How to Find an Apartment in Mexico (Both Long and Short Term)

good afternoon so today we're gonna chat all about how to find apartments in mexico it's been one of the most asked questions since i started doing these series of videos here in baja california um i have been living in mexico for almost five years now mostly in mexico city but since the pandemic we have been moving around a lot more and basing ourselves for one to two months in different places and finding month-to-month rentals and as i mentioned in some previous videos airbnb started increasing their fees and all that sort of stuff so we have been looking in a lot of other places for these month-to-month rentals to avoid super high fees and also just to find some some other locations and keep practicing our spanish so whether you're looking for a month to month rentals or you're looking for year-long leases or longer empty unfurnished apartments or furnished apartments with all of the utilities included we'll cover all the bases in this video so yeah let's get started i did want to preface this video with some information about renting longer term in mexico this is definitely something that you'll need to think about if you're going to be moving here moving your furniture setting up rent and and the utilities and all that sort of stuff in another city in mexico this is particularly uh required in a lot of places in mexico city but i've heard about it happening in keretaro oaxaca and guadalajara and it's called afiyador or in mexico city they call it anaval but it's basically a guarantor and in mexico in order to rent long term to sign a lease a lot of landlords require that you have this guarantor this feature a fiat in mexico has to own property in the state that you're trying to rent in so if you're trying to rent in queretaro that person has to own property in queretaro not in mexico city or in another part of the country the other way that you can have a fiador is if for instance you're coming to the country with a business someone's hired you from from another part of the world that you've been living and you're now moving to mexico to work for that company that company can be a fiat because obviously it has value uh the same as a property has value so instead of using the property as a sort of guarantee you're using the the collateral of the business as collateral so that's how a lot of people who move over and don't know anyone tend to get around it in general i believe it's possible to pay basically like half your year's rent up front in order to avoid having to use a naval but in a lot of instances you simply have to find someone who can help you there are people you can hire to be a raval i believe but again that's obviously going to cost you more money but it's something to to know about something to be aware of as you uh start looking for long-term rent in the bigger cities it's something that you're gonna have to something you're gonna have to deal with right so let's switch over to the computer to talk about some of the different ways that you can look for apartments before arriving in mexico if you're thinking about trying to book a place so that when you get here you can move straight in and these are a few of the ways that you can try to do that another thing to keep in mind uh so many things to keep in mind is that a lot of ren in my experience tends to be in cash this is still very much a cash country um if you're not going through something like airbnb or vrbo then you will likely come take some cash out of an atm and pay your landlord in cash that's just the way that it is so let's head to the computer so the first place i like to go in general just to scope out prices but also to see availability and to find really good deals is facebook marketplace to find the marketplace just go to your main facebook feed and then click on the little building at the top that looks like a store if you hover your mouse over it you'll see it says marketplace it's worth remembering that the prices are usually listed in pesos um since we're searching in mexico but it's always best to double check in case it's showing up in pesos for me because i'm in mexico back when i was living in mexico city i used to use facebook marketplace to buy and sell furniture and kitchen appliances but i had no idea until i moved here to baja how popular it was for landlords to list their apartments here we have found tons of leads for la paz on marketplace and in the end we found our current apartment here in san jose through facebook marketplace as well it can be hit or miss and you have to be ready to move pretty quickly so it's not the sort of place to come if you're trying to book something for the month ahead of time these are cash only deals and if you aren't ready to look at the apartment or put down a down payment then don't bother contacting people at the minute however if you're not currently in mexico it's a good place to start to get an idea of prices and once you're ready and you're here in mexico to be able to move pretty quickly on the apartments that are here while you're already on facebook it's also really worth joining any facebook groups that relate directly to the place you want to live for instance if you want to find rentals in toro santos you should join the group toro santos news feed in la paz be sure to join loco la paz expats if you're not sure what the name of the local group is it's usually pretty simple to find by typing expats and the name of the place in order to find the group [Music] you can also just type the name of the city or town and then in the left hand column you can click groups and you'll be able to browse all of the groups relating to that location every once in a while you'll get lucky and find a group that is specifically focused on rentals in that region of the country that is an absolute gold mine [Music] the next place that i only discovered recently that is a little bit more english speaker friendly is craigslist choose which region you're looking to rent in and then simply head to the rental section of the website craigslist can be a little bit confusing because sometimes the prices are listed in pesos and sometimes they're listed in dollars sometimes the price that's listed isn't even the real price it's just to get your attention so always be sure to ask the other problem i found with craigslist is that you can't exactly narrow down the search as much as you can in facebook marketplace so you think you've found a great gem in cabo but actually it's in toro santos however craigslist is a great place to find longer term rentals monthly vacation rentals and most valuable of all property managers it was only through craigslist that i realized the power of finding local property managers around mexico it's how i found some really great property managers in puerto vallarta as well as in toro santos and around cabo if you can't find them on craigslist you can simply use google and search property managers in puerto vallarta or wherever it is you're looking to rent this is the best option if you're looking for month-to-month rentals that are furnished and include all of your utilities most real estate offices are also property managers so if you aren't having any luck finding specifically property managers search for real estate agents in those locations and they can usually help you find what you're looking for within the budget just keep in mind that going this route where you have a middleman who's likely managing foreign owned properties means that these will cost more than if you were speaking directly to mexican landlords in spanish that being said you also get what you pay for and if you want higher-end places without having to do a ton of the legwork or you don't have a great grasp on the spanish language then it's usually worth the money to go this way so the final tip that i have for finding an apartment requires you to get out and about in the streets this is where you really find the best deals like wandering around the neighborhood in the town or city that you want to live in and looking for for rent signs is the number one way to find the best price places and to be able to really see exactly where your your new home is going to be exactly where what it looks like inside and outside before agreeing to any sort of thing on the internet uh but in general it's it's just the best way to find the best deals uh so i'll show you a little bit about what to look out for you will of course have to speak a little bit of spanish because these are all you know for rent by by owners these are also how you find um for sale signs too but in general this is the way that i have almost always found an apartment i've used this method in mexico city oaxaca puerto vallarta our monthly place there for the most part these are places that are trying to rent it out for year-long leases or at least six month leases um but you can find gems and in my experience even if that person that you're trying that you're contacting whose phone number you got doesn't have a place the amount of times that i've been like messaging someone on whatsapp saying this is what i'm looking for i saw your sign and then i'm added to like another whatsapp group with someone's brother or auntie or uh something like that and then i'm like connected to someone who has what i'm looking for it happens so often because people help each other like if someone in their family has rentals that are better for for vacations or for month-to-month places that are already furnished they're gonna hook you up with that because it helps their friends and family um so yeah regardless of the fact that maybe this place is renting uh places that are completely unfurnished and you have to set up your own utilities you could contact those people and and maybe they can put you in touch with people they know that that's especially common maybe not on buildings like this that are big rentals but on smaller rentals that have people have them on their houses and stuff that's always something you want to look out for uh yeah just message people on whatsapp get chatting and uh that is really my number one tip for for finding great priced places around mexico and and places that you really want to be in so yeah if you have managed to make it all the way to the end of this video i hope you found all these tips helpful if you have other questions about finding apartments specifically in a certain place um in mexico or more general questions about what i've talked about in this video please let me know in the comments below i'll do my best to answer them for you uh if you enjoyed this video you found it helpful please give it a thumbs up it really supports my channel and i will see you next time bye

Channel: Laura Bronner

Views: 76,157

Keywords: travel, how to find an apartment in mexico, how to find a rental in mexico, renting in mexico, renting an apartment in mexico, how to rent an apartment in mexico, finding an apartment in mexico, eternal expat

Id: mCmAMeg-JsI

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021