Five years ago, my wife and I began traveling south for 2 months each winter. First to Venice Beach California, then to Ocean Beach (San Diego.) We loved our time escaping the dreary Portland winters, but we could only afford two months at a furnished rental in southern California – especially because we wanted to be close to the beach.
Ocean Beach was perfect – for the past two years, we lived in Brighton Ave – it was like it was meant to be. We were just 3 blocks from the biggest dog-friendly beach in California and we’d take our Golden Retriever (first Rowan, and now Nugget) on daily beach visits. While we were both still working 40 hours + per week, we got to enjoy the off hours.
And we would rent out our house in Portland – something we never thought would be possible due to Portland’s inglorious winter weather.
We knew that we wanted to spend more time in the sun, but we were paying around $3000 per month for a furnished apartment (compared to our $2000 per month mortgage on a 3 bedroom house in one of the hippest Portland neighborhoods.)
So we started looking south of the border to find a way to pay less and also have a place that we could call our home – where I could customize the house and my wife could plant a vegetable garden, fruit trees and whatever else she wanted to put in the ground.
We began by looking near the border. Not a serious looking because when we visited these towns they never felt “right.” They felt “wrong.”
With my wife’s birthday fast approaching, I read a blog post about biking in La Paz, Mexico. I had never heard of La Paz and I didn’t know where it was, but the photos online in the blog post made it look like a nice town to spend a weekend in. And we were able to get cheap plane tickets to La Paz from San Diego by first crossing the border to fly from the Tijuana airport. This airport is located directly on the US border and there is actually an entrance on the US side where you can go through customs and immigration as you walk into the airport – very convenient!
On a whim, my wife decided it would be fun to look at houses while we were there. She found an agent online and even found a house listed for $260,000 right on the beach. We met agent Jim at his office on Saturday to see that house – plus a few more that Jim had picked out in the area.
The area, by the way, is called Centenario – it’s a little dusty town just outside La Paz. La Paz is on a bay on the sea of Cortez, and Centenario looks across the bay at the city of La Paz. A 25 minute Uber ride from our downtown hotel took us to Centenario – and cost us $6.
When we started dreaming about a home in Mexico, I had to compromise a little. I love being around people and I don’t like driving a car. In Portland, our house is walking distance from a half dozen coffee shops, a historic 500 seat movie theater, two grocery stores, bookshops, bars, restaurants, second-hand shops, a library… you get the idea. We aren’t in downtown Portland, but in an old trolley car suburb where everything is within walking distance. We live on a 1/10th acre postage stamp lot without much room for a garden.
My wife Kat convinced me that I had my ideal home for 6 months of the year in Portland and I needed to be flexible when finding a place in Mexico. She wanted space. And she wanted to live on the beach. And we had a limited budget.
Back to our arrival at our real estate agent’s office in Centenario. It was located next to a bar/restaurant that had a few ex-pats bellied up to the bar sipping Coronas when we arrived. Centenario had at least one possible hang-out for me.
But before we could see the $260,000 beach house, our agent wanted to show us a place that was just a short walk behind his office. It had been on the market for years, but the timing was right – they had recently lowered the price and the awful neighbor had recently sold his property (more on that in another post.)
We loved the house! It was clearly in need of some repairs, but it was close to $100,000 less expensive than the house we’d come down to see. This was similar to that house in that it had a palapa roof (yes our house has a palm tree roof as you’ve seen on Gilligan’s Island.) This house also had 91 windows around the outside. I’d say it’s wall-to-wall windows, but there really aren’t any walls on the outside that aren’t windows. The good news is that it’s brick for the bottom 30 inches or so so it’s still possible to put furniture along the outside walls.
It was a 1/2 acre lot with plenty of room to plant whatever my wife desired. And it was on the beach. Our realtor told us that this section of beach was unique for two reasons: 1) it was the only section of beach where there wasn’t a road running between the houses and the beach and 2) it was the farthest point from the mouth of the bay, so it was where the silt built up. Point 1 was a plus (and we’ve since learned how important this point is.) Point 2 was a negative, and silt built up is also known as muck and got pretty smelly at low tide.
That smell was a concern for me, but my wife grew up in the Florida keys so “tidal marsh smell” wasn’t a problem for her. This was also a smell we became familiar with in Ocean Beach where the river met the ocean. I’ve never been a fan of that smell, but I’ve since learned to live with it.
The house also had a separate casita that we could use as a guest house. We learned that this is pretty common in Mexico.
We decided we liked the house but wanted to continue the “home tour” that Jim and Rebecca had planned for us. The house we loved online turned out to be very dark inside and it had that dirt road between the house and the beach. Plus it was $100k more expensive. We got some great photos of the landscaping and pool that we have used as inspiration for our home.
The last 3-4 houses were not our speed. Much more “Americanized” with things like actual roofs. We also didn’t like the other locations. One was in Comitan – a community that is more remote. Next to beautiful beaches, but there was nothing else in walking distance. I’ve heard that a family has since opened a restaurant up there, but I still preferred being near the “heart of El Centenario.” The other houses were up in the “hills” beyond the flat lands which were populated mostly by Mexican families. The “hills” by contrast were mostly Americans and Canadians. Prices were higher and the houses were newer and it just didn’t feel right for us.
What we didn’t realize was that one of the benefits of living in the hills was having more expat neighbors. Most of our friends live up there and they talk about the people they’ve met while walking their dogs or just taking a stroll. Strolling down the beach with our dog is great – but we’ve really only met one friend on the beach.
After we returned to Jim’s office, but before we headed back to La Paz, we decided to stop for a bite to eat. And that’s when we decided we should walk back to house #1 and look at it again from outside the fence. It just seemed to click.
And it continued to click that evening while we watched the sun set over Centenario while we walked along the Malecon in La Paz.
The following day, we went to look at it again and confirm that this is something that we wanted to do.
A quick weekend trip to La Paz ended with writing up an offer to purchase a house on the beach.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Lots of people vacation in Mexico and end up buying a time-share. We are definitely not timeshare people. In fact, we aren’t allowed to do timeshare presentations anymore (more on that in a future post.)
About 9 months of negotiating, waiting, paper-working, buying an RV for the trip down, and finally transferring the funds and we were moving into our new Mexican home. There’s no looking back and no regrets.
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