La Lancha Beach Reopened to the Public

Punta Mita

A Nayarit beach in Punta de Mita, and that has long been a favorite surf break for locals and tourists, was closed to the public in 2016 but has now been reopened by the federal government. The Secretariat of the Environment (Semarnat) revoked a concession for La Lancha beach to a real estate consortium, reopening it to the public.


Semarnat said it would file a complaint against Mariana Boy Tamborrell, then head of Zofemat and currently in charge of Mexico City’s environmental protection agency. The federal department claims that the privatization of La Lancha beach was illegal. Environmentalists removed the company’s gate to the beach on Friday and invited people to visit once again.


The current director of Zofemat, Rodrigo Hernández Aguilar, said the Mexican government is committed to opening all of the country’s beaches up to the general public. His department will continue inspecting concessions to verify that they comply with regulations.“This is an achievement for the people of Nayarit, considering that since 2016 they have denounced the closing of the beach on the part of the Cantiles de Mita, with the authorization of the Semarnat at the time, manipulating the laws for the company’s convenience,” he said.


In order to deliver on President López Obrador’s campaign promise to open up the country’s beaches, federal Environmental Secretary Víctor Manuel Toledo has asked people to keep in mind that Mexico’s coastal communities have enjoyed the beaches for hundreds of years.

Having lived in the Banderas Bay region for more than 30 years, I watched as slowly more and more beach accesses (“Ventanas del Mar”), were closed off to the public. Developers have to realize that taking away such access can work against them, for if people can’t get to the beach they’ll stop coming to the destination. Hopefully next in line will be access at Destiladeras Beach, which for years was a favorite for many locals and tourists, but has been fenced off for a number of years now, even though no development has taken place there.

Courtesy of Mexico News Daily

New Changes and Updates to MLSVallarta

We’ve completely rebuilt MLSVallarta on WordPress, which now allows us to provide a faster, more flexible and much more reliable service for real estate agencies, agents, developers and buyers and sellers of real estate in and around Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit.

  • Completely upgraded search function including a Map View that incorporates a regional map with short descriptions and, exclusive to MLSVallarta, a detailed directory of new real estate development currently under construction. 
  • All new and outstanding aerial photography with updated descriptions of all the popular real estate regions and neighborhood in and around Banderas Bay.
  • Improved “Favorites” function where visitors can save properties they are interested in and print out reports and information sheets regarding these properties.
  • Updated directory of real estate professionals such as real estate agents, lawyers, notaries and mortgage brokers.
  • Extensive directories of real estate agencies and developments with detailed descriptions of their services.
  • Extensive library of articles about buying and selling real estate in Puerto Vallarta.

Vallarta Airport Sets Record and PV Wins an Award

Vallarta North Real Estate

The Puerto Vallarta International Airport is in the process of setting a record for passenger arrivals, on target to see over 5 million passengers this year, according to Saúl Ernest Sanabria Gibert, the airport director. Of these, 70% are foreign, and the increase over 2018 will be 5%, much higher than Mexico’s average of between 3 and 4%.

The airport is currently serviced by more than 50 destinations. The director also announced there are plans to remodel the current terminal in the near future and as well, construct another terminal which will be for both international and domestic flights.

Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit also jointly won Apple Vacation’s “Crystal Apple Award” for the Best Destination of the Year for 2019, selected by thousands of Apple Vacations customers and who filled out their “Apple Vacations” survey.

2019 Real Estate Tourism Summit

AMPI (Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals), the Real Estate Association of Mexico, has announced that a 2019 Real Estate Tourism Summit will be held in Acapulco at the Mundo Imperial Expo from August 28 to 30th. 

In a press conference, Pablo Vásquez Rodríguez, the national president of the AMPI, said that this forum has as its main objective to reflect on the changes and challenges that the real estate sector is facing in technological and sustainable matters, with the purpose of strengthening Mexican destinations and make them more attractive to investors. He explained further that the intention of this forum is to strengthen a “niche” market that could represent a huge income potential for the country.

According to Softec, 721 thousand vacation properties are purchased in the United States with a market value of 144 billion dollars, and Mexico has only a 0.3% share of this market. AMPI’s goal is to see this increase to at least 1% in the near future.

Government Auction for Confiscated Real Estate Properties

The Mexican government held an auction on June 23rd for 27 real estate properties that had been confiscated by the government, primarily properties previously held by narco-trafficers. 

The 27 parcels were located in 11 states, while 10 were located in México state alone. All were confiscated by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) or federal courts. The total starting price of the properties is about 176.5 million pesos (US $9.2 million). One property was a house in Cancún (shown in picture) valued at 9.7 million pesos. Another property was part of the Centenario Ranch in Jilotepec, México state, which was confiscated after police found a methamphetamine laboratory there in 2011.

One can’t help but think that people would be a little hesitant to participate in such an auction. For at some point in time the previous owner will get out of jail and just might want the property back, no matter what you, or the may government have to say about the matter. They tend to play by their own rules, as we are all too aware.

Previously reported in the Mexico Daily News.

Another Kind of “Surge” at the Border

A recent report by ABC News discusses a different type of “surge” at the border, one that may not be as visible, but it’s been happening over the last few years. They discuss the record number of U.S. citizens who are moving to Mexico to retire. “This reverse migration trend is very real, and it’s booming with more than one million American citizens estimated to be living in Mexico. Cost of living and climate are listed as the top two reasons for this migration.”

Jamie and Paige Lopez are ex-pats who sold their home in Arizona and settled in the Rosarito Beach area.

“We live in a gated community. We bought a house that has three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and an ocean view,” said Lopez. Living on their retirement income, many couples who have made this move know they could never afford this lifestyle in the United States.

Many of the couples they spoke to said that in the U.S. they were on the verge of poverty, where as in Mexico they are living comfortably. The cost of living is the biggest draw for retirees. According to a recent report by the Stanford Center on Longevity, U.S. baby boomers hold less wealth, are deeper in debt, and will face higher expenses than retirees a decade older than them.

These recommendations were given by many of the people they talked to:

  • Just like anywhere else in the world, watch out for travel, moving, and property scams.  Most of the scams appear to be no different than scams in the United States. For instance, don’t fall for a smooth-talking salesperson and buy or rent a property without going to see it in person first. 
  • Live there for a couple of months, rent a place, and see if the lifestyle is really for you before you start shelling out all of that cash.
  • Make sure you find out if a Homeowners Association runs the property and find out what the rules are, so there are no surprises.
  • Make sure the title of the property has no liens attached to it.
  • Make sure you consult with an attorney or real estate expert for advice and suggestions before making any big moves.

You can read the full story here. 

Vallarta First Quarter Sales down Compared to 2018

Real estate sales in the Puerto Vallarta/Riviera Nayarit for the first quarter of 2019 are so far been reporting down about 30% compared to the first quarter of 2018. Overall volume is down 22%, showing that prices are up, but overall numbers of sales is down.

The reasoning for this could very well be because of the economic downturn experienced in December of last year. Realtors reports that many prospective purchasers were holding off moving forward with purchasing until the saw what the markets were going to do. That may have been enough to delay sales in the first quarter, moving them up into the 2nd quarter of this year. We’ll have to wait and see for that, however realtors have reports that activity did increase in January as the markets returned back up to previous highs.

A second reason could be the lag in reporting – sales that may have been taking place at the end of the month may still not have been reported into the system. To be most accurate, it is best to review the statistics again a month later, or at the end of April, as the numbers will most likely increase.

And a third reason is that the first quarter of 2018 was an exceptional year, probably one of the best the regions has ever seen. It may be that it is difficult for the market to keep up those types of numbers and the market is returning to more normalized conditions.

Brock Squire of Coldwell Banker La Costa seems to agree. “There was definitely a lag effect from the beginning of November that was attributable to the mid-terms in the U.S., which was further exasperated with the uncertainty surrounding the Fed, and finally the government shut-down. Since mid/end of January, however, sales and volume have definitely rebounded, which will be seen in the numbers over the next 60 days or so.”

Friendliest Country for Expats? Mexico!

The expat network Internations does a survey each year amongst its members, ranking countries on a number of criteria, one of which is “Finding Friends and Friendliness.” Coming in first place in this year, up one position from last year, is Mexico.

They report, “almost all expats in Mexico (94%) rate the general friendliness of the local population positively, and more than half (56%) believe that attitudes towards foreign residents are very friendly. A large majority feel at home in the Mexican culture (85%), find it is easy to settle down there (85%), and have few problems getting used to local customs (83%). More than half (55%) do not struggle to live in Mexico without speaking Spanish, and just under two-thirds (66%) consider learning the language simple.”

Other countries found to be friendly were Bahrain, Serbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Uganda, Colombia, Taiwan, Israel, and Portugal. Countries found to be the least friendly, or hardest to make friends, at the bottom of the list were Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Norway, Finland, Austria, and Estonia.

You can see the full results here. Internations was founded in 2007 and currently has 3.5 million members in 420 cities worldwide.

Puerto Vallarta Condo Stats for 2018

The most popular type of real estate in Puerto Vallarta continues to be the condominium, accounting for 75% of the sales in 2018, a percentage in line with previous years. The condominium makes a lot of sense for second-home buyers who are looking for something that is easy to secure, low in maintenance, and they can leave for long periods of time. The views they can provide, especially from tower projects, can be impressive.

We decided to take a closer look at condominiums with regards to the number of bedrooms they have, price and size. Rather than studying the whole market we narrowed it down to just the downtown, hotel zone and the south shore regions, combining the three together, which comprises about 50% of the market and is a good representation of the “middle” of the market.

Price

The pie chart below shows four categories for what the average sales prices were for condominiums. $100,000-$250,000 and $250,000-$500,000 are roughly the same size with about 40% of the all sales. Combined they make up 80% of the market, leaving little for those above $500,000 (12%) or below $100,000 (6%).

The average size of a condominium under $100,000 was 670 f2, 1020 f2 for a condominium between $100,000-$250,000, 1470 f2 for condominiums priced between $250,000-$500,000 and 2285 f2 for condos over $500,000.

Type

When considering the number of bedrooms for this region, the two-bedroom, the traditional favorite, makes up for half of all sales. Next would be the one-bedroom unit, with just 6% for studio units and 10% for unit with three or more bedrooms.

A studio unit’s average size was 620 f2 and average price was $130,000. For one-bedroom units it was 865 f2 and $185,000 respectively. For two-bedrooms 1465 f2 and $320,000 and for a three-bedroom the average size was 2670 f2 and average price was $565,000.

Size

When we consider the size of the units we find that just over a third of all units sold were under 1,000 f2. Another third were between 1,000-1,500 f2, leaving remaining third for units over 1,500 f2.

Condos from under 1000 f2 up to 2000 f2 averaged about the same price with regards to cost per square foot or meter: $225 f2 ($2,400 m2). Condominiums over 2000 f2 in size averaged $190 f2 ($2,045 m2).

Conclusions

The most popular condo is a two-bedroom unit that accounts for 50% of all condos sold in 2018. Over 88% of condo sales were for units priced under $500,000, with only 12% for condos sold above that. And 2/3rds of all condos sold last year were under 1,500 f2 in size, half of those were under 1,000 f2.

Alamar Launches New Tower – Delta IV

Grupo de Real del Mar and Tierra y Armonía recently held a ground breaking event for their latest residential tower, Delta IV, and has already sold its first unit as it roles out its new pre-sale program. Delta IV follows Towers I & II which are 100% sold out, and Delta III which is now under construction and is 60% sold out.

Alamar is situated in Nayarit, 30 minutes north of the international airport, in the village of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. Nestled into the hillside, it features panoramic views of Banderas Bay. It also features a large beach club and restaurant, integrating the jungle with the sea. Alamar has created a unique, innovative development that offers a healthy lifestyle in a very exclusive environment.

For more information, visit Alamar’s description page with photos and available inventory.