If you need any fur­ther evi­dence that Twit­ter is becom­ing more main­stream with every pass­ing day, look no fur­ther than the fact that the U.S. Embassy in Mex­ico has its own Twit­ter account. (They’re also on Face­book and YouTube, too.) But if you’d pre­fer some old-fashioned face time with the Embassy, or need to visit them in per­son when you’re in Mex­ico City, then Twit­ter just won’t do.

As one of the coun­tries clos­est to the United States, and one of the most pop­u­lar vaca­tion des­ti­na­tions for Amer­i­cans, it’s good to know that the U.S. Embassy in Mex­ico City is there for you — whether you’re trav­el­ing to Mex­ico for busi­ness, plea­sure, or a lit­tle of both.

When you see the address of the Embassy below, don’t be con­fused or think we’ve listed the wrong office. The mail­ing address doesn’t include the words “Mex­ico City,” because the term that’s used (espe­cially when you’re talk­ing about addresses) is “Dis­trito Fed­eral” or the sim­ple abbre­vi­a­tion of “D.F.” instead. The bound­aries of Dis­trito Fed­eral and Mex­ico City are the same, and for all intents and pur­poses the two names are synonymous.

Note that U.S. tourists trav­el­ing in Mex­ico don’t need a tourist visa to enter the coun­try — but Amer­i­cans going to Mex­ico in order to work or study in Mex­ico do need to obtain a visa before they go.

Here’s what you’ll need to know about con­tact­ing or get­ting to the U.S. Embassy in Mex­ico City, Mexico.

Embassy of the United States in Mex­ico City
Paseo de la Reforma 305
Colo­nia Cuauhte­moc
06500 Mex­ico, D.F.

gen­eral tel: from Mex­ico, (01–55) 5080–2000; from the U.S., 011–52-55–5080-2000
fax: from Mex­ico, (01–55) 5525–5040; from the U.S., 011–52-55–5525-5040
web­site: http://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/
email: acsmexicocity@state.gov

Open Hours: Monday-Friday, spe­cific hours depend on the office you’re try­ing to con­tact (closed on U.S. and Mex­i­can hol­i­days listed here)
» Pass­port ser­vices: Monday-Friday 8:30am-12:00 noon (by appoint­ment only)
» Notary ser­vices: Mon­day, Tues­day, & Thurs­day 2:00pm-4:00pm (by appoint­ment only)
» Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens Ser­vices: Monday-Friday 8:30am-10:30am

U.S. Pass­ports, U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship, & Notary Ser­vices at U.S. Embassy in Mex­ico City
Room 106
tel exten­sion: 4326

Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens Ser­vices
tel exten­sion: 4780

Emer­gen­cies & Spe­cial Con­sular Ser­vices
tel exten­sion: 4780
Open Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30am-5:00pm

http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/us-embassy-in-mexico-city.html

A mile­stone and his­toric event occurred in Mex­ico real estate this August. Recently, the AMPI asso­ci­a­tion was able to imple­ment a new degree in the Mex­i­can uni­ver­si­ties and obtain the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of a new pro­fes­sional license for Mex­ico Real Estate pro­fes­sion­als. The new uni­ver­sity degree is being offered as an option in uni­ver­si­ties in response to the Mex­i­can authority’s con­cerns that improved stan­dards and bet­ter train­ing should be required for real estate con­sul­tants and pro­fes­sion­als in Mex­ico. Fer­nando González Salazar, Direc­tor of the Pro­fes­sional License Depart­ment of AMPI pointed out, “The mar­ket and clients demand true pro­fes­sion­als, spe­cial­ists in real estate with rec­og­nized stud­ies and a pro­fes­sional license autho­rized by a fed­eral gov­ern­ment body.”

The new pro­fes­sional title is offi­cially autho­rized and admin­is­tered by the SEP (Sec­re­tary of Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion), and comes in response to the request from the con­sumer mar­ket. The title is offered through a com­bi­na­tion of a pro­fes­sion­ally applied exam of high secu­rity — and the req­ui­sites of demon­strat­ing ample expe­ri­ence in the indus­try. Also, the title can be obtained from study­ing 4 years of courses at sev­eral uni­ver­si­ties selected through­out Mexico.

Antecedents

“We have esti­mated that there are nearly 19,000 peo­ple prac­tic­ing within the Mex­ico real estate indus­try.” Men­tioned Lic. Laura Flo­res, coor­di­na­tor of the process EGATSU-CI within AMPI. “Of these approx­i­mately 2,300 are asso­ciates of the AMPI orga­ni­za­tion”. Before the new title of Prop­erty Com­mer­cial­iza­tion was pre­sented, Mex­ico real estate licenses were not offered although cer­ti­fi­ca­tions were avail­able, such as those offered by CONOCER orga­ni­za­tion and by AMPI chap­ters. In the state of Sonora for exam­ple, a license to work in the indus­try was avail­able and required. The license was avail­able for those who took the test and obtained the certification.

A group of asso­ciates in the national office of AMPI have been work­ing with great ded­i­ca­tion for the past sev­eral years to change the idea of a Mex­ico real estate pro­fes­sional license into real­ity, and in doing so, increas­ing the level of ser­vice stan­dards in the Mex­i­can real estate indus­try. AMPI con­tributed many man hours, knowl­edge and ded­i­ca­tion from key mem­bers of their orga­ni­za­tion to ensure this mile­stone achieve­ment was accomplished.

Zac Sun­der­land, try­ing to be the youngest sailor to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the globe alone, has seen pirates, equip­ment breaks and a large ship come too close at canal. His 13-month trip is due to end soon.

By Pete Thomas
L.A. Times
July 6, 2009

Report­ing from Puerto Val­larta, Mex­ico — Zac Sun­der­land is wedged in his small bunk, read­ing, as his 36-foot sail­boat ascends and careens down moun­tain­ous, shift­ing peaks.

Just ahead on this late June morn­ing is Mexico’s first sea­sonal trop­i­cal depres­sion, whose winds have roiled the Pacific. To the south, churn­ing up the coast: a larger storm build­ing into a hurricane.

Sun­der­land, 17, is more than 100 miles off­shore on the final leg of a 13-month, around-the-world odyssey. He holds course but is inter­rupted by a jar­ring thud and what sounds like a gunshot.

His boat, Intre­pid, has launched from a 10-foot wave and its port-side bulk­head has buck­led on impact. The deck flexes and chain plates with lines sup­port­ing the mast have ripped loose. Wind hisses loudly, menacingly.

He must change course and try to reach the near­est refuge, Puerto Vallarta.

Sun­der­land has grown accus­tomed to adver­sity since he embarked from Marina del Rey on June 14, 2008, on a mis­sion to become the youngest sailor ever to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the globe alone. He was 16 and didn’t even have a driver’s license.

The idea had been in his mind since he read “The Dove” as a child. The book chron­i­cles a five-year cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion by Robin Lee Gra­ham, whose voy­age ended in 1970, when he was 20.

Sun­der­land, a shipwright’s son and an expe­ri­enced sailor, planned the jour­ney him­self. He would cross the Pacific and Indian oceans before round­ing Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, then cross the Atlantic, pass through the Panama Canal and sail north along the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Mex­i­can coasts before return­ing home.

He would sub­sist on freeze-dried and canned food when fresh pro­vi­sions ran out, and he would desali­nate his drink­ing water with an on-board kit.

What Sun­der­land, due to return to Marina del Rey about July 14, could not fore­see were the dan­gers and difficulties.

Notable was the pirate scare. In Octo­ber, he was 150 miles beyond Indone­sia, on a course from Aus­tralia to the Cokos Keel­ing Islands, when he encoun­tered a mys­te­ri­ous boat. The 60-foot wooden ves­sel did not appear on his radar screen.He tried unsuc­cess­fully to raise its crew on the radio. He changed direc­tion; it changed direction.

Winds were light and he could not escape, so he clutched his satel­lite phone — his life­line — and dialed his home in Thou­sand Oaks.

A sis­ter answered. Lau­rence Sun­der­land heard his son’s pan­icked voice, grabbed the phone and rushed into his office. Zac’s heart raced as he digested the instruc­tions: Load your pis­tol and flare gun, then issue a radio secu­rity alert with your position.

Fire a warn­ing shot if nec­es­sary, but at the first sign of aggres­sion, shoot to kill because they’ll try to kill you.

Lau­rence recalls: “For two hours we’re sit­ting here not know­ing what the sit­u­a­tion was or whether Zac could han­dle it.”

The decrepit craft swept directly into Intrepid’s wake, its crew still hid­den, as Sun­der­land placed his emer­gency call. Then it motored away.

“For 30 min­utes I was liv­ing on the edge out there, not know­ing what to do,” he says.

Yet this was not the most har­row­ing expe­ri­ence for a long-haired adven­turer who rarely expresses emo­tion while recount­ing his adventure.

Click here to read the full story
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-zac-sunderland6-2009jul06,0,6103005.story

BBC News
Thurs­day, 7 May 2009 17:06 UK 

High schools, uni­ver­si­ties, bars and night­clubs are reopen­ing their doors in Mex­ico as restric­tions are lifted fol­low­ing the out­break of swine flu.

Res­i­dents of Mex­ico City expressed relief as ordi­nary life was resumed in the usu­ally bustling capital.

But Pres­i­dent Felipe Calderon, and world health offi­cials, have cau­tioned the virus has not yet run its course.

Forty-four peo­ple are now known to have died of swine flu in Mex­ico. There are now 2,099 reported infec­tions globally.

Aside from Mex­ico, only two other peo­ple are known to have died from the virus, both in the US, which is also expe­ri­enc­ing the sec­ond high­est num­ber of infections.

But health offi­cials are keep­ing a close watch on the spread of the dis­ease, par­tic­u­larly in Europe, where new cases con­tinue to be reported.

Signs of sus­tained trans­mis­sion between peo­ple there could force the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) to raise its pan­demic alert to 6, the high­est level.

Keep­ing a distance

But in Mex­ico, which has so far borne the brunt of the dis­ease, there was relief as life returned to the country’s streets — eerily empty dur­ing the government-mandated five-day shut­down which sought to con­tain the spread of the virus.

“It was a hor­ri­ble feel­ing,” Marcela, a res­i­dent of the cap­i­tal, told the BBC as she enjoyed a meal in a restaurant.

“Mex­ico City is a very lively city, very crowded. We live in a city of 23m peo­ple, so every­where you go there are zil­lions of peo­ple, so the [shut­down] was shock­ing, to see every­thing quiet and closed, every­body in a som­bre mood and panic shopping.

“It was really awful.”

Restric­tions may have been relaxed, but clear signs of the virus remain, say reports from Mexico.

Offi­cial guide­lines sug­gest restau­rants main­tain a dis­tance of 2.5m (more than 8 feet) between tables, many peo­ple still wear masks, and few peo­ple walk hand-in-hand or kiss, says one report.

But the BBC’s Stephen Gibbs in Mex­ico City says that with lit­tle evi­dence of large num­bers falling ill or dying, peo­ple are feel­ing much more relaxed.

He says the pri­or­ity now is to get Mex­ico back on its feet again. The virus is esti­mated to have caused dam­age worth bil­lions of dol­lars to the economy.

Some trade and diplo­matic ten­sions have been stoked as some coun­tries, among them China and Rus­sia, have slapped import bans on pork prod­ucts from regions affected by the virus.

‘Main­tain vigilance’

Pres­i­dent Calderon again railed against such “dis­crim­i­na­tory mea­sures” after it emerged Hait­ian offi­cials rejected a Mex­i­can ship car­ry­ing rice, fer­tiliser and emer­gency food kits — an aid ship­ment from the Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank.

“It’s not fair, and it’s not valid or use­ful,” he said. “I think that it is due to lack of information.”

At the WHO’s daily news brief­ing on the virus, act­ing director-general Keiji Fukuda reit­er­ated that eat­ing pork “does not pose a risk to peo­ple in terms of get­ting this infection”.

Mr Fukuda also stressed the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a vig­i­lant stance against the virus, despite its appar­ently mild character.

Win­ter­time is approach­ing in the south­ern hemi­sphere, said Mr Fukuda — a time of increased activ­ity of influenza viruses.

Until now, the virus has been largely con­fined to the north­ern hemi­sphere, but Mr Fukuda warned that the virus could change if it saw a greater spread in the south­ern hemisphere.

Pop­u­la­tions there, he said, could be more vul­ner­a­ble to the virus, due to the greater preva­lence of mal­nour­ish­ment, war, and HIV.

“The bot­tom line is we need to work with coun­tries to be as pre­pared as pos­si­ble,” Mr Fukuda said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8038554.stm

March 24, 2009 by David  
Filed under Real Estate

This could be the great news every­one is wait­ing for regard­ing our incred­i­bly bad real estate mar­ket. The early indi­ca­tions are no where near def­i­nite or even mildly con­clu­sive and is at best cir­cum­stan­tial. How­ever, it is the first good news on the nation­wide hous­ing mar­ket we gave seen in ages.

First, the media is report­ing over the past few days some good signs of a recov­ery in hous­ing, sales and con­struc­tion stats. The media is also full of sto­ries about lots of for­eign investors buy­ing homes in the U.S. Just this morn­ing ABC’s Good Morn­ing Amer­ica reported exist­ing home sales for Feb­ru­ary were the best since July 2003.

GMA also reported “hous­ing vul­tures” (includ­ing many for­eign investors) were buy­ing homes in high num­bers (some­times 100 homes at a time in bulk) and the investors were going on real estate tours of the U.S. Investors from places such as Aus­tralia, Canada, Mex­ico, Brazil, China and of course U.S. Investors too.

Next I would like to report on per­sonal expe­ri­ences in my area in Ari­zona. First, we have noticed far more Real­tors with buy­ers tour­ing the neigh­bor­hood recently. On another per­sonal level we have seen a notice­able uptick in traf­fic going to a real estate web­site we run FreeMLSlisting.com.

In fact, a check of yes­ter­days traf­fic data reveals more vis­i­tors on Mar 23 2009 vs any other day on the chart, which cov­ers a few months of web site vis­i­tor activ­ity. Look­ing at more sta­tis­tics sup­plied by Google we noticed an impor­tant sta­tis­tic had its best day yes­ter­day since Nov 3 2008.

Please keep in mind the upbeat infor­ma­tion is by no means con­clu­sive or proven to be sta­tis­ti­cally valid but nev­er­the­less it cer­tainly is quite encour­ag­ing to the nation­wide war on fore­clo­sures and the real estate mar­ket to say the least.

http://davidgreen.com/evidence-the-housing-market-may-have-bottomed-out.htm

“Per­rrrrrrrrrrrrrrro,” I stut­tered, fail­ing com­pletely to roll the r’s as my 8-year-old daugh­ter laughed with glee.

“No, it’s perro,” she said in a per­fect Span­ish accent. “Like this.” She twit­tered like a bird demon­strat­ing how to do it. “You need to practice.”

“Do you think I can learn?”

“Yes. Prac­tice all the way home.”

So I did, spew­ing spit­tle left and right as I tried to trill my r’s to my daughter’s delight. All the way home — which meant a 10-minute walk from the beach in Puerto Val­larta to our rented apart­ment deep in the old part of town– I was a blither­ing idiot cut loose from some over­crowded psych ward, but Érne loved it. She couldn’t wait to tell her sis­ter and mama.

My attempt to learn to roll my r’s using the Span­ish word for dog had less to do with my desire to speak Span­ish and more to do with my daughter’s love for ani­mals — at the moment, the dogs of Colo­nia Emil­iano Zap­ata, the neigh­bor­hood where we were stay­ing in this resort city.

There was the fluffy mutt whose head appeared through the bars of the bal­cony rail­ing on the sec­ond floor almost every time we passed, day or night. There was the ner­vous poo­dle that hung out in a door­way and usu­ally had a yelp and a growl for us as we low­ered hands for her to sniff. And there was the fam­ily of Chi­huahuas, about as small as dogs can be, at the com­bi­na­tion piñata shop and home of a cou­ple seem­ingly old enough to have rid­den with Pan­cho Villa.

We couldn’t walk past the open door­way on Aquiles Ser­dan with­out stop­ping to pet the mama, daddy and pups that lived in a card­board box under a chair just inside.

After we’d spent sev­eral days get­ting to know the neigh­bor­hood of Colo­nia Emil­iano Zap­ata and pass­ing the ancient couple’s door many times, they smiled in recog­ni­tion. Their faces wore the ruts of a long, hard life, dark and brown as the parched Mex­i­can soil. Their fin­gers never ceased work­ing with the col­ored crepe paper they fixed to forms to cre­ate the piñatas that dan­gled from the ceil­ing — bur­ros, som­breros, stars, bulls, other crea­tures great and small.

Our con­ver­sa­tion through the open facade couldn’t travel beyond “Hello, how are you? Nice dogs,” because of my piti­ful Span­ish, but it was a les­son for the chil­dren and a reminder for me.

Speak­ing the local lan­guage is by far the best way to get to know a place and peo­ple. You can com­mu­ni­cate a lot and get by with body lan­guage and cha­rades, frac­tured sen­tences devoid of gram­mar and tense; it shows you’re a good sport doing your best to meet the peo­ple on their own terms. But what does that get you beyond a few laughs, good-natured acknowl­edg­ments and the con­vic­tion that they think you’re all right but, well, maybe they really think you’re nuts? With­out speak­ing the local lan­guage you can make con­nec­tions that cross the divide, but you can­not have a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion about things that matter.

What could they have told us about their long lives? Had they always lived here, in this home open to the street, mak­ing piñatas for the neigh­bor­hood fam­i­lies? Did they set­tle here late in life after other adven­tures, strug­gles, pur­suits, dreams? Was this a long-standing fam­ily busi­ness, or some­thing more recent? How did they view the world from this van­tage point, inside a cool room open to the heat and noise and smells of the street and the sea breezes?

Of course I couldn’t get answers to these ques­tions with­out speak­ing ade­quate Span­ish. I was left to imag­ine their sto­ries, to roman­ti­cize or triv­i­al­ize their lives with best guesses based on what I saw before me. I was a tourist, on a short vaca­tion with my fam­ily, and none of us were pre­pared — no mat­ter how much we wanted — to get beneath the sur­face of things.

“It’s nice that the houses are open and chil­dren play out­side with each other all the time,” Érne said early in our visit. “I wish we could do that at home.”

Things were dif­fer­ent here, and the girls were noticing.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to talk to that old cou­ple with the dogs?” I said.

“But we don’t speak Span­ish,” Érne replied.

“But we could learn. I could take a Span­ish class. We could come back here again next year, and the year after that. You’re learn­ing in school. That’s where you learned to say perro.”

She gig­gled. “Not like that, like this.” And she rolled her r’s per­fectly again.

Per­rrrrrrrrro! I sput­tered, feel­ing truly like an idiot but enjoy­ing every moment. After all, I was try­ing, wasn’t I? So we made our way up the street look­ing for dogs, cats and black­birds with giant boat-like tails that squawked all day in the trees.

I prac­ticed all the way home.
Larry Habeg­ger is exec­u­tive edi­tor for Trav­el­ers’ Tales, author of World Travel Watch and edi­tor for Triporati.com. To com­ment, visit sfgate.com/travel.

Accord­ing to the National Coali­tion of Health Care in Amer­ica, in 2007, total national health expen­di­tures were expected to rise 6.9 percent–twice the rate of infla­tion. health care spend­ing is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are unin­sured, the United States spends more on health care than other indus­tri­al­ized nations.

It is no won­der then that scores of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens are head­ing off to for­eign shores for their health care needs.

New Yorker Danelle New, 29, was suf­fer­ing from epilepsy, the resid­ual effect of a car acci­dent dur­ing high school. She suf­fered grand mal seizures last­ing up to 20 min­utes, which she says west­ern doc­tors could not explain or under­stand. “My body would build up resis­tances to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs and they would no longer work, which forced me to try and find other ways to solve the problem.”

New trav­eled to India in 2004, and has been seizure-free since. “It was a sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings, as I had already spent thou­sands of dol­lars in med­ical expenses, not to men­tion the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars spent by my insur­ance com­pany,” she says. This included a five-day hos­pi­tal stay and med­ica­tions that cost more than $700 a month.

In India, she spent $1,200 for suc­cess­ful ther­apy with “less than two months of pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tion,” she adds.

India is, indeed, one of the biggest mar­kets for med­ical tourism, where tourism com­pa­nies now offer attrac­tive pack­ages that include treat­ment with a splen­did view of the ocean.

“For many pro­ce­dures, the cost is 50–90 per­cent lower in India ver­sus the US,” says Herb Stephens, Co-Founder and CEO of Health Travel Guides. For instance, he says, open heart surgery costs between $55,000 to $100,000 in the US. In India, you would get it for $8,500. Hip replace­ment is $65,000 in the US, around $8,000 in India.

Mex­ico, too, is a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion, espe­cially for Amer­i­cans. The prices are com­pa­ra­ble to those in India, but the flights are direct and cheaper.

The ben­e­fit, says Stephens, of work­ing with a com­pany such as his is that they take care of all the travel and med­ical details — no wor­ry­ing about how to get to the hos­pi­tal, which flights to book, and where to check in.

There are prob­lems, however.

The British Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion advises peo­ple to be care­ful when con­sid­er­ing treat­ment abroad, and says fly­ing soon after surgery can cause com­pli­ca­tions. Some experts also ques­tion the health care avail­able in coun­tries such as India and Mexico.

“Some coun­tries have image issues that extend erro­neously to assump­tions about health care,” says Stephens. “For exam­ple, India is a coun­try with a very large pop­u­la­tion that includes a very large and vis­i­ble seg­ment of poor peo­ple. Many Amer­i­cans see media exam­ples of this poverty and erro­neously assume that good health care must not be avail­able. It’s a def­i­nite issue that inter­na­tional health care providers have to work to overcome.”

In his expe­ri­ence, he says, the prej­u­dice is quickly and deci­sively dis­pelled for med­ical trav­el­ers who ven­ture abroad. Most are shocked by the qual­ity and moder­nity of the facil­i­ties, doc­tor train­ing, hos­pi­tal staff and equip­ment. “This is true not only of Indian hos­pi­tals like Apollo Group, but also hos­pi­tals in Mex­ico such as Grupo Ange­les in Tijuana, ABC Hos­pi­tal in Mex­ico City and Amer­imed in Puerto Vallarta.

New admits to being pleas­antly sur­prised dur­ing her trip to India. “I was sur­prised by how ther­a­peu­tic the entire process was. I believe I had men­tally pre­pared myself for some­thing much more strange and maybe even more inva­sive than what I actu­ally experienced.”

New sought nat­ural treat­ments in India, but for most trav­el­ers, west­ern med­i­cine is still the big pull.

And the num­bers are con­tin­u­ously increas­ing. Over 150,000 med­ical tourists trav­eled to India in 2002. The rate of increase has been 15 per­cent since then and reports indi­cate that India’s med­ical tourism earn­ings alone will increase to $2 bil­lion by 2012.

The Gov­ern­ment of India is mak­ing sure the coun­try is ready by invest­ing $6.5 bil­lion in med­ical tourism infra­struc­ture. In Mex­ico, StarMed­ica hos­pi­tal groups built seven hos­pi­tals in the last five years, Amer­iMed is open­ing ten new hos­pi­tals by 2012, and Grupo, the largest pri­vate hos­pi­tal group in Mex­ico, is spend­ing $700 mil­lion to build 15 hos­pi­tals in the next three years.

What does this mean for the United States? Plenty. It means that with ris­ing inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion, Amer­i­can hos­pi­tals are likely to adopt aggres­sive mar­ket­ing strate­gies, and maybe even cre­ate pol­icy shifts allow­ing for bet­ter health care within the country.

In the mean­time, patients seem happy with a vari­ety of options avail­able to them–at home or abroad.

“I would have spent mul­ti­ple more thou­sands out of pocket to actu­ally cure or even just more suc­cess­fully treat my con­di­tion,” says New. Instead, she spent three months in India, “for a suc­cess­ful ther­apy that truly changed my body, my mind, and my approach to life.”

NUEVO VALLARTA, Mex­ico — Rob and Mary Lad­ner pic­tured their dream retire­ment as a sail­ing trip around the world. But every­thing changed when they cruised into the big, balmy bay of Puerto Val­larta 10 years ago.

Seduced by sway­ing palm trees, col­or­ful mar­kets and cheap beach­front hous­ing, the Lad­ners dropped anchor. The cou­ple bought a cor­ner con­do­minium in a master-planned com­mu­nity 1,500 miles from their native Cal­i­for­nia, but with nearly all the ameni­ties of home.

Cross­ing the bor­der to find a bet­ter life, the Lad­ners are in the first wave of what some are com­par­ing to a reverse migra­tion flow.

With 76 mil­lion Amer­i­can baby boomers hit­ting retire­ment age over the next two decades, experts say as many as 8 mil­lion may choose to live out their golden years in Mexico.

“And even if just a per­cent­age of those come, that’s a sig­nif­i­cant quan­tity,” said Ser­gio Dueñas, pres­i­dent of the Mex­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Real Estate Professionals.

U.S. retirees are expected to flock to nearly every region of Mex­ico. Already, retirees are ven­tur­ing into pre­vi­ously undis­cov­ered fish­ing vil­lages and colo­nial pueblos.

Mexico’s cost of liv­ing for Amer­i­can retirees is an esti­mated 30 per­cent cheaper than in the U.S. Parts of the coun­try offer an easy­go­ing exis­tence that many retirees say is a world away from the bloody head­lines of Mex­i­can drug violence.

Ken Har­bour, a San Anto­nio native and retired phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals sales­man, moved to Puerto Val­larta 15 years ago. Since then, his $150,000 beach­front con­do­minium has tripled in value and he’s seen very lit­tle to make him nervous.

“All the time we have friends who say, We just read about six guys get­ting their heads cut off,’ ” he said. “But how many peo­ple were shot or killed in Hous­ton or Dal­las last night? It’s just a much easier-going lifestyle here. It’s a lot less stress.”

Other retirees find a ful­fill­ment in Mex­ico that they never expected when they first arrived. Robin Lov­ing Row­land and her hus­band left Austin three years ago, buy­ing and remod­el­ing a home in the colo­nial city of San Miguel de Allende in cen­tral Mex­ico for $120,000.

Row­land loved the dra­matic archi­tec­ture and the near-perfect cli­mate, but said her life took on new mean­ing when she began vol­un­teer­ing at a nearby orphan­age for girls.

“When I lived in Austin, I couldn’t think of any other place in the world I would rather live,” said Row­land, a retired pub­lic rela­tions spe­cial­ist. “But we don’t miss it a bit. … We could have retired in the U.S., but we would have been pretty bored.”

Real estate agents say Mex­ico tends to attract retirees who want to remain busy as they grow older.

Stretch­ing retire­ment dollars

“Mex­ico is for the more adven­tur­ous, peo­ple who don’t want to wind down,” said Alex Urru­tia, sales direc­tor of Luma, an upscale devel­op­ment near Puerto Val­larta. “It takes away the typ­i­cal idea of retire­ment. It’s more like a per­ma­nent vacation.”

An increas­ing num­ber of retirees on fixed incomes see Mex­ico as the best way to stretch their retire­ment dollars.

Richard Schwartzkopf, 68, and Bon­nie Gra­ham, 60, rent a com­fort­able two-bedroom house in a tra­di­tional Mex­i­can neigh­bor­hood in Puerto Val­larta for just $300 a month.

Schwartzkopf, a retired metal fin­isher from Ore­gon, lives off of his monthly Social Secu­rity check. Gra­ham, a retired Red Cross worker in Van­cou­ver, Canada, lives from a mod­est pension.

“We know all kinds of peo­ple,” Schwartzkopf said on a recent after­noon as the cou­ple shopped at Puerto Vallarta’s recently opened Costco gro­cery store. “Peo­ple with money and peo­ple just get­ting by like us.”

But retirees on lim­ited bud­gets need to do their home­work when it comes to health­care, experts say. Medicare ben­e­fits don’t extend into Mex­ico and while many pri­vate Mex­i­can hos­pi­tals com­pare favor­ably with the level of care in the U.S., pri­vate insur­ance can be expen­sive, said David Warner, a Uni­ver­sity of Texas pub­lic affairs professor.

One option is buy­ing into Mexico’s inex­pen­sive social secu­rity system.

“(It’s) not nec­es­sar­ily a bad option,” he said. “The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has a his­tory of set­ting up primary-care facil­i­ties that are pretty good in these retire­ment areas.”

Experts say the retire­ment boom — more than 100,000 Amer­i­can retirees are believed to live in Mex­ico — is due in part to the growth of the net­work of real estate agents and lawyers aimed at help­ing retirees to nav­i­gate Mexico’s com­pli­cated home­buy­ing laws.

Mex­ico, where most real estate trans­ac­tions are car­ried out in cash, has largely been immune to the mort­gage crunch in the United States. It has enjoyed a sta­ble, slow-growing econ­omy for the past 15 years and is in the midst of a home con­struc­tion boom.

But despite the rosy long-term pro­jec­tions for Mex­i­can real estate, experts say a com­bi­na­tion of bor­der vio­lence and the eco­nomic slow­down in the U.S. is mak­ing for a tough year.

With a mis­er­able mar­ket in the U.S., some poten­tial retirees are hav­ing trou­ble sell­ing their Amer­i­can homes, while oth­ers are becom­ing more con­ser­v­a­tive with their money, real estate agents say.

And wor­ries over drug vio­lence has par­tic­u­larly hurt sales at retire­ment havens in places like north­ern Baja Cal­i­for­nia and south of the Ari­zona bor­der, said David Collins, direc­tor of the con­sult­ing group Active Liv­ing International.

At the same time, retire­ment des­ti­na­tions in the inte­rior are see­ing unprece­dented invest­ment, fueled in part by an influx of retirees from Canada, which hasn’t suf­fered the U.S.’ hous­ing meltdown.

Collins said that retirees headed far from the bor­der tend to feel safe. “They think, This is an enclave away from the vio­lence and dan­ger,’ ” he said.

Remote areas lure Americans

Some Amer­i­can retirees, both those seek­ing an authen­tic Mex­ico expe­ri­ence and those on the eter­nal quest for afford­able par­adise, have moved into ever more remote areas, far from the near­est Wal-Mart or airport.

About 70 miles north of Puerto Val­larta, the tiny fish­ing vil­lage of Cha­cala has become the lat­est hot spot for Amer­i­can and Cana­dian retirees.

Cha­cala has bumpy dirt roads and just a hand­ful of rus­tic restau­rants, but it also has one of Mexico’s most pic­turesque bays, dra­matic jun­gle scenery and lower prices than Puerto Vallarta.

“So many more peo­ple are more com­fort­able (with Mex­ico) than they were 20 years ago,” said Rod Rosile, a Cha­cala res­i­dent who left San Diego 12 years ago and now sells real estate north of Puerto Vallarta.

Rosile ini­tially bought a home in the nearby surf­ing haven of Sayulita for $11,000. He promptly watched home val­ues sky­rocket and moved up the road to Cha­cala when Sayulita got “too busy.”

A few years ago he bought one of the first homes in a new Cha­cala sub­di­vi­sion for about $250,000. That home nearly dou­bled in value and Rosile now lives in a lux­u­ri­ous beach­side home worth about $500,000.

While such suc­cess sto­ries are becom­ing harder to find as hous­ing val­ues climb in Mex­ico, Rosile said pos­si­bil­i­ties for cheap par­adise still exist in remote areas.

Rosile believes the reju­ve­nat­ing effects of Mex­ico will also begin to lure younger Amer­i­cans in larger numbers.

“Most of us give up so much of our lives (in the U.S.) — we get up at dawn and work through the day and I was just tired of that,” he said. “The Amer­i­cans I see com­ing here are not just the retirees, but the younger peo­ple who say, I’ve just about had it.“‘

On the Net:

http://www.solutionsabroad.com

http://www.mexperience.com/retirement

Things to con­sider before mak­ing the move

Think­ing about retir­ing in Mex­ico? Some tips from the experts:

- Come armed with patience. Even in the most Amer­i­can­ized retire­ment enclaves, things get done on Mex­ico time, which often means wait­ing a lit­tle longer than you’re used to.

- Learn Span­ish. Not only will the locals appre­ci­ate your efforts, but also you’ll get more out of your experience.

- Find a rep­utable real estate agent. Buy­ing a home in Mex­ico can be a com­pli­cated process,

- Inves­ti­gate health­care options. Medicare doesn’t extend across the bor­der, but options include pri­vate health insur­ance and the IMSS, Mexico’s pub­lic social secu­rity system.

Some options, and sam­ple home prices:

San Miguel de Allende. Not served by an inter­na­tional air­port, but its remote­ness hasn’t kept it from becom­ing one of the most pop­u­lar retire­ment havens in Mex­ico. The charm­ing colo­nial city attracts many with an artis­tic bent and is filled with amaz­ing archi­tec­ture and inno­v­a­tive restau­rants. Mod­ern, two-story home with panoramic views for $285,000.

Lake Chapala/Ajijic. Just 35 min­utes from Guadala­jara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. Pic­turesque, but with a highly pol­luted lake, Aji­jic is home to many American-style sub­di­vi­sions. The Cha­pala area was a spring­like cli­mate and is the place to stretch your retire­ment dol­lar, with hous­ing costs gen­er­ally lower than in other retire­ment hot spots. New two-bedroom home with Jacuzzi in gated com­mu­nity for $170,000.

Puerto Val­larta. The Pacific beach resort has been attract­ing Amer­i­cans and Cana­di­ans for decades and has spawned myr­iad upscale devel­op­ments on its north­ern fringe offer­ing world-class golf courses, fish­ing and snor­kel­ing. The air­port has direct flights to many U.S. cities, includ­ing Dal­las and Los Ange­les. Two-bedroom condo near the water for $359,000.

Merida. Com­bin­ing colo­nial charm with a nearby beach, Merida has the best of both worlds. The city’s pic­turesque down­town is filled with remod­el­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and Yucate­can cui­sine is among Mexico’s finest. But the sti­fling sum­mer heat can be uncom­fort­able. Direct flights to Hous­ton and Miami. Remod­eled, fur­nished, two-bedroom home four blocks from main plaza for $215,000.

MEXICO CITY -(Dow Jones)- Mexico’s banks have no mean­ing­ful expo­sure to U.S. invest­ment bank Lehman Broth­ers Hold­ings Inc. (LEH), which filed for Chap­ter 11 bank­ruptcy pro­tec­tion on Mon­day, accord­ing to a gov­ern­ment official.

“Lehman really never was a strong coun­ter­party fig­ure in the (Mex­i­can bank­ing) sys­tem,” said an offi­cial at the National Bank­ing and Secu­ri­ties Com­mis­sion, or CNBV, who asked not to be named. “It doesn’t rep­re­sent a risk to the sys­tem or ( finan­cial) intermediaries.”

In the case of local insti­tu­tions owned by for­eign banks, any expo­sure to Lehman Broth­ers is prob­a­bly at the parent-company level, the offi­cial added.

The Bank of Mex­ico, which has a hand in reg­u­lat­ing the finan­cial sys­tem, declined to com­ment on the matter.

Lehman filed for pro­tec­tion Mon­day under Chap­ter 11 of the U.S. Bank­ruptcy Code in New York, report­ing $613 bil­lion in debts.

Mexico’s bank­ing sys­tem is largely in the hands of inter­na­tional investors fol­low­ing an acqui­si­tion binge in the early part of the decade.

Five of the country’s six largest banks are owned by Cit­i­group Inc. ©, Canada’s Bank of Nova Sco­tia (BNS), HSBC Hold­ings PLC (HBC) and Span­ish groups Banco Bil­bao Viz­caya Argen­taria SA (BBV) and Banco San­tander SA (STD).

Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB (GFNORTE.MX), Mexico’s No. 5 bank by assets and last big locally owned bank, isn’t exposed to Lehman Broth­ers, said Joaquin Lopez Doriga, the bank’s chief cor­po­rate offi­cer, in an email.

The six lead­ing banks con­trolled about 83% of loans and deposits at the end of June, with the rest of the mar­ket divided among 35 niche players.

The bank­ing industry’s first-half net profit was nearly unchanged at 30.16 bil­lion pesos ($2.82 bil­lion) com­pared to the same period of 2007 as ris­ing loan-loss pro­vi­sions and costs off­set higher rev­enues, accord­ing to CNBV data.

Wanted: Gift of gab.

If you’ve meant to spend retire­ment tour­ing the world, your hopes may be sag­ging along with the limp dol­lar. But if your native tongue is Eng­lish, there’s a way to sub­si­dize your travel.

The Jour­nal Report

Demand is grow­ing in schools over­seas for peo­ple to teach con­ver­sa­tional Amer­i­can to for­eign stu­dents of all ages. Can­di­dates don’t have to be teach­ers by pro­fes­sion — although it helps to have a col­lege degree and some train­ing in Teach­ing Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage, or TESL. Rather, the ideal instruc­tor is adven­tur­ous, adapt­able and inter­ested in exotic climes — mainly in Asia, the Mid­dle East, East­ern Europe and Latin America.

Jobs can be as short as a sum­mer ses­sion or as long as a school year. The work itself can be chal­leng­ing. Class­room dis­ci­pline and stu­dent atti­tudes vary widely. Some teach­ers have arrived at their des­ti­na­tion only to find that employ­ment promises were mis­lead­ing. Accom­mo­da­tions and ameni­ties, of course, are often vastly dif­fer­ent from home.

Still, teach­ers get the chance to immerse them­selves (more often than not) in a wel­com­ing for­eign cul­ture, where they can help change lives in a com­mu­nity. And though wages may be low, the money helps off­set the alarm­ing increase in travel costs and stretches tour­ing dollars.

 
Rob Shep­per­son­Bill Siegel, 66 years old and a semi­re­tired den­tist, and his wife, Mar­ian, 65, his for­mer office man­ager, taught at Rajab­hat Uni­ver­sity in Nakhon Pathom, Thai­land, from last Novem­ber to March.

The Bev­erly, Mass., cou­ple love to travel and are “finan­cially com­fort­able,” Mr. Siegel says, “but we couldn’t afford to visit another coun­try and stay for months with­out hav­ing our income sup­ple­mented.” They are think­ing of teach­ing in East­ern Europe next.

Where to Go
For Amer­i­cans in their 50s and 60s, there are many pos­si­bil­i­ties like these, accord­ing to pur­vey­ors of TESL instruc­tion. Asians and Mid­dle East­ern­ers tend to respect age and expe­ri­ence over youth, although many schools pre­fer to employ recent col­lege graduates.

TESL-instruction schools are spread­ing at home and abroad. Sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of job open­ings are scarce, but school offi­cials say demand is growing.

China’s mar­ket is the biggest, and South Korea’s is “boom­ing,” says David Sper­ling, of North­ridge, Calif., the pro­pri­etor of Dave’s ESL Cafe at eslcafe.com, a site that schools and erst­while teach­ers cite as the best source for infor­ma­tion about all aspects of world-wide TESL.

Other teach­ing hot spots include Thai­land, Tai­wan, Viet­nam and Indone­sia. Oppor­tu­ni­ties in Japan, a desir­able locale, have been shrink­ing. In the Mid­dle East, Saudi Ara­bia needs teach­ers (although vis­it­ing women face social restric­tions), as do the more lib­eral coun­tries of United Arab Emi­rates, Kuwait, Oman, and Yemen. Closer to home, Mex­ico, Costa Rica and Ecuador offer a num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for Americans.

Unhap­pily, schools in the 27 Euro­pean Union coun­tries gen­er­ally limit hir­ing to peo­ple with EU pass­ports. How­ever, job watch­ers point to some open­ings for Amer­i­cans in East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries that joined the EU in recent years, includ­ing the Czech Repub­lic, Slo­va­kia, Hun­gary and Poland.

Jobs also may be avail­able in Rus­sia, for­mer Soviet republics such as Ukraine, and in coun­tries that arose from the col­lapse of Yugoslavia, such as Croatia.

Pay and ben­e­fits range from just the cost of air­fare and accom­mo­da­tions to much more. The best deals, accord­ing to job watch­ers, are found in South Korea and the Mid­dle East, where teach­ers may have money left over to bring home. Just don’t count on that.

Although pay varies wildly in China, Bill and Linda Schreiber of Fram­ing­ham, Mass., lived com­fort­ably while teach­ing in Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, Mr. Schreiber says, and they still had “a wad of cash” to con­vert to dol­lars upon departure.

Oxford Sem­i­nars, which has TESL pro­grams at col­leges in the U.S. and Canada, recently listed these exam­ples of pos­si­ble jobs: In South Korea, $1,600 to $1,900 a month, air­fare and accom­mo­da­tion, with a one-year con­tract. In China, $750 a month, air­fare and accom­mo­da­tion, prefer­ably but not nec­es­sar­ily with a one-year con­tract. In Ecuador, $6 an hour.

Teach and Learn
Peo­ple who have taught Eng­lish over­seas fre­quently describe the expe­ri­ence as dou­bly reward­ing: There’s the oppor­tu­nity to learn more about a coun­try than they ever would as part of a tour. And there’s the chance to share their tal­ents and wis­dom with a unique audience.

David Stock, 55, once just a way­far­ing globe-trekker, left Ver­mont to teach Eng­lish in Bao­tou, Inner Mon­go­lia, China, for six months last year. “I wanted to travel, but also have some­thing pos­i­tive to do,” the for­mer postal worker explains. Mr. Stock also recently taught for five months in Nayarit, Mex­ico. He has coped with stu­dents of all ages and learn­ing levels.

Mr. Schreiber, a 64-year-old retired loud­speaker engi­neer, rec­om­mends teach­ing Eng­lish as a way “to expe­ri­ence another cul­ture from the inside.” He says, “I really got a sense of China as a dynamic, friendly, entre­pre­neur­ial soci­ety.” The Schreibers taught at Suqian Col­lege for a semes­ter in the spring of 2005.

Teach­ing the Lingo
A sam­pling of the better-known schools that offer classes and train­ing for peo­ple inter­ested in teach­ing Eng­lish as a sec­ond language

Boston Lan­guage Insti­tute
Boston
teflcertificate.com
877–998-3500
Empha­sizes small class size, with a max­i­mum of 12 stu­dents in each. Has trained about 1,000 teachers.

Cam­bridge Celta
Cam­bridge, Eng­land
english-international.com/CELTA.html
Jeffrey.D.Mohamed@lonestar.edu*
A world-wide pro­gram of the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge. Oper­ates seven cen­ters in the U.S. that award Celta, or Cer­tifi­cate in Eng­lish Lan­guage Teach­ing to Adults.
So is teach­ing Eng­lish the right travel gig for you?

Do plenty of research before you answer, advises Brian Long, a for­mer direc­tor of train­ing and edu­ca­tion ser­vices at SIT Grad­u­ate Insti­tute in Brat­tle­boro, Vt., which offers TESL courses around the world.

And, he sug­gests, ask your­self these ques­tions: Do I like to teach? Do I like peo­ple? How many hours do I want to work? How much money do I need? And how hard am I will­ing to work for it?

Per­son­ally, you should be healthy, curi­ous, open-minded, flex­i­ble, patient, friendly and will­ing to take some chances. A sub­tle sense of Amer­i­can humor will prime you to explain its mys­ter­ies to for­eign­ers who often take or give offense through misunderstandings.

“You can’t expect the ameni­ties to be the same as in the West­ern world,” cau­tions David Roberts, teacher-placement coor­di­na­tor and spokesman for Oxford Sem­i­nars. Watch out for prim­i­tive toi­lets in China, for example.

Most for­eign employ­ers want to see your col­lege degree and may require a cer­tifi­cate show­ing that you have stud­ied TESL or TEFL, which stands for Teach­ing Eng­lish as a For­eign Lan­guage, as some courses are labeled.

Expe­ri­enced teach­ers rec­om­mend tak­ing a month­long TESL course in a class­room, with some prac­tice teach­ing. At home in Mass­a­chu­setts, Mrs. Schreiber, 61, is an adjunct pro­fes­sor teach­ing expos­i­tory writ­ing to col­lege fresh­men. In China, how­ever, she needed dif­fer­ent skills to stim­u­late par­tic­i­pa­tion in exer­cises by stu­dents speak­ing Eng­lish with vary­ing proficiency.

The Schreibers, the Siegels and Mr. Stock received TEFL cer­tifi­cates from the Boston Lan­guage Insti­tute, one of the better-known pro­grams in the coun­try. The cost of such a course ranges from about $1,000 to more than $2,000. To get acquainted with the coun­try you’re con­sid­er­ing as a des­ti­na­tion, you also could take a course there. The cost should be less than in the U.S.

When it comes to find­ing the right stint in the right place, cer­tifi­cate schools’ Web sites and Dave’s ESL Cafe can direct you to infor­ma­tion about coun­tries, jobs, pay and ben­e­fits, liv­ing con­di­tions, unre­li­able employ­ers and unscrupu­lous prac­tices, and how to pre­pare for ship­ping out.

You can pop into these sites’ chat forums to ask ques­tions and meet peo­ple who will tell you where they’ve been, how they liked it, what to see, and how best to learn more. Remem­ber to ask about health care.

Mr. Roberts of Oxford Sem­i­nars also sug­gests mak­ing sure that a con­tract spells out your rights in case you don’t like the sit­u­a­tion you’ve got­ten into.

Be Flex­i­ble
And be ready to roll with the punches. The Siegels thought they both had jobs before they went to Thai­land, but one didn’t pan out. So, they spent three weeks in Bangkok explor­ing other job pos­si­bil­i­ties — and the city — and found what they wanted, with good pay and liv­ing con­di­tions. In Nakhon Pathom, the uni­ver­sity town, “every­where we went…we were treated like celebri­ties,” Mr. Siegel says.

Be ready to adjust to local school dis­ci­pline and stu­dent atti­tudes. The Thai stu­dents “were very respect­ful but not atten­tive,” Mr. Siegel recalls. They thought noth­ing of com­ing late to class or talk­ing on cell­phones there. Their cul­ture was to help one another, he adds, so one stu­dent would take on and com­plete a class’s home­work assign­ment, and then the oth­ers would copy it exactly.

What may you miss most away from home? Mr. Stock lists friends, fam­ily and cheese­burg­ers. All the same, he’s ready to set out again, “to do some­thing that’s appre­ci­ated and get paid for it.”

Inter­view by Ben Ross
Sat­ur­day, 13 Sep­tem­ber 2008
Kelly Hop­pen: “I can do with­out the travel”

My work [as an inte­rior designer] is based on my trav­els; it’s what I get most of my inspi­ra­tion from, if not all of it. Grow­ing up, I was very for­tu­nate that my mother and father loved to travel, so I’ve seen 80 per cent of the world. I wish in a way that when my kids were grow­ing up I could have taken them away on a boat around the world. I think you’d learn more from that than you would in a year at school.

First hol­i­day mem­ory?
Albufeira, in the Algarve. I just remem­ber a beach, bucket and spade. My par­ents used to take us on hol­i­day every sum­mer, Easter and Christmas.

Best hol­i­day?
The trou­ble is: I’ve had so many! One of my best was in Careyes, Mex­ico, where I rented a beau­ti­ful house. It was just friends and fam­ily. We par­tied the whole time. Careyes is known for that: you have huge houses that sleep 15 or 20 peo­ple and you get invi­ta­tions every day from the other houses to extra­or­di­nary par­ties where you meet great peo­ple. The hol­i­day I’ve just come back from was pretty good, too; we were in Ibiza for a month. The first two weeks were quite chilled – I had the trainer down there and a chef with us – and then the last two weeks kind of hot­ted up.

Favourite place in the British Isles?
Corn­wall. We used to go down to the vil­lage of Rock a lot – which is now very fash­ion­able – for fam­ily holidays.

Ideal trav­el­ling com­pan­ion?
If you’re trav­el­ling to a city for shop­ping it’s a girl­friend. But if you’re going away like we did just now, it’s great to have your boyfriend and kids with all their friends.
Where has seduced you?
Tahiti is one of the most beau­ti­ful places I’ve ever been to; it’s as if it’s out of a pic­ture book. It’s got the most turquoise, clear sea; it’s like some­thing out of a Bounty advert. And when you arrive they put gar­lands around your neck. It’s heaven.

Beach bum, cul­ture vul­ture or adren­a­lin junkie?
I’m a beach bum. I love lying in the sun on the beach, read­ing, talk­ing, and eat­ing long lunches.
Great­est travel lux­ury?
A pri­vate plane. You don’t have to queue; you just get on and that’s it. That’s got to be the biggest travel luxury.

Hol­i­day read­ing?
Auto­bi­ogra­phies. I’m read­ing the Jane Fonda one, My Life So Far, at the moment. Being on hol­i­day is the only time I have the chance to read and I love it; I just don’t seem to do it when I’m at home.

Bet­ter to travel or arrive?
Arrive – I can do with­out the travel. When we were leav­ing Ibiza, the plane arrived on time but it then took an hour and a half to get out of the air­port. That’s the bit that’s bad.

Worst hotel?
It was in Mex­ico. We arrived and one of my daugh­ters’ bed­rooms didn’t have a door on it; there was no staff because they’d all walked out because of a hur­ri­cane warn­ing. We’d been told every­thing was absolutely fine. We stayed about a week and then checked out and stayed in some lit­tle beach cabañas in Tulum instead. I thought it was bet­ter than a five-star hotel that didn’t have any doors or windows.

Best hotel?
My favourite – because it’s just time­less – is La Scali­natella in Capri. I’ve been going there since I was about 12 and it’s never changed. It’s not only about the way the hotel looks, it’s the way it’s run every year: the same faces, the same wait­ers. It’s glorious.

Favourite walk/ swim/ride/drive?
I’d rather run. I like run­ning on beaches. The beach at Tulum in Mex­ico has the whitest sand and the bluest sea; you can keep going and not see many peo­ple, which is pretty amazing.

Best meal abroad?
Again, I’ve had lots. But a recent one was at a place called Per­roig in Ibiza. It’s a tiny restau­rant in a cove on the south side of the island and they serve only a fish dish which is to die for: it’s just pota­toes, olive oil, pep­pers, onions and big cloves of gar­lic and they cook the fish with that; it’s fab­u­lous. You just sit on the beach and eat it. I like sim­ple food like that.

First thing you do when you arrive some­where new?
I check out the bath­room. Then I unpack imme­di­ately. I like to get organised.

Dream trip?
Brazil or Argentina. I’m think­ing about doing that this Christ­mas. I haven’t been to that side of the world. And every Brazil­ian that I’ve ever met has got that unbe­liev­able kind of joie de vivre, that kind of reck­less Latin spirit.

Favourite city?
New York, because it’s such a fan­tas­tic city. I remem­ber a for­mer New York cop who drove us around when we were there; every time he wanted to cut across some­body and the traf­fic was bad he would get out of the car and go, “Excuse me, can I get through?” and then he’d get back in the car and say, “Thank you.”

We asked him why he did it and he said, “Because if you get out the car and you ask nicely they let you through, oth­er­wise you’ll sit here all day.” It’s lit­tle things like that I love. It’s got a whole dif­fer­ent vibe.

Where next?
We’re off to Portofino for a birth­day for a long week­end. It’s quite nice when you’ve come back from a hol­i­day to have just one last lit­tle snip­pet before Christmas.

This lux­ury bou­tique hotel offers a five star expe­ri­ence in a unique beach­front set­ting. The prop­erty is located in the heart of Punta de Mita on the famous surf beach at El Anclote. The twelve rooms offer an exclu­sive expe­ri­ence for home­own­ers and guests com­plete with their own sig­na­ture spa and fit­ness club on site.

The prop­erty fea­tures a rooftop pool with hot tub, bar and food ser­vice is avail­able pool­side. The rooftop ter­race also offers a space for pri­vate din­ing, wed­dings and cor­po­rate events. As you enter the lobby, pass­ing by the gen­tle water­fall, you will enter a world of ele­gance and sophis­ti­ca­tion that will wel­come you into the sanc­tu­ary of art and relax­ation for your per­fect vaca­tion retreat. The Spa and Ath­letic Club pro­vide you with state of the art equip­ment and ser­vices in our treat­ment room or if you pre­fer they can also be pro­vided to you in your pri­vate suite.

The hotel fea­tures the new Café des Artistes del Mar with the famous Chef Thierry Blouet, offer­ing the finest and fresh­est local seafood served with the great­est care. The restau­rant offers 70 seats, includ­ing an out­door beach­front ter­race over­look­ing the blue waters of the beaches at El Anclote. You can also arrange room ser­vice or a pri­vate chef en suite if you have a spe­cial event.

The lobby area fea­tures the Fine Art Col­lec­tion of Thierry Blouet with the finest in orig­i­nal art, show­ings change through­out the year. A full concierge ser­vice is avail­able through our concierge ser­vice, from a pick up at the air­port to a fish­ing char­ter or a pri­vate wed­ding func­tion, we can do it all! The rooftop pool and hot tub pro­vide a stun­ning loca­tion for sun­bathing and enjoy­ing the views over­look­ing the beaches of El Anclote. The Beach Club has four sea kayaks and a hobie cat for your per­sonal enjoy­ment, in addi­tion, we have a Ponga with a cap­tain avail­able for your trips explor­ing the Mari­etas or whale watch­ing off shore. A beach­front pool will also be avail­able for your enjoyment.

For More Infor­ma­tion or for Reser­va­tions: http://www.hoteldesartistesdelmar.com

As Amer­i­cans strug­gle with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing and a suf­fer­ing hous­ing mar­ket, invest­ing in Mex­i­can real estate is begin­ning to look muy bueno. Prop­erty prices in Mex­ico are sig­nif­i­cantly more afford­able than in the U.S., and the forth­com­ing retire­ment of the baby boomer pop­u­la­tion is likely to cre­ate huge demand for prop­erty mar­kets offer­ing the pleas­ant cli­mate, glit­ter­ing beaches and rich cul­tural tra­di­tions for which Mex­ico is famous.

Mex­i­can real estate might seem like a sure­fire place for invest­ment, but the process of obtain­ing own­er­ship of prop­erty in Mex­ico can be risky and com­pli­cated. (For more gen­eral infor­ma­tion about own­ing Mex­i­can real estate, read our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, The Myth of Mex­i­can Prop­erty Own­er­ship). Because find­ing the right place for invest­ment can be equally chal­leng­ing, NuWire has selected five Mex­i­can real estate mar­kets that show poten­tial for growth and appreciation.

Real estate mar­kets were selected based on fac­tors such as afford­abil­ity, prox­im­ity to the U.S., strength of the local econ­omy, nat­ural and cul­tural attrac­tions, devel­op­ment of regional infra­struc­ture, tourism activ­ity and over­all appeal as a poten­tial retire­ment and expa­tri­ate destination.

1. Loreto, Baja Cal­i­for­nia Sur

Growth in Loreto has been a Cin­derella story of sorts, with Mexico’s National Fund for tourism devel­op­ment, FONATUR, play­ing the role of fairy god­mother. As a result of the enor­mous amount of invest­ment ded­i­cated to Loreto’s devel­op­ment, the small fish­ing village—home to just 14,000—is now regarded as an up-and-coming tourist hotspot, fol­low­ing the lead of pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tions such as Can­cun and Ixtapa.

Pris­tine beaches, fish­ing trips and new devel­op­ment make Loreto real estate hotAd­vances in Loreto’s infra­struc­ture include an inter­na­tional air­port, marina, util­i­ties, waste­water treat­ment plant and improve­ment and expan­sion of its road sys­tem. Resort devel­op­ment includes two hotels, a ten­nis cen­ter and a golf course. In addi­tion, Loreto is favored for selec­tion as the cap­i­tal of the Sea of Cortes Nau­ti­cal Route, “FONATUR’s most ambi­tious project in the last 20 years,” accord­ing to the FONATUR website.

Fur­ther­more, plans for devel­op­ment in Loreto are intended to pro­mote eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity, which could poten­tially fos­ter a strong indus­try in ecotourism.

Because the region around Loreto remains unde­vel­oped com­pared to other mar­kets, investors can take advan­tage of rel­a­tively afford­able oppor­tu­ni­ties for invest­ment in coastal prop­er­ties, retire­ment or vaca­tion homes and raw land.

For more infor­ma­tion about Loreto, read our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, Loreto: Mexico’s Next Real Estate Hotspot.
2. Merida, Yucatan
Real estate in Merida, the cap­i­tal city of the Mex­i­can state of Yucatan, offers a unique blend of urban and coastal mar­kets and fea­tures sur­pris­ingly afford­able prop­erty prices. A colo­nial home in the down­town area, for instance, can be pur­chased for less than $100,000. A savvy investor could also buy a 20– to 25-meter tract of nearby beach­front for a sim­i­lar amount of money, accord­ing to Brian Mur­phy, owner of real estate firm Mexira.

More­over, prices for beach­front prop­erty are con­sid­er­ably lower than those of other mar­kets on the Yucatan Penin­sula, such as the region of Costa Maya. How­ever, Merida’s beaches are sit­u­ated along the Gulf of Mex­ico and don’t offer the beau­ti­ful turquoise waters of Mexico’s Caribbean coastal towns, such as Can­cun or Riv­iera Maya, Mur­phy said.

Because cheap, unde­vel­oped land sur­round­ing the city is abun­dant, Merida should see con­sid­er­able growth in the next 10 years, accord­ing to Mur­phy. FONATUR has not shown much inter­est in the area, but exist­ing tourist and recre­ational attractions—such as port activ­ity at nearby Progreso—is help­ing to drive the local economy.

“It’s slowly devel­op­ing itself—and I think just mar­ket forces will allow that to develop with­out any…[need for an] infu­sion of money,” Mur­phy said.

For more infor­ma­tion about real estate in Merida, read our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, Merida, Mex­ico Real Estate: Vari­ety and Value.
3. Guadala­jara, Jalisco

Tlaque­paque Street in Guadala­jara is known for its quaint atmos­phereAs the sec­ond most pop­u­lous city in Mex­ico and a major indus­trial hub, Guadala­jara is a far cry from an “undis­cov­ered” mar­ket by anyone’s def­i­n­i­tion. How­ever, the city’s strong local econ­omy and favor­able liv­ing con­di­tions are likely to pro­mote reli­able growth in prop­erty prices.

Guadala­jara ranked fifth among major “North Amer­i­can Cities of the Future 2007/2008” for its youth­ful pop­u­la­tion, low unem­ploy­ment rate and large num­ber of recent for­eign invest­ment deals, accord­ing to For­eign Direct Invest­ment mag­a­zine. The city has also become known as the “Mex­i­can Sil­i­con Val­ley,” with a strong pres­ence of high-tech com­pa­nies such as Gen­eral Elec­tric, IBM and Intel.

Rapid devel­op­ment and build­ing in the city has begun to grow “upwards as opposed to out­wards,” and con­struc­tion of lux­ury high-rise con­do­mini­ums has exploded, accord­ing to Mary Wick, co-owner of Wick Barazza Real Estate.

“I would say [that] in a para­me­ter of three miles…about 20 high-rises are in the process of fin­ish­ing,” and many more are in the begin­ning stages, Wick said. Prices for lux­ury con­dos range from $200,000 to $3 mil­lion, but sup­ply is quickly out­strip­ping demand, and prices are expected to drop within the next one or two years, accord­ing to Wick.

Another oppor­tu­nity for invest­ment can be found in low-income hous­ing, as Guadala­jara strug­gles to sup­port its large lower-class population.

In addi­tion to the urban set­ting, expa­tri­ates are drawn to the city for its pleas­ant cli­mate, Wick said. Aver­age high tem­per­a­tures range from 75 to 89 degrees Fahren­heit through­out the year, accord­ing to Weather.com, and Guadalajara’s high ele­va­tion helps to avert air pollution.

4. Puerto Val­larta, Jalisco

Nes­tled in the cen­ter of Ban­deras Bay on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Puerto Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket has rapidly cre­ated a boom­town for vaca­tion prop­er­ties and sec­ond homes. Val­larta is home to 350,000 res­i­dents, with a com­mu­nity of 6500 expa­tri­ates, accord­ing to VisitPuertoVallarta.com, a web­site pro­moted by Puerto Val­larta CVB and Tourism Board.

Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in El Cen­tro of Puerto VallartaVallarta’s con­tin­u­ously expand­ing inter­na­tional air­port wel­comes more than 450 flights daily, accord­ing to the web­site. Over­all, it is esti­mated that more than three mil­lion tourists visit the Val­larta area annu­ally, “with the total ris­ing sub­stan­tially each year,” Tere Kim­ball, bro­ker and part­ner for Pru­den­tial Cal­i­for­nia Real Estate, said in an e-mail interview.

Although prices for con­dos and vil­las have risen by an aver­age of 10 per­cent each year for the last 10 years, prices are expected to flat­ten soon as a result of over­build­ing, accord­ing to Kimball.

“U.S. and Cana­dian buy­ers will soon enjoy the first buyer’s mar­ket in many years,” she said. “But it won’t last forever.”

The best oppor­tu­ni­ties for prop­erty invest­ment around Val­larta may be found in the larger Bay vicin­ity, which already boasts lux­ury resorts, res­i­den­tial devel­op­ments and golf courses. FONATUR’s plans for the new Litibu resort devel­op­ment, approx­i­mately 45 min­utes north of Puerto Val­larta, may pro­mote growth in the nearby small town Higuera Blanca.

Finally, “financ­ing for devel­op­ers at com­pet­i­tive rates is more dif­fi­cult to arrange and more expen­sive than in the U.S.,” there­fore cash buy­ers will­ing to pur­chase con­dos on a pre-construction basis can ben­e­fit from sig­nif­i­cant dis­counts of up to 30 per­cent, accord­ing to Kimball.

5. Oax­aca, Oaxaca

After its recent bout with polit­i­cal unrest in 2006, Oaxaca’s has seen double-digit growth in prop­erty prices, and new-home con­struc­tion is march­ing onwards. Fur­ther­more, the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has taken an active inter­est in strength­en­ing Oaxaca’s infra­struc­ture by improv­ing util­i­ties and sewer sys­tems, pro­mot­ing clean­li­ness and invest­ing heav­ily in improve­ment and expan­sion of its road network.

His­tor­i­cal and cul­tural attrac­tions in Oax­aca include pre-Hispanic ruins, 16th cen­tury Domini­can churches and monas­ter­ies, weekly town mar­ket­places, craft vil­lages, regional art, muse­ums and fine Mex­i­can cui­sine. Out­door recre­ation and eco­tourism can be enjoyed in the moun­tains and val­leys that envelop the city.

With 450,000 peo­ple, Oax­aca is less than one third of the size of Guadala­jara, but it has a sim­i­larly pleas­ant cli­mate, with aver­age high tem­per­a­tures rang­ing from 77 to 88 degrees Fahren­heit in the course of a year, accord­ing to Weather.com.

As in Merida, oppor­tu­ni­ties to pur­chase colo­nial homes in the city or plots of raw land are avail­able for a frac­tion of the cost for sim­i­lar prop­er­ties in the U.S. Tourism and jobs are return­ing to the area and prop­erty val­ues are expected to rise as the city gains pop­u­lar­ity among the expa­tri­ate community.

In order to reduce expo­sure to the pos­si­bil­ity of future polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions, investors might con­sider pur­chas­ing prop­erty in Oaxaca’s sub­urbs.
For more infor­ma­tion about Oax­aca, read our pre­vi­ous arti­cle Oax­aca, Mex­ico Real Estate Investment.

Last update: 8:23 a.m. EDT Sept. 10, 2008

BALTIMORE, Sept 10, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Walt and Jean Smith start their morn­ings with cof­fee on the ter­race. Some­times they spy a school of play­ful dol­phins jump­ing the waves. Usu­ally, though, they watch the town awaken. Women pull tarps off small beach shacks where they’ll soon start grilling the ‘catch of the day.’ Young men joke and chat with each other before they head off in sep­a­rate direc­tions to sell their col­or­ful wares and sil­ver jewelry.

Later in the day, the Smiths may walk down to the male­con, or sea­side board­walk, for lunch. They know the best restau­rants in Puerto Val­larta … those that are off the tourist track and where you can still get a fill­ing lunch of fresh fish, rice, beans, and tor­tillas for $5 or less.

Puerto Val­larta, Mex­ico, is one of the favored des­ti­na­tions for U.S. and Cana­dian retirees. Although it’s dif­fi­cult to cor­rob­o­rate exact num­bers, esti­mates are that one mil­lion Amer­i­can and Cana­dian retirees live in Mex­ico at least full– or part-time. The Lake Cha­pala area, south of Guadala­jara in the mid­dle of Mexico’s cen­tral high­lands, is home to the largest con­cen­trated pop­u­la­tion of U.S. and Cana­dian retirees liv­ing out­side the U.S. and Canada.

When the Smiths first retired to Mex­ico, they set­tled in the Lake Cha­pala area, in the vil­lage of Aji­jic. They bought a large prop­erty, remod­eled it, and reopened it as an upscale B&B. After five and a half years as innkeep­ers, they were ready to retire again … for real this time. And this time they chose to live in the famous resort and beach town of Puerto Vallarta.

“Mov­ing from one town to another is fairly typ­i­cal of the retiree expe­ri­ence in Mex­ico,” says Dan Prescher, pub­lisher of Inter­na­tional Liv­ing mag­a­zine and the expan­sive web­site about liv­ing and invest­ing over­seas, www.internationalliving.com. Prescher and his wife have them­selves lived in three towns in Mex­ico: Aji­jic, San Miguel de Allende, and now Merida in the state of Yucatan.

“Mex­ico is a very easy coun­try to live in, espe­cially if you’ve never lived over­seas before,” says Prescher. “You can drive here eas­ily from the U.S. or Canada, it’s easy to get a res­i­dent visa here and to import your house­hold belong­ings duty-free. It’s easy to start a busi­ness. And the cost of liv­ing is lower than it is north of the bor­der. Impor­tantly for retirees, espe­cially, health care in Mex­ico is first rate and can cost 50–60% less than it does back home. While Medicare doesn’t cover you any­where out­side the U.S., for­eign­ers can buy into the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment health insur­ance pro­gram for less than $300 per year. There are, in fact, many perks and dis­counts extended to retirees in Mexico.”

The coun­try has so much to offer, says Inter­na­tional Liv­ing edi­tor Laura Sheri­dan, that for the sec­ond year in a row, Mex­ico ranks #1 on the publication’s Annual Global Retire­ment Index.

“In Mex­ico, you can afford the kinds of lux­u­ries only the wealthy enjoy up north … like a maid, a cook, and a gar­dener,” says Sheri­dan. “What­ever your vision of the ideal retire­ment involves … shop­ping, fish­ing, sun­bathing, div­ing, moun­tain climb­ing, col­lect­ing crafts, vis­it­ing arche­o­log­i­cal sites, going to con­certs, attend­ing the the­ater, or fine din­ing … in Mex­ico you can have all this and more.”

To deter­mine the Annual Retire­ment Index, Sheri­dan says 29 coun­tries, are ana­lyzed and ranked in cat­e­gories includ­ing real estate costs, spe­cial ben­e­fits offered to retirees, cul­ture, safety and sta­bil­ity, health care, cli­mate, infra­struc­ture, and cost of living.

“We look closely at the best oppor­tu­ni­ties world­wide for retire­ment liv­ing,” she says. “Where will the pensioner’s dol­lars go far­thest? Which coun­try is the safest? Where is the health care best? We give top pri­or­ity to those things that mat­ter most to any­one plan­ning for retire­ment, includ­ing pro­grams with spe­cial ben­e­fits for retirees … things like tax breaks and dis­counts, for exam­ple, that var­i­ous gov­ern­ments offer in an effort to attract invest­ment and retire­ment dollars.”

“This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year that Mex­ico tops our list as the best coun­try in the world to retire to,” Sheri­dan says. “It’s fol­lowed on that list by Ecuador, Panama, Uruguay, and Italy.

“Keep in mind that every place has its pros and cons. And every coun­try has pock­ets where liv­ing is eas­ier … or cheaper … than another. Mex­ico is a good exam­ple of this. Liv­ing in a resort city like Puerto Val­larta is more expen­sive than liv­ing in a smaller and lesser-known town like Tepic, just a few hours north.”

The same is true of Italy, Sheri­dan says, where higher prices are com­mon in the north­ern part of the coun­try and near big cities like Rome and Flo­rence. “But go south to the Abruzzo, Molise, and Cam­pa­nia regions and towns like Straz­zari and Cal­itri to find the bargains.”

Ecuador, in the num­ber two spot, may be the best-kept retire­ment secret in the Amer­i­cas, says Inter­na­tional Liv­ing pub­lisher Dan Prescher, espe­cially when it comes to real estate prices.

“On a recent trip to Ecuador,” he says, “I saw flat, build­able lots with majes­tic views over­look­ing the Pacific Ocean for $6,000. In a tidy gated com­mu­nity right on the beach lots are sell­ing for $18,000. Gor­geous mod­ern con­dos in high-rise tow­ers in the Ocean­side city of Manta sell for $100 per square foot. And in the high­lands, prices can be even lower. How does $46,000 sound for an 1,100-square-foot pent­house with views of two volcanoes?”

This is the 16th year that Inter­na­tional Liv­ing, founded in 1979, has com­piled its Annual Retire­ment Index.
The United States ranks #21 and receives par­tic­u­larly bad marks in the area of spe­cial ben­e­fits for retirees. It scores well in both safety and infra­struc­ture. The United King­dom ranks at the bot­tom of the list at #29 — pri­mar­ily because of its high real estate prices and over­all high cost of living.

“No place scores a per­fect 100,” stresses Sheri­dan. “Even Mex­ico, our num­ber one retire­ment des­ti­na­tion, earns a score of only 77. The best, but not per­fect. If you’re try­ing to pick a place to retire, keep that in mind. There will be good points and bad, no mat­ter where you go. Real­iz­ing that ahead of time will elim­i­nate many dis­ap­point­ments later.”

    The Top Ten Best Places to Retire (and total points out of a pos­si­ble 100):
     Mex­ico         77
     Ecuador        76
     Panama         75
     Uruguay        74
     Italy          73
     Brazil         72
     France         72
     Argentina      71
     Costa Rica     70
     Aus­tralia      70

Pub­lished on: Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 10, 2008
Writ­ten by: Yemis­rach Kifle      

 
Puerto Val­larta was once a quiet fish­ing vil­lage, but ever since it served as the back­drop for John Huston’s 1964 film “The Night of the Iguana,” star­ring Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and Richard Bur­ton, the sleepy sea­side town has grown to become the block­buster resort that it is today. This long­stand­ing pop­u­lar­ity only seems to be increas­ing among both tourists and retirees, and as a result, Puerto Vallarta’s real estate mar­ket is thriving.

Many for­eign­ers look­ing to retire in Mex­ico have cho­sen this sea­side town for its beau­ti­ful scenery, its small size and the rel­a­tive ease of con­duct­ing day-to-day life with lim­ited Span­ish required. Inter­est among inter­na­tional buy­ers is so great that almost all real estate agen­cies quote prices in dol­lars.
About Puerto Vallarta

Puerto Val­larta, west of Guadala­jara Located on the Pacific coast, the munic­i­pal­ity of Puerto Val­larta occu­pies 502.19 square miles and has a view of the beau­ti­ful Sierra Madre moun­tains. With its esti­mated pop­u­la­tion hov­er­ing around 300,000, the city is the fifth largest in the Mex­i­can state of Jalisco.

Tourism is the largest indus­try in the area, fol­lowed by agri­cul­ture and fish­ing. Puerto Val­larta is the sec­ond most vis­ited resort town in Mex­ico and wel­comes 2.2 mil­lion tourists annu­ally, accord­ing to Visit Puerto Val­larta Mex­ico, an online guide to the city.

The city’s offi­cial slo­gan, “where Mex­ico comes to life,” rings true to John Youden, founder of Puerto Vallarta’s real estate mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice, Multi List Val­larta, and owner of Val­larta Lifestyles Pub­lish­ing Group, he said. “Puerto Val­larta is a Mex­i­can town that became an inter­na­tional tourist des­ti­na­tion. Los Cabos and Can­cun, for the most part, were planned des­ti­na­tions,” he said. Puerto Val­larta has a lot of Mex­ico to offer, accord­ing to Mr. Youden. “Its down­town cen­tral area with its plaza and Male­con offers some­thing truly unique. It is also very close to Guadala­jara, Mexico’s sec­ond largest city.”

The lights of Puerto Val­larta at dusk along the Pacific coast­Puerto Vallarta’s real estate market

Puerto Val­larta was ranked in NuWire’s top five Mex­i­can real estate mar­kets in 2008. In 2000, Puerto Val­larta sold roughly $50 mil­lion in resort real estate, which is defined as prop­erty pur­chased by retirees or as a sec­ond home, accord­ing to Dar­ryl Bowie, the gen­eral man­ager of Cold­well Banker La Costa Realty. Million-dollar homes were rare and there were only a few large scale devel­op­ments. In 2007, resort real estate sales reached $500 mil­lion. There were con­dos sell­ing for $2 mil­lion apiece and homes gar­ner­ing a hefty $5 mil­lion, accord­ing to Cold­well Banker La Costa Realty.

As of sum­mer 2008, there are more than 100 devel­op­ments around Ban­deras Bay, mak­ing Puerto Val­larta first in resort prop­erty sales in Mex­ico. Punta Mita, one of the bet­ter known devel­op­ments, has Four Sea­sons, Ritz Carl­ton and St. Regis Hotels and two Jack Nick­laus Sig­na­ture golf courses. “The whole area is boom­ing, from Rin­con de Guayabitos in the north to Mis­maloya in the south,” Bowie said.

The major prop­erty buy­ers in Puerto Val­larta are Mex­i­cans, Amer­i­cans and Cana­di­ans and mostly they come look­ing in one of three cat­e­gories, accord­ing to fig­ures from Cold­well Banker La Costa. Some are seek­ing full-time win­ter homes. Oth­ers are look­ing for a sec­ond home that can also dou­ble as a rental prop­erty. Many are look­ing to retire in Puerto Vallarta.

“This year, with the sub-prime cri­sis, elec­tion, price of oil and other eco­nomic fac­tors, we have seen a notice­able drop in Amer­i­can buy­ers and a notice­able rise in Amer­i­can sell­ers. The Cana­dian buy­ers have really stepped in with a strong dol­lar, how­ever, as the oil-based infla­tion woes make the news, even the Cana­dian buy­ers are being more cau­tious than usual,” Bowie said.

Those who are look­ing for prop­er­ties under $250,000 but want ameni­ties such as a pool, beach, secu­rity, view and prox­im­ity to down­town are find­ing a mar­ket where prices are much higher than they expected, accord­ing to Bowie. The mar­ket under $400,000 is strong, espe­cially in the condo sec­tor. How­ever, sales from prop­er­ties val­ued between $500,000 and $1 mil­lion are not doing as well. “At this price range, buy­ers are faced with a major invest­ment deci­sion and when the eco­nomic indi­ca­tors are all scream­ing ‘buy gold, infla­tion is loom­ing, oil is going higher, cash is king, the sky is falling,’ they put the dream on hold,” Bowie said.

“The $500,000 to $1,000,000 mar­ket seems to be soft­en­ing at this time, with a desire toward either less expen­sive con­dos in the $300s or very high-end con­dos and vil­las, typ­i­cally over $2 mil­lion,” said Wayne Franklin, pres­i­dent of Trop­i­casa Real­ity. The top end of the mar­ket is doing quiet a bit bet­ter than any other por­tion of the mar­ket. “This makes sense because eco­nomic fluc­tu­a­tions affect high pro­file clients less,” Franklin said.

Buy­ing real estate in Puerto Vallarta

The paper­work and real estate lan­guage used dur­ing prop­erty trans­ac­tion may seem sim­i­lar to those used in the United States but inter­na­tional buy­ers must remem­ber that sim­i­lar­ity does not trans­late into same­ness. They must research every turn and ensure all pro­ce­dures are com­pleted in accor­dance to Mex­i­can law. Gen­er­ally, prop­erty pur­chase involves a bank, a lawyer, a real estate com­pany and a pub­lic notary, accord­ing to Mex­on­line. Trans­ac­tions that are not within restricted zones don’t need to involve banks. Read more bout Mex­i­can real estate law in our arti­cle The Myth of Mex­i­can Prop­erty Ownership.

“Investors need to do their home­work and work with an AMPI [Mex­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Real Estate Pro­fes­sion­als] agent to make sure that they are being rep­re­sented prop­erly,” Franklin said. Buy­ers must review and eval­u­ate doc­u­ments of their cho­sen devel­op­ment crit­i­cally to ensure that every­thing is as it seems. “If the investor has found a valid project, pre­con­struc­tion devel­op­ers some­times offer great dis­counts for entry level into a devel­op­ment. Oth­ers offer ter­rific terms through­out the course of the con­struc­tion. In Mex­ico, prices increase on devel­op­ments as inven­tory decreases, so price esca­la­tions are typ­i­cally built into the model. You may also find a devel­oper whose sales have stag­nated. They’ve reached a plateau and they need to get mov­ing again. Being in the right place at the right time can pay off in these projects. You may be able to con­vince a devel­oper to give you that ‘spe­cial deal’ on the next unit sold so that he can get sales mov­ing again,” he said.

The next few years

Real estate agents are opti­mistic about the future of the Puerto Val­larta prop­erty mar­ket as new devel­op­ments are planned to open the town to even greater num­bers of tourists. “A new high­way is under con­struc­tion to Guadala­jara, which will bring more vis­i­tors to the beach. This will be a huge boom for Val­larta. Peo­ple will need lodg­ing, food and want to shop and drink. All busi­nesses will enjoy an uptick in activ­ity, real estate and hotels espe­cially,” said Franklin.

“The baby boomer pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to retire with huge wealth despite U.S. eco­nomic fac­tors. Val­larta, with its prox­im­ity to major wealth cen­ters in the States, will con­tinue to grow and be among one of the top vaca­tion and retire­ment des­ti­na­tion as baby boomers look for more out of life,” he added.

“[The mar­ket] will cer­tainly con­tinue to grow. A slow­down is tak­ing place, as else­where in the world, but it will pick up again,” Youden said.