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Real Estate Adventures - Buying a Home in Mexico

[00:00:00] Good morning from Mexico. I am on vacation and yes, realtors do get to take vacation. I am down in San Miguel De Allende, in Querétaro, no, I'm sorry, in Guanajuato, Mexico. And, I'm going to give you a little tour of the area that I have a little Casita. And I'll talk a little bit about buying property in Mexico or how that worked for me.

I only know about my experience. I don't only know about here, I don't know about beachfront property, how that would be. But anyway, yeah, I'll talk a little bit about that and let you know that I do things besides sell real estate. Hi, I'm Judith Barnett with my I don't even know who I am. I'm on vacation.

Judith Sells homes and my home group realty where [00:01:00] real estate is done with compassion and integrity.

Okay, so we are going to do a little video. This is the house at the end of the row where I am. It's very tall, very tall. I have a very small little casita. I don't need a lot of space. I'm on the last row of this little subdivision. it's been here probably I think, 25, maybe 30 years. I'm friends with one of the original owners in here.

She helped to sort of put this all together. we have gardeners, so they're in here taking care of it. This is the front of my Casita right here. I have a little patio area and lots of plants. We'll do an indoor [00:02:00] tour later, but it's not it's kind of messy right now. My grandson here is visiting, but this is the patio and this plant

was overgrowing the stairwell when I got here. So I had the gardener trim it back, but we have a little patio on top. I'll go up and show you that 'cause this is something the previous owner installed so that she could enjoy, you know, getting up here. We have a lemon tree right there. It's just so beautiful.

It's monsoons right now and they have had record rains. So everything is growing massively. So here we are. This is the top little patio. I haven't really done anything here. I'm not here that often. We've been gradually redoing the casita. Nothing's been really done for a long time, but here's [00:03:00] just beautiful view.

And then we have our propane tank and the rla. This is where our water is. And then it gets pumped down to the house.

And this is my friend's house over here. This is my friend's house. It was on the other side. She added a second level and another patio. But her house is exactly the same as mine inside. This is another small house, one level. And you'll see these are just the, this is what slide into the house.

There's not a lot of windows. 'cause we're connected on three sides.

So back down we go.

Yes. My shoes grippy. Way too grippy.[00:04:00] 

All right. I don't know what they're doing today, but it's loud. I don't know what the heck they're doing. Okay. I'm gonna be curious 'cause nobody's ever down here. Seriously. I don't know what they're doing. That's weird. Oh, okay. Something with the septic, I think. Oh, that's right. Okay. This is like our septic system and they're going in there and they're cleaning it out and they're gonna treat it for pests.

Cockroaches like to come through the septic system here. I know maybe grossing y'all out, but I am in a different country. It is what it is. Oh God. That stinks. Woo. Oh my God. All right. This is my little casita. We are well kitchen. We have a little patio in the [00:05:00] back. This is like a little wash area store room.

And the previous owner back in here, this is all rusty, it's all painted now. Put a toilet in here, which was actually very handy. And then in the corner here is going to be the washing center. Just have to get that. But right now it's just a store room with a toilet. Okay, so that's in the back. Kitchen gas stove.

Yes, we've been cooking. So here's the living room space. It's a small little casita, wave Sebastian. All right. He's used to this. His mom does video all the time. So this is the cool ceiling. Sebastian, what is the ceiling called? Do you know? no, I don't think so. This has a special name. The ceiling's like this.

It's bricks. It's really cool. And then that's the little, what do you [00:06:00] call it structure sticking out that I showed you up on the patio. And then we have this fireplace. That's not a fireplace, but it's in all the houses. It justs there. Looks cool though. Windows here are different. They're metal and it doesn't open the whole window.

Just this little piece opens. Instead of the whole window and they are made out of their metal. So I just had those painted. So the interior was this really bright colors. If I can find pictures of it, I'll share that. And so we just had this repainted in the last year. So we have a bathroom. Pretty straightforward.

They don't have a lot of bath in here. This whole room is tiled, like the whole room. Every inch of it is tiled. [00:07:00] One solid color. Like it's just tiled the whole thing. All right, and then this is my office, and this is also my grandson's little place to sleep. We don't have a great bed situation here, so this is temporary.

Those are the closets over there.

And I do have a mini split. It does work, but it's really not that hot, so I don't really want to use it. yeah. And then this is the primary bedroom? Yes. I did not make my bed. Deal with it people. Actually, I need to put a new sheet on it 'cause this one doesn't have elastic on the corners, but it's a pretty good sized room and the ceilings are vaulted.

So as you can see, it starts here and it goes up so it's higher in the corner. That's a little gas heater again. I haven't used it. I really [00:08:00] don't have a need. I don't think it's that hot or cold. And then here's another closet. It has hanging on one side and shelves on the other. We had that fixed because all the little slats were falling out, unfortunately.

All right, so that's my little casita.

Okay, so let's go tour the neighborhood a little more. Now that they're done with the sewers, they have left. So again, this is our little cute patio space. At some point, I wanna enclose this.

So my patio or my area is up to, if you see the white rocks over there, that's the end of my patio area. So if I wanted to enclose this, I could do a little fence at the end and then along on the inside of the sidewalk and over here, and kind of go all the way there and maybe put [00:09:00] a gate right here. Oops.

Fall down. Anyway, let's go tour the rest of this beautiful little place. Our friends, Henry and Kathy live next door here. They have been doing a lot of remodeling as well. They have a massive house. It's many levels. And then they, all the doors here are beautiful. I also wanna do that is add another bigger door, beautiful door.

But they added, and I'll see if I can show you from here. They added a terrace and then they added a terrace on top of that. So maybe another time when they're here I can video their terrace. 'cause you can see all the way to central that's downtown. Where the pretty pink churches. All right. And then this house has been vacant for a long time, but they are now cleaning it up and the family is either going to sell it and or start [00:10:00] using it again.

This is our parking lot. Everybody has an assigned parking space.

I will walk down each one of that. I don't even know how many houses are in here. Maybe 40. Oh, no count. So here is my friend lives over here. As you can see, everything is super lush right now. Lots of vines growing everywhere. Most of the houses in here are at least two story, most or three. That's just bigger than I want.

This is my friend's house. She has a nice little patio enclosed, and then she put in an apartment above, so she rents out the upper level of her [00:11:00] house. A lot of these homes are rented out. Most of the homes here are not. Nobody's in them full time. So these all down here are rented out and there are five homes in here for sale right now.

And then there's a little lot down here that you could build your house from scratch, so you could buy the lot and build your house. This house on the corner is three levels with the patio. And then there's another patio space. This is a very tall house, a lot of space, but everything goes up. The square footage is about the same at the base of everyone, so it's about a thousand square feet.

There's the next level will be a thousand square feet. Next level will be a thousand square feet, so that one down there, three levels is about 3000 square feet. Again, [00:12:00] people have different fences. Here it is, has an HOA. So I pay 1500 pesos a month. I have to figure out what that is. I think that's around, we'll figure that out and we'll post how much that is.

And then we come down here and we, The gate, we are gated. So, let get here makes some sense. Pretty. So this is our garbage bin. We put our garbage in there. Everything has to be in bags 'cause they hand take things outta the garbage. This is our guard's house. We go in and out this door. They let us in and out 'cause it's always locked.

And then we go in and out these doors with our cars. It's beautiful. Walk down here. I think there is a house over here, a liberal, one smaller one [00:13:00] that is for sale and the cactus. Cool.

See most of 'em have patios on top. If you look, which is nice to have, you get up high and you get to see over what's going on and just see out to the city. I am not very high, so I don't get to see a whole lot. I think this little coed right here is for sale.

Cute little patio pavers. As you can see, we're kind of all squished in together here, so we're really right on top of each other. So there's one. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Six Counting, 7, 8, 9, [00:14:00] 10. I think there's 10 or 11 on each. Let's just say there's 10 on each row.

Maybe there's more like 60 houses in here.

Isn't that gorgeous? Just beautiful and everybody makes their patio a little different. Some people live here full time, not a lot.

But everybody does something a little different to make it theirs. And this is my house down here in San Miguel. Okay, so I was gonna tell you, about my experience buying a house down in Mexico.

[00:15:00] My kids came down here. And my son, my, daughter and son-in-law came down to Mexico, and they rented this casita. And while they were there, they mentioned that the current owner was thinking about selling. Because she didn't wanna travel anymore and come down here and she'd been renting it out for a number of years to different people and, was finally thinking maybe she was gonna sell it.

So I spoke to her and we did not have a real estate agent involved, though I did have an agent show me houses. First before I decided that the casita [00:16:00] was what I wanted to buy, I'm gonna sit down here for a second.

And so she and I chatted and here, property sales go through an attorney. So. I dunno if she knew somebody. Anyway, she found she had, oh, I know she had an attorney that, had helped her and maybe buy the house or something. Anyway, she found the attorney for us and basically it's, it's a much more, a little more involved just because I was in the United States buying a house in Mexico.

Mexico. And so, I had to wire transfer part of the money, like the earnest money to a bank in New York [00:17:00] because there's only certain banks that work with Mexico to do transactions like this. And so I, I sent the money and I'm telling you, there was a lot of faith involved because I did not know, I didn't get a receipt, I didn't get anything confirming they received the money, however.

Apparently they did because the attorney contacted me and said, okay, we're ready. when can you come down to, sorry, I have to get off, get a phone call off. So we started the process of getting the money 'cause we had to pay cash. There are lenders down here. They're not used very often because there's still discomfort in that whole process.

So basically, if you're buying a house down here, you that's already build. You have to pay [00:18:00] cash. So how I got the cash to do this is I took, and refinanced a house like one of my rental properties. And use the money from that to buy this house. so then we met with the attorney. So we had to come down here, fly down here at a certain time.

We had to send certain paperwork down here. First, we had to have documents translated, I don't remember, it's been like three years. we had to have certain documents translated and sent down here. And then when we got here, Dennis and I bought this together though. He says he is never coming back again.

I laugh 'cause I love it here. I come down at least once a year depending on work and finances and stuff like that my ability to be gone from my work. so if there's anybody out there that would like to partner up with me, I would love it. Okay. Let me finish telling you about my [00:19:00] purchase here in Mexico of a house.

 I got interrupted by the cleaning of the sewers that was going on the other day and wasn't able to finish. And then my grandson and I just got busy doing things, so just didn't get back to you. I'm sorry, but I'm here today. so where I left off was the documents that we needed to have translated into Spanish and sent down here in advance.

Of our coming down to meet with the attorney to go over the paperwork. Prior to all of this happening I had met with the attorney while I was in Mexico and went over all the details of how long it would take of the documents we were gonna need, how much it was gonna cost. It really wasn't that expensive and honestly, I wish I could tell you how much it was for her services.

I honestly cannot remember. I'd [00:20:00] have to go back. But it really wasn't that expensive outside because we paid cash. The only additional fees we had would be the closing fees, like the title fees, that type of thing, which the attorney provided. So, I'm sure it cost us well under $3,000 to do all of what we did, meaning the translation documents, the attorney, the maybe even the travel included in that, because we had to come down here for the final part.

And Signed the documents. They had it in a way that it was English on one side and Spanish in the other. And we went over it with the attorney and there was a notary there. They have a notary sign off on our signatures on [00:21:00] everything. And the other thing that we needed to do is we both made a will.

So that there was no, we did that at the same time, and you ask, why would you do that? And it's just highly recommended to do that in Mexico because if something were to happen to you as a US citizen, and I don't know about the other people but that live here, Mexicans, but it makes the transfer of property to your family or whatever, much more complicated.

so we both did a will and set it up so that, you know, if. He passed X would go to, and basically ultimately my kids are gonna inherit this. Meaning when I say kids, my daughter, son-in-law and grandson are in the will to inherit this casita when we die unless we sell it, which I can't fathom that we would do that.

I kind of really like the idea of making [00:22:00] that house. And I, even though it's just a little casita, but it's a house in San Miguel. And it in a way changes the course of their familial heritage. You know, it, it really levels up their life in so many ways. But the whole process actually wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be.

the other thing that we had to do was, I don't remember if I did it on this, I think I did it on a second trip, but the title takes a while to get, and you get your title, like I own it. And I have this very lengthy document that we get in the United States as a, you know, electronic document.

Everything here is in, like, I have my ownership papers they're in the United States now, but [00:23:00] I have this long involved document. It's all in Spanish. I can't read any of it. That's the history of this property. now a lot of people ask, do you just own the house or do you own the land? Do you really own it or is it a lease?

so my answer is yes. I own the house and the dirt it sits on. it's not a lease. I own the house. I have the title. I don't, again, I don't know what it's like in other parts of Mexico especially I know along the beach and coastline. There may be some differences because that's way more desirous areas though.

 I will say that San Miguel is a fairly desirous area for expats to come and live because there is probably 20% of the population is expats. so there's a lot of English speaking people here and a lot of the [00:24:00] people who are Mexican that live here also knows english pretty well because they're dealing with us.

 and it's a high tourist area. Sorry, I'm sweating. It's like hot out here and it's a little humid. Like I said, it was monsoons. That's why it's so green. So it's a little humid. And I'm from Arizona. We don't have humidity. Originally, I'm from Minnesota, so I know what humidity is, and I'm like, woo, look at my hair is even like a little frizzy, a little curly.

'cause it's humid. My hair gets a little funky when it's humid. So anyway, that was our process of buying a property down here in Arizona. I love it. ultimately like I said, I think I mentioned that I'm in the, sorry, I just got bit by a bug. Ooh. Then I, in the process of also getting my permanent residency.

and the reason for that is that ultimately when I retire, I wanna be able to come down here and be here for, you know, several months at a time. Like, I would come in the [00:25:00] summer when it's really hot. Sorry, that bug is really bugging me. When it's really hot in Arizona, I could come down here and even though it's humid, overall, it's very comfortable.

We don't want need to really run the air conditioner or anything. My house stays very comfortable, temperature wise, and so I would come down in like July, August, September when it's really hot triple digits in Arizona. And then I would come back down again, maybe over the winter when it gets a little chilly in the Cottonwood area.

I say chilly 'cause it doesn't really get cold and I wouldn't really need to leave, but I would come down, you know, so I would be here half of the year, different periods of time for two or three, maybe four months at a time. So you wanna have your permanent residency so you don't have to worry about.

Leaving at a certain time or it [00:26:00] missing your tourist visa, you know, and not getting back when you're supposed to. Plus it just makes it possible for me then to buy a car because if you are not a Mexican or don't have permanent residency, you cannot buy a car down here. And I need a vehicle eventually, and that's part of needing, getting the permanent residency.

If I wanted a car now, I would have to buy it in my daughter's name or son-in-law's name, and then I would use it. And people do that all the time. But you know, since I'm able to pretty much Uber where I need to go right now and or they will come pick me up or they come and visit me. My kids. I'm not worried about a vehicle I've rented a couple times.

it's very expensive because you have to buy the Mexican insurance and I do because if you're in a car accident here, you are so screwed if you are anybody, but especially if [00:27:00] you're a American or a tourist because your car insurance doesn't cover down here. Anyway, I'm really getting off the tangent, but those are just things to know about living down here, about moving down here, about even visiting down here, things to know.

But this is where I come, this is kind of my like main vacation. I do go other places. I do go to Minnesota from time to time, but primarily I come here and of course every time I come I have house repairs to do, so now I'm on a mission to try and find faucets. One for the bathroom, maybe one for the kitchen, trying to find a new shower head.

I need to get a toilet seat because the one in the second bathroom or the little bathroom area broke. so I have little projects that I'm working on, and then we're gonna put the new roof over the water tank and condenser area and hopefully resolve some of the water leaks that I have going on in the house.[00:28:00] 

Again, I'm Judith Barnett. I sell homes in Arizona, in the Sedona Verde Valley area. And if you are interested, please feel free to dm, like, and subscribe below and let me know what you think. I look forward to seeing your comments. Have a blessed day.