excep­tional. Some stated it has been busier, but mostly for new real estate devel­op­ment. Some said they actu­ally wel­comed a slow­down so they could have some time for them­selves instead of work­ing until mid­night most nights. The mar­ket has nor­mal­ized. Condo projects aren’t sell­ing out before the devel­oper even breaks ground as we saw last year, but they are def­i­nitely sell­ing and sell­ing well. Over­all, it makes for a health­ier real estate market.

High-end Lux­ury Bou­tique Con­do­mini­ums Very Pop­u­lar
Although high-end homes still remain pop­u­lar, it is the lux­ury con­do­minium mar­ket that has really seen excep­tional growth. Sale prices have been reported over $2.5 mil­lion USD, some­thing just unheard of in the past. These devel­op­ments can be found all around the bay, from Punta Mita to the South Shore; how­ever, Con­chas Chi­nas has received much of the atten­tion. Devel­op­ers have been tak­ing older homes on large estate lots both on the beach and on the hill­side of Con­chas Chi­nas, tear­ing them down and build­ing small, high-end lux­ury con­do­minium projects. Pur­chasers are peo­ple who can afford to own a house, but pre­fer the “lock up and leave” aspect of own­ing a con­do­minium. Over­all sizes have increased so that con­dos, with 3,000-plus to 6,000-plus sq. ft., offer nearly every­thing a home can. And because condo devel­op­ments are usu­ally four to six floors high, they can offer supe­rior views.

Resales Lag Behind New Prod­uct Sales
Prac­ti­cally every office we spoke to informed us that the re-sale mar­ket is lag­ging behind new sales, or devel­op­ment prop­er­ties. Peo­ple pre­fer the new con­struc­tion and often-ideal loca­tions offered by new devel­op­ments. Some pur­chasers start off with a unit in a par­tic­u­lar project, and when the devel­oper starts a new project, the pur­chaser buys there as well, offer­ing their unit on trade. It’s the “new car” phe­nom­e­non – peo­ple want the lat­est styles and mod­els and all they have to offer. This allows devel­op­ments to get pre­mium prices; how­ever, sooner or later the re-sale mar­ket will begin to offer strong competition.

Pur­chasers Are Informed, Thanks to the Inter­net
Thanks to the Inter­net, peo­ple are more informed than ever. If they are inter­ested in real estate in Val­larta, they do their home­work before they come down, check­ing out real estate sites  , which offers infor­ma­tion on nearly every devel­op­ment around the bay, the MLS data­base, descrip­tions of pop­u­lar neigh­bor­hoods, and arti­cles on how to buy real estate in Mex­ico. When they find prop­er­ties they are inter­ested in, they email the real­tor or devel­oper for more infor­ma­tion. When they arrive, they have a file full of print­outs about prop­er­ties. Although this has made it eas­ier for agents in some ways, it also means they spend a lot of time answer­ing emails, not know­ing which are qual­i­fied and which are just peo­ple with a lot of time on their hands.

More Peo­ple Choos­ing to Build Their Own Homes
Real­tors report that there has been a lack of homes priced between $600,000 and $900,000 USD on the mar­ket, forc­ing some home­buy­ers to decide to build their own homes. They pur­chase a lot, and then find an archi­tect and con­trac­tor to build it. In some cases, it may be the devel­oper of the land who offers this ser­vice. The end result is that they get much more home than they would have from what was avail­able on the mar­ket. And they get it for a price within their bud­get. Build­ing a home in Val­larta, how­ever, can be chal­leng­ing, espe­cially if you don’t have the nec­es­sary time to ded­i­cate to the project, don’t speak the lan­guage, or are short on patience!

Lack of Prod­uct in the Lower-End of the Mar­ket
There also is a lack of new con­do­mini­ums priced between $250,000 and $350,000 USD in or near Puerto Val­larta. Most of the new high-rise condo projects now have price points above this. So, peo­ple in this bud­get range have been look­ing north to places such as Buce­rias and La Cruz de Hua­nacax­tle, where units can still be pur­chased for these prices, many com­ing with an exten­sive amenity package.

Fewer “Flip­pers”
A trend we wit­nessed in the past few years was the entry of the real estate flip­per, or pro­fes­sional real estate buyer, who buys short-term to try to make a quick profit. Real­tors report they are see­ing less of this type of buyer. Because of the lack of financ­ing in Mex­ico, it’s more dif­fi­cult to do. Another rea­son is that devel­op­ers have made it more dif­fi­cult for buy­ers to flip prop­er­ties quickly. Devel­op­ers dis­cov­ered that flip­pers became their com­pe­ti­tion, putting their unit(s) on the mar­ket while the devel­oper was still try­ing to sell his remain­ing inven­tory. So, many now include clauses in their sales agree­ments that do not allow any­one to sell until the devel­oper has sold a cer­tain per­cent­age of the project.

Developments:What’s Your Unique Sell­ing Fea­ture?
With so many new devel­op­ments in con­struc­tion, there has never been so many options and choices avail­able. This is going to make it more dif­fi­cult for devel­op­ers – they needto have an edge on the com­pe­ti­tion or they aren’t going to sell, or at least not as quickly as they would like. We have seen devel­op­ers offer­ing extended short-term financ­ing and spe­cial prop­erty ameni­ties, such as gyms and spas, club­houses, even a new vehi­cle with the pur­chase of a home or condo!

These can cer­tainly sweeten the deal, but it really comes down to who can best offer the style of life, the “lifestyle,” that prospec­tive pur­chasers are look­ing for. Peo­ple want more than a condo or home, they want spe­cial ser­vices to go with it, ser­vices that you tra­di­tion­ally would find only at a lux­ury hotel. In-project concierges are becom­ing pop­u­lar and very appeal­ing for home­own­ers who are only using their prop­er­ties for short peri­ods of time. The concierge can arrange restau­rant rec­om­men­da­tions and reser­va­tions, as well as tours and activ­i­ties. Per­son­al­ized ser­vice is becom­ing more and more impor­tant; it’s not just about the home or condo any­more; much more is taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. Some projects have taken to offer­ing this type of ser­vice in-house or con­tract­ing it out.

High-end hotels noticed this trend early and many are now offer­ing a real estate option on their prop­er­ties. The Four Sea­sons at Punta Mita has the Four Sea­sons Vil­las and frac­tional own­er­ship; the new St. Regis also will have real estate avail­able; and smaller bou­tique devel­op­ers, such as El Banco, are offer­ing a sim­i­lar pack­age of a bou­tique hotel with upscale real estate and the option of hav­ing all the ser­vices the hotel has to offer. It’s a strong trend and we sus­pect we will be see­ing a lot more of this going forward.

Val­larta Suits Amer­i­can Travel Habits
Two trends in US travel will cer­tainly prove to be pos­i­tive for Val­larta and other des­ti­na­tions in Mex­ico. The first has to do with the new rule that Amer­i­cans must have a pass­port to travel abroad. In the past, this was the case to enter many coun­tries, but not Mex­ico, Canada or the Caribbean. The US gov­ern­ment has received such a strong demand from peo­ple try­ing to obtain pass­ports that they had to delay this require­ment until the end of the year – they have not been able to process the large num­ber of appli­ca­tions so far received. This indi­cates that there are a lot of peo­ple out there inter­ested in vis­it­ing these coun­tries, with Val­larta most cer­tainly included in some of their plans.

Another trend, accord­ing to Pho­cusWright, Inc., is that Amer­i­cans are tak­ing shorter vaca­tions. They are work­ing hard – so hard, in fact, that many don’t have time for extended peri­ods away from the office. Long week­end trips, on aver­age four a year, are now the most pop­u­lar type of leisure travel. This is fine for trips to Mex­ico, but it cer­tainly wouldn’t be to Europe or Asia.

So, shorter vaca­tions and the strong demand for pass­ports will prove pos­i­tive for Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket. Peo­ple won’t be buy­ing real estate that involves trav­el­ing for more than six hours if they only have three days of vaca­tion. They’ll be look­ing for a place that is a max­i­mum of three to four hours from home, has good air­line con­nec­tions and offers com­pet­i­tively priced real estate. Val­larta fits the bill.

Trans­fer of Wealth
The trend that will have the biggest impact on Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket is the trans­fer of wealth now tak­ing place in Amer­ica. The eco­nomic boom of the 1990s cre­ated an unprece­dented amount of per­sonal wealth in the USA — cur­rently esti­mated at more than $33 tril­lion USD. At the same time, today’s retirees con­sti­tute one of the wealth­i­est seg­ments of the US pop­u­la­tion, with more per­sonal wealth than any pre­vi­ous generation.

This wealth will sig­nif­i­cantly boost the resources of the 76 mil­lion Baby Boomers. Every seven sec­onds, another Baby Boomer turns 50, bring­ing them that much closer to the time when they will be think­ing about retire­ment and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Second-home own­er­ship in a warm loca­tion with con­ve­nient access back to fam­ily is high on their list. And as wealthy as they may be, the cost of liv­ing here is also impor­tant to them. It’s worth men­tion­ing that for what prop­erty taxes may be back home, Val­larta home­own­ers can often pay not only their taxes but also their house employ­ees and part of their utilities.

In Con­clu­sion
Although the mar­ket is not as “siz­zling” hot as it was last year, it is still very strong and there does not seem to be any rea­son it will not con­tinue to be so. Val­larta has much to offer prospec­tive pur­chasers, with a wide range of pric­ing, a great vari­ety of types of real estate and loca­tions, prox­im­ity to key mar­kets in the USA, a low cost of liv­ing, and a warm, tem­per­ate cli­mate. In short, Puerto Val­larta offers an excel­lent “lifestyle,” and that’s exactly what many second-home buy­ers are look­ing for.

A home is usu­ally your largest sin­gle invest­ment. When you pur­chase a home, you pur­chase homeowner’s or haz­ard insur­ance to pro­tect against loss from fire, theft or wind damage.

Title insur­ance pro­tects against hid­den title haz­ards that may threaten your finan­cial invest­ment in your home. You see, when pur­chas­ing a home, you are really pur­chas­ing the title to the prop­erty – the right to occupy and use the land and improvements.

Other types of insur­ance focus on pos­si­ble future events and charge an annual pre­mium. Title insur­ance is pur­chased with a one-time pre­mium and safe­guards against loss from haz­ards and defects that already exist in the title.

There are two basic kinds of title insur­ance: lender or mort­gagee pro­tec­tion, and owner’s cov­er­age. Most lenders require mort­gagee title insur­ance as secu­rity for their invest­ment in real estate.

Owner’s title insur­ance lasts as long as you, the pol­i­cy­holder – or your heirs – has an inter­est in the insured prop­erty. Depend­ing on local prac­tices and state law where the prop­erty is located, you may pay an addi­tional pre­mium for an owner’s pol­icy or you may pay a simul­ta­ne­ous issue charge for the sep­a­rate lenders coverage.

Title search and exam­i­na­tion is the first step

Insur­ing a home’s title begins with a search of pub­lic land records affect­ing the prop­erty. The title agent or attor­ney work­ing on behalf of the title under­writer exam­ines per­ti­nent doc­u­ments to deter­mine whether the prop­erty is insurable.

Those doc­u­ments (among oth­ers) include deeds, wills, trusts, out­stand­ing mort­gages and judg­ments, prop­erty liens, high­way or util­ity line ease­ments, pend­ing legal actions and notary acknowledgements.

When title prob­lems are dis­closed dur­ing the search process, they are cor­rected when­ever pos­si­ble to avoid future claims. Accord­ing to sur­veys done by the Amer­i­can Land Title Asso­ci­a­tion (ALTA), title prob­lems con­sis­tently arise in 36 per­cent, or one out of three real estate transactions.

The process of per­form­ing title searches and cur­ing title prob­lems does not come cheap. Indus­try stud­ies find that title insur­ers spend an aver­age of 92 cents out of every pre­mium dol­lar as their cost of doing business.

What if a prob­lem is hid­den or missed?

After all this search­ing and exam­i­na­tion, title prob­lems may still be hid­den or missed. A sig­na­ture can be forged on a deed; an unknown heir can step for­ward to claim own­er­ship of the prop­erty; a power of attor­ney used dur­ing a prop­erty trans­fer could have been expired or forged; a pub­lic record may be incorrect.

In each of these cases and many more, when there is the appro­pri­ate title insur­ance cov­er­age, a pol­icy will offer finan­cial pro­tec­tion (sub­ject to the terms and con­di­tions of the pol­icy). The title insurer defends the title and either “per­fects” the title or pays valid claims.

In 2005, title insur­ers paid approx­i­mately $916.4 mil­lion in claims, up from $699.1 mil­lion the year before.

With title insur­ance, you have finan­cial pro­tec­tion against cov­ered title haz­ards. Your home is your most impor­tant invest­ment – pro­tect it with an owner’s title insur­ance policy.

Like a per­fect storm, all the con­di­tions are in place for a major shift in Costa Vallarta’s cli­mate. But we’re not talk­ing weather or bad news, rather, a “good” per­fect storm. New lead­ers at fed­eral, state and munic­i­pal lev­els with a renewed com­mit­ment to work­ing together are look­ing at tourism, a major growth indus­try in Mex­ico, as a top pri­or­ity. With a recently updated Mas­ter Urban Devel­op­ment Plan pro­posed for Costa Val­larta by Fonatur, Mexico’s national trust for the pro­mo­tion of tourism, the renewed strate­gic vision shared by the gov­er­nors of Jalisco and Nayarit, and the endorse­ment of newly elected pres­i­dent Felipe Calderon, who has tripled Nayarit’s present tourism bud­get, refer­ring to the region as “thriv­ing, full of energy and vital­ity when it comes to tourism,” we can expect noth­ing but clear skies and a sunny out­look when it comes to Costa Vallarta’s via­bil­ity as a tourist destination.

At first glance, Ban­deras Bay is sim­ply that: one bay. In actu­al­ity, it com­prises three dif­fer­ent munic­i­pal­i­ties: Cabo Cor­ri­entes and Puerto Val­larta in the state of Jalisco, and Bahía de Ban­deras in the state of Nayarit. Divided by a river and a state bound­ary, the bay’s over­all ongo­ing devel­op­ment has been ham­pered by two state gov­ern­ments that have not always seen eye to eye when it comes to all-encompassing poli­cies devel­oped to fos­ter the bay’s con­tin­ued devel­op­ment. Fonatur’s pre­vi­ous attempt to imple­ment a sim­i­lar devel­op­ment plan for Ban­deras Bay in 2001 also involved the three gov­ern­ment lev­els, the pri­vate sec­tor, as well as cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion. How­ever, ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between both states’ key play­ers have so far pre­vented the imple­men­ta­tion of a suc­cess­ful medium– to long-term devel­op­ment plan. This should hardly be the con­cern of tourists, eager to book flights and hotel rooms and enjoy the many attrac­tions Costa Val­larta has to offer, who may not even notice the one-hour time zone dif­fer­ence as they cross the Ameca River bridge from one state to the other. Mex­i­can and inter­na­tional devel­op­ers and long-term investors, on the other hand, have been patiently wait­ing for recently appointed tri-level lead­ers to make their polit­i­cal agen­das known to the gen­eral pub­lic. The answer came to Puerto Val­larta last month.

At the request and with the endorse­ment of Felipe Calderón, newly elected pres­i­dent of Mex­ico, a meet­ing chaired by Fed­eral Tourism Sec­re­tary Rodolfo Eli­zondo took place last month at the Grand Velas hotel, bring­ing together busi­ness lead­ers from all over Ban­deras Bay, as well as Nayarit Gov­er­nor Ney Gon­za­lez and recently elected Jalisco Gov­er­nor Emilio González. Also attend­ing was Fonatur Direc­tor Miguel Gómez Mont, who pre­sented an updated ver­sion of the Mas­ter Urban Devel­op­ment Plan for Ban­deras Bay, which is more in tune with the bay’s cur­rent needs. The dif­fer­ence between this plan and the one pre­sented in 2001 had less to do with the plan itself and much more to do with the revi­tal­iz­ing com­mit­ment that the play­ers above, plus munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments, put forth to work together to imple­ment it.

Three Munic­i­pal­i­ties, Two States — One Plan, One Agency
The Mas­ter Urban Devel­op­ment Plan calls for a new agency, whose role will be to iden­tify the long-term goals of the region, estab­lish and pri­or­i­tize strate­gic projects, obtain fund­ing through both national and inter­na­tional invest­ment and bank­ing sources, and imple­ment these goals with tri-level sup­port, act­ing inde­pen­dently of the two states’ gov­ern­ments. The plan focuses on five spe­cific areas:

Potable Water and Treat­ment Facil­i­ties
To meet the needs of our grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, as well as the region’s agri­cul­tural indus­try, a dozen new treat­ment plans through­out the bay are being pro­posed. Addi­tion­ally, deep water pools will be tapped by means of new wells, which will in turn dis­trib­ute water through wider pipes, par­tic­u­larly to Litibú, an area that is expe­ri­enc­ing expo­nen­tial growth.

Roads and Trans­porta­tion
A new belt­way sur­round­ing Puerto Val­larta will greatly alle­vi­ate vehic­u­lar traf­fic within the city, while a new high­way from the city to Jala, Nayarit, will make travel time to points such as Tepic and Guadala­jara much shorter.

Nature Con­ser­va­tion
While the north­ern side of the bay is being devel­oped with major hotel and real estate devel­op­ments, the munic­i­pal­ity of Cabo Cor­ri­entes, south of Puerto Val­larta, has been set aside as an area where nature will dic­tate devel­op­ment. Eco­tourism will be strongly pro­moted here, and new docks will be cre­ated along the bay’s South Shore des­ti­na­tions. Areas already con­sid­ered pro­tected, such as Los Arcos and the Mari­eta Islands, will be strongly enforced, while beach-cleaning pro­grams through­out the bay will be prioritized.

Urban Devel­op­ment Plan­ning
At the same time, those areas designed for urban devel­op­ment will be clearly out­lined and guide­lines estab­lished, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the con­ser­va­tion and preser­va­tion of the “typ­i­cal” image of some of the smaller towns along the bay.

Tourism Devel­op­ment Projects
Some of the projects presently tak­ing place around Ban­deras Bay were designed to serve as cat­a­lysts for the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Costa Val­larta as a sound tourism and real estate invest­ment des­ti­na­tion. These projects include expan­sion of our Mar­itime Ter­mi­nal and air­port, a new marina and malecón in La Cruz, as well as a con­ven­tion cen­ter in Puerto Val­larta. Addi­tional devel­op­ments, such as those tak­ing place in Litibú and El Capomo, the pro­mo­tion of our des­ti­na­tion for con­ven­tions and expo­si­tions, and the revi­tal­iz­ing of Puerto Vallarta’s El Cen­tro, will fur­ther strengthen Costa Val­larta as Mexico’s pre­mier destination.

In short:
• The Mas­ter Urban Devel­op­ment Plan for Ban­deras Bay was deliv­ered per­son­ally by Fed­eral Tourism Sec­re­tary Rodolfo Eli­zondo.
• Pres­i­dent Felipe Calderón has specif­i­cally stated that he wants par­tic­u­lar atten­tion devoted to the con­tin­ued and pros­per­ous devel­op­ment of the state of Nayarit.
• The over­all fed­eral tourism bud­get was increased by 40% by the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion — Nayarit’s own was tripled.
• Nayarit Gov­er­nor Ney González, who also chairs the National Gov­er­nors Conference’s Tourism Com­mis­sion, has asked recently elected Jalisco Gov­er­nor Emilio Gon­za­lez to co-chair the com­mis­sion. Gon­za­lez has agreed, con­firm­ing a renewed alliance between the states.
• A plan to develop an agency that will autonomously over­see the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the bay within the con­text of its three munic­i­pal­i­ties, regard­less of state or par­ti­san bound­aries, has received enthu­si­as­tic sup­port from all involved.
• With the com­ple­tion of the new marina in La Cruz, our des­ti­na­tion will have more boat slips than any other des­ti­na­tion in Mex­ico.
• Two con­ven­tion cen­ters are presently being devel­oped, strength­en­ing the region’s posi­tion as a sound busi­ness and cul­tural des­ti­na­tion.
• Air­port and road expan­sion will allow for more fluid move­ment in, out and through the bay.
• Employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and over­all pros­per­ity for the region will result.

When most peo­ple think of real estate as an indus­try, it brings up images of tracts of sin­gle fam­ily homes, large com­mer­cial and con­do­minium tow­ers and shop­ping malls. But are there ben­e­fits other than pro­vid­ing hous­ing, office space and shop­ping oppor­tu­ni­ties? If this is all that is taken into con­sid­er­a­tion, the real estate indus­try can seem to be doing what­ever it can to ful­fill its own inter­ests, some­times above the best inter­ests of the com­mu­nity. But there are ben­e­fits that arise from real estate that too often are not con­sid­ered, short­chang­ing the indus­try and, in some respects, giv­ing it a bad image.

Let’s refl ect on the real estate indus­try in the Puerto Val­larta area.

Golf Courses
Real estate devel­op­ers learned a long time ago that, if you want to sell real estate, you have to deliver ameni­ties. Build­ing tracts of homes or con­do­minium tow­ers is not enough. If you want a project to sell well, add extras such as golf courses, mari­nas and com­mer­cial spaces. In this region, there are cur­rently seven playable golf courses. Of these, only one (Flamin­gos) was built by the gov­ern­ment, although it fal­tered and even­tu­ally was sold to a real estate devel­oper. All the rest were built by pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions, most of them real estate developers.

After Flamin­gos, the first course to be devel­oped was the Marina Val­larta golf course by Grupo Situr. It was even­tu­ally sold to Club Corp, which also built two more courses behind Val­larta that also have a real estate com­po­nent to them. Next to fol­low were the courses of Mayan Island, Par­adise Vil­lage (El Tigre) and Punta Mita, very good exam­ples of golf courses built to facil­i­tate real estate sales. It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that if it weren’t for real estate devel­op­ers, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have golf avail­able today in Vallarta.

Build­ing golf courses is a major invest­ment, and involv­ing the sale of homes along the fair­ways goes a long way toward pay­ing for the course. Golf is one of the main dri­vers behind tourism pro­mo­tion through­out North Amer­ica and, espe­cially, here in Val­larta. Pro­mot­ing this des­ti­na­tion is sim­ply eas­ier with the avail­abil­ity of good golf courses, just ask any hotelier.

Mari­nas
Another impor­tant amenity off ered by real estate devel­op­ers are mari­nas. There are cur­rently four in this area, three built by real estate devel­op­ers (Marina Val­larta, Nuevo Val­larta and Par­adise Marina). The fourth is the new marina in La Cruz, which also has a very strong real estate com­po­nent, strong enough that I’m sure the devel­oper would not object to being called a real estate devel­oper who built a marina to attract real estate buy­ers, rather than a marina devel­oper who included real estate to attract boaters. Real estate can pay for a marina invest­ment much faster than moor­age fees can.

Of the sec­ondary indus­tries, these would prob­a­bly be the most obvi­ous, although it is amaz­ing how few peo­ple have thought about this when I bring it up. But there are other ben­e­fits, as well. Prob­a­bly, the most obvi­ous would be the addi­tional rev­enues for the munic­i­pal­ity through prop­erty taxes. Next would be home dec­o­ra­tion and art galleries.

Dec­o­ra­tion and Art
Most con­do­mini­ums and homes are sold unfur­nished, open­ing a major mar­ket for those sell­ing fur­ni­ture and home decor items. It wasn’t too long ago that most peo­ple either shipped fur­ni­ture down from the USA or pur­chased what they needed in Guadala­jara. Today, we have a num­ber of fine fur­ni­ture stores, so there is no need to go out of town to fur­nish your home. And as homes and con­do­minium sizes have increased, so has the need for more fur­ni­ture. The same goes for the art gal­leries. These homes need art on their walls, and Val­larta has plenty to offer. The past five years have cre­ated a small boom for gallery own­ers and their artists.

Employ­ment
It takes peo­ple to build all of these homes and con­do­mini­ums, a demand so great that Val­larta has had to attract work­ers from other parts of Mex­ico. One inter­est­ing trend we are see­ing is that many of these work­ers are bilin­gual, hav­ing returned to Mex­ico from the USA because of either the slow­down in the home­build­ing indus­try or the tight­en­ing of immi­gra­tion laws. Some­times the work­ers speak bet­ter Eng­lish than their employers!

Employ­ment is also cre­ated by the need for peo­ple to man­age and admin­is­trate the homes and con­do­minium com­plexes, includ­ing gar­den­ers, main­te­nance, secu­rity and prop­erty man­agers. There actu­ally is a lack of peo­ple to fill these types of posi­tions and a demand for qual­i­fied, pro­fes­sional administrators.

There is also a demand for pro­fes­sion­als such as notaries, lawyers, accoun­tants, engi­neers and archi­tects, all impor­tant aspects in the pur­chase, sale and con­struc­tions of real estate properties.

Restau­rants
Val­larta has seen nearly every hotel in the region begin offer­ing an all-inclusive pro­gram. For many, that’s all they offer. So, what does that do for the restau­rants in Val­larta? They suf­fer from it. If it weren’t for full-time real estate and time­share own­ers, we would not have the qual­ity of restau­rants we do. Real estate pro­vides a base that the restau­rants can depend on, even dur­ing the low sea­son. A study done a few years ago showed that home own­ers in Val­larta dine out two to three times a week when they are in town.

Demand for Air­lift
Hotel oper­a­tors some­times com­plain that peo­ple who own full-time real estate are tak­ing away air seats from poten­tial clients for their hotels. I believe it’s the other way around: there is more air­lift because of the increased demand by home­own­ers. In order to attract air­lines and increased ser­vice to a des­ti­na­tion, there needs to be strong demand, and the num­bers need to be high. Real estate, includ­ing time­share, pro­vides the num­bers. This is one of the rea­sons Val­larta has the wide vari­ety of car­ri­ers ser­vic­ing the des­ti­na­tion today, more than many other Mex­i­can destinations.

Non-Profit Ser­vice
And we can’t com­plete this piece with­out men­tion­ing one very impor­tant com­po­nent that receives the atten­tion of prop­erty own­ers, espe­cially those choos­ing to retire here. They have time on their hands and many get involved with non-profit orga­ni­za­tions. They ben­e­fit greatly through their direct par­tic­i­pa­tion or dona­tions. Many NPOs sim­ply would not sur­vive with­out this impor­tant input.

There you have it. There is much more to real estate than meets the eye. Real estate con­tributes greatly to the com­mu­nity. There can, of course, be neg­a­tive aspects to real estate growth. It’s inher­ent in most devel­op­ers, if they are to be suc­cess­ful, to get the most they can out of their invest­ment, which some­times can mean build­ing too high or too much. But that’s where local gov­ern­ment needs to step in and reg­u­late the indus­try. How­ever, too often that side of the busi­ness gets much more cov­er­age than the pos­i­tive aspects of the real estate indus­try. Real estate does con­tribute more than its share to the com­mu­nity and should be rec­og­nized for it.

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AFTER the 1994 peso crash, the risk of Mexico’s dif­fi­cul­ties spilling over into Amer­ica was con­sid­ered so great that the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion helped bail out its south­ern neigh­bour. In the first quar­ter of 2008, the boot was on the other foot, though the scale was entirely dif­fer­ent. Now it was the turn of Banamex, one of Mexico’s two largest banks, to help out Cit­i­group, its crisis-stricken par­ent. Banamex pro­vided $453m of the $1.1 bil­lion Citi earned in net income from its over­seas oper­a­tions between Jan­u­ary and March (Citi lost $5.1 bil­lion over­all). You could almost hear Vikram Pan­dit, Citi’s new chief, mut­ter “Gra­cias, compadre.”

Illus­tra­tion by David Simonds

Yet Banamex was not even the best-performing of the Mex­i­can banks. Of Mexico’s five largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions (which con­trol three-quarters of the mar­ket and also include Ban­comer, San­tander, HSBC and Banorte), it was the only one that did not show a big rise in year-on-year prof­its in the first quar­ter. The per­for­mance of the banks was impres­sive for two rea­sons. Firstly, Mex­ico has one of the most open bank­ing sys­tems in the world; two of its top five banks are Spanish-owned, one is Amer­i­can, one British, and only one is Mex­i­can. Yet the cri­sis in global bank­ing has barely ruf­fled it. Also, Mexico’s econ­omy is usu­ally more exposed than almost any other to a slow­down in Amer­ica. As Ale­jan­dro Valen­zuela, boss of Banorte, del­i­cately puts it: “Decou­pling is the wrong word, but there is now a cer­tain shield.”

That shield, how­ever brit­tle, has been forged both from finan­cial reform in recent years and from macro­eco­nomic sta­bil­ity. On the finan­cial front, lend­ing has bal­looned. Accord­ing to the cen­tral bank, credit to the pri­vate sec­tor has nearly tripled since 2001, while con­sumer credit has increased by around seven times. The banks have also feath­ered their nests with rel­a­tively high consumer-banking fees.

Mean­while, the mar­ket has grown more sophis­ti­cated, thanks to some shrewd moves by reg­u­la­tors. Chief among these, accord­ing to an IMF work­ing paper released this week, were reforms to bank-secrecy laws which allowed the cre­ation of a suc­cess­ful credit-reporting sys­tem, as well as reforms to bank­ruptcy laws. These have given birth to a thriv­ing mortgage-backed secu­ri­ties indus­try. If that sets off alarm bells, Ale­jan­dro Werner, the deputy finance min­is­ter, notes that over the past seven years, the accu­mu­lated increase in house prices in Mex­ico has been less than infla­tion: there is no bub­ble yet.

There are also eco­nomic reforms to thank. Mar­cos Martínez, the head of San­tander in Mex­ico, says that infra­struc­ture invest­ment as well as a huge public-sector mort­gage pro­gramme have boosted demand. It helps that Mex­i­can GDP closely cor­re­lates with America’s indus­trial pro­duc­tion, rather than its over­all econ­omy. The brunt of the slow­down in Amer­ica has been borne by the ser­vices sector.

Although Mex­i­can eco­nomic growth is likely to remain slug­gish, at some­thing under 3%, the health of the bank­ing indus­try is a salu­tary sign. For once, Mex­i­cans can look north­ward with a sense of sym­pa­thy rather than envy.

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mex­ico — Strollers pass­ing along the river that flows through down­town here were star­tled last week to encounter a pair of “Towel Swans” glid­ing atop the murky water. Crafted out of plas­tic foam by Chilean artist Cristián Silva, they resem­bled the dec­o­ra­tive birds sculpted by cham­ber­maids to be left on tourists’ hotel beds, in hopes of earn­ing a few extra pesos in tip money.

The “swans” briefly drifted on Sat­ur­day after­noon but were retrieved after a few urgent cell­phone calls. As to how those stealthy avians got there in the first place, the answer was sim­ple: Provo­ca­teurs were in town.

It’s been 4 1/2 decades since direc­tor John Hus­ton and com­pany came here to shoot “The Night of the Iguana” and placed this for­mer fish­ing vil­lage on the map. But Puerto Val­larta still con­jures up Hollywood-style trop­i­cal fan­tasies that lure cruise ships and charter-jet tourists by the tens of thou­sands every year.

Never mind that this Pacific coast resort has a pop­u­la­tion of nearly 200,000 or that its growth has pro­duced a slew of incon­ve­nient truths: dirty water, trash-strewn beaches, crime, grid­locked Saturday-night traf­fic and eco-unfriendly hotels and con­do­mini­ums. Plus the annual bac­cha­nal of sun­burned coeds and frat boys gone wild whom Mex­i­cans refer to as los spring break­ers.

Last week, a small but ener­getic group of artists, writ­ers, cura­tors and other cul­tural savants from Los Ange­les, Guadala­jara, Tijuana and Mex­ico City joined the locals in hopes of adding a new, pos­i­tive attrac­tion to the area. “Puerto Val­larta Arte Con­tem­porá­neo 08,” a five-day marathon of art shows, panel dis­cus­sions, walk­ing tours and pub­lic art projects, was the inau­gural edi­tion of a con­tem­po­rary art fes­ti­val that orga­niz­ers hope will become an annual event. The idea of attach­ing an art fair, jazz fest or film sym­po­sium to a beach resort is hardly novel, but few, if any, of Mexico’s prin­ci­pal beach resorts have got­ten in on the act yet.

“There is a great deal of poten­tial because of the rich­ness of Puerto Val­larta,” Aure­lio López Rocha, tourism sec­re­tary for Jalisco state, one of the festival’s spon­sors, said while puff­ing on a cigar at a Sat­ur­day night after-party. “I think Puerto Val­larta can posi­tion itself at a high level.”

Fes­ti­val Direc­tor Pilar Perez, a vet­eran L.A. arts pro­gram­mer and Puerto Val­larta native, sees the project as a means of enhanc­ing the grow­ing cross-border dia­logue among artists, patrons and cul­tural insti­tu­tions across Cal­i­for­nia and Latin Amer­ica. She also thinks that devel­op­ing a larger, richer con­tem­po­rary art scene could help her home­town develop an iden­tity not based solely on sun, surf and com­mer­cial devel­op­ment. “I still really love this place, but I’m very scared about what could be here,” she said.

At present, Puerto Val­larta doesn’t lack for art. Plein-air painters dis­play their ide­al­ized ocean­scapes along the Malecón pedes­trian side­walk. And there are plenty of folk­loric tchotchkes for sale at the many sou­venir stands.

But there’s a much less devel­oped tra­di­tion here of con­tem­po­rary art, with its high-concept abstrac­tions, patch­work mate­ri­als and iron­i­cally sub­ver­sive humor. Try­ing to make these art tra­di­tions mesh was among the chal­lenges fac­ing fes­ti­val par­tic­i­pants, along with keep­ing your ceviche from spilling on your laptop.

The out-of-town del­e­ga­tion included Tijuana artist Marco Ramirez Erre; Ruben Ortiz-Torres, a Mex­ico City native turned Echo-Park-er; and San­dra de la Loza, Ruben Ochoa and Mario Ybarra Jr., all from L.A., and all rep­re­sented in Los Ange­les County Museum of Art’s ongo­ing exhi­bi­tion “Phan­tom Sight­ings: Art After the Chi­cano Move­ment.” LACMA assis­tant cura­tor Rita González, Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Art asso­ciate cura­tor Alma Ruiz and L.A.-Mexico City journalist-blogger Daniel Her­nan­dez also were on hand.

Many art­works were dis­played at a nexus of gal­leries in the city’s down­town, two of them owned by Omar Alonso Vazquez, who moved here from Guadala­jara sev­eral years ago. A crit­i­cal mass of artists, gal­leries and col­lec­tors has been build­ing in the area for some time, Alonso said. All that has been needed is a fes­ti­val to “lift art in Puerto Val­larta to an inter­na­tional level.”

Fit­tingly, a num­ber of works addressed themes of glob­al­iza­tion and bor­ders (polit­i­cal, aes­thetic, tech­no­log­i­cal), while chal­leng­ing the host city’s touris­tic rai­son d’être. Davis R. Birks, a Seat­tle native who has lived in Puerto Val­larta for years, dis­played his witty sculp­ture “US/ELLOS,” a double-sided cyclone fence that makes a visual pun of the abbre­vi­a­tion for “United States” and the Span­ish word for “them.” Ortiz-Torres’ video, “Nuevo Val­larta” (2008), depicted the for­mer World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers loom­ing over the fast-developing Puerto Val­larta shore­line, a haunt­ing image of how for­eign money and power can trans­form a land­scape and a way of life.

The ambi­tious panel dis­cus­sions tack­led such themes as how the folk-craft and con­tem­po­rary art can be bet­ter inte­grated and how cul­ture changes when for­merly “minor­ity” cul­tures turn into the major­ity. Some dis­cus­sions took place in uncon­ven­tional pub­lic spaces, such as an out­door plaza and the gay night­club Mañana. Ale­jan­dro Ser­ratos, 29, who lives near the club, sug­gested that the long­time rap­port between the city’s large gay com­mu­nity and gay tourists could serve as a model for mix­ing local and for­eign artists.

“I think it’s very impor­tant above all for the peo­ple of Puerto Val­larta to under­stand what con­tem­po­rary art is,” he said.

Par­tic­i­pants also bat­ted around ideas about how to make Puerto Val­larta more “green” and amenable to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment so it doesn’t turn into another traffic-congested, over-built resort. Feed­back was gen­er­ally friendly and con­struc­tive, though some said they wished more local artists and insti­tu­tions had been included in the fes­ti­val. “In a way, this fric­tion is impor­tant in order to grow,” Birks said.