Update! Our Experience Buying a House in Puerto Vallarta Mexico

stairs everything was locked up and I'm looking on the floor and there's this big piece of poop hello my name is Stefan and I'm ADA and welcome to living simply in Mexico before we get going today if you haven't already make sure that you like and subscribe to our Channel and today's video is gonna be about basically an update on our first video of buying a house in Puerto Vallarta it's so I'm gonna go over after how long's it been oh it's 2017 we're almost done two years and we actually found this place but you know a little bit of shy of that yeah so what we'll do is we'll go through what we've learned through the process and what our experience of thing hopefully yeah you'll get some more nuggets information out of that so and we appreciate all the comments by the way a lot of you put comments in about looking to do the same thing and just interested in to what we're doing and so thank you so much for that so I guess we can get started here huh yeah so first of all I want to start by saying we have zero regrets on having bought this house I mean it was a little crazy we knew we wanted to buy one like I said it wasn't necessarily in we didn't know we're gonna do it this quickly we are glad that we did and we did want to just really emphasize the fact that you know the market down here does fluctuate you know for the better and for the worse right now the market has been kind of on the upswing you know I did check some mls prices there are some one bedroom and bath condos that go to 70 to 80 thousand dollar price range there is one place I think it's combo a casa Humble Bundle that's in sympathy December a that's out there that shows on HDTV and I think they're they're looking at 180 something 185 they're about but that's that's a three-story house much different than the place we had because that's actually trying to ready to go one thing to think about and we get a lot of questions on this and I think this is the the question of turnkey versus doing something where it's a fixer-upper because I mean that's a little scary a it's scary the prospect of buying property in a foreign country being the prospect of actually renovating it but I think what's important is you have I think it's the expectation factor and so for us once again we wanted simple we want a rustic traditional style we weren't looking for US standards we had renovated a bathroom in our home in the Bay Area and it cost actually more than it would cost to renovate this entire house and so you know and it was a lot less stressful to renovate this house that was that bathroom it's not like we came down here it's like oh we're gonna buy a property today let's just do it on a whim although we kind of joke it's kind of like those HGTV shows you know we did have a thinking process and one of those processes were we when we looked at the place we got to meet the neighbor next door and we also got to know how much he spent on on construction and we thought that this was a great deal so we knew our neighbors we know how much it cost we knew sort of what the price range was for the house and then we met our other neighbor and he had a really good experience with a contractor and so I'm going with them and since then it's been great so there was a lot of thought involved there is risks but we mitigated that we're just getting to know people and understanding what the value was and then we decided given the price point it was risk we were willing to take and it's been a really good one it's changed our lives in short good luck takes a lot of planning so in a couple things on that so do do look at that MLS by Arctic comm that's a place and your search on I think if Tour de biotic north and so that's north of the Rio cuale and that has like El Cerro al central areas to put in your summary area and that those are the places that you'd find places like ours north of the video quality but there are some fabulous places that are sounded like the Emilio yeah romantic songs anything correct all right so let's talk a little bit about maintenance and some some things that we've actually had little fun moving over time during the last two years the first thing to cover is just some of the wear and tear you get in this tropical environment quarterback there's really several things that you need to watch out one is the heats of course and most importantly less humidity if you'll notice when you come down here there's not a whole lot of those structures that's because of the weather plus of some so monitor - I can talk about that a bit but then there's a humidity in that gets and everything so there's no dry wall without a lot of laminate countertop it's usually a pretty hard way that's one thing a lot of Steel and country and so that's what you'll see here and I thought that's what we experienced and the other thing is this wall here when we first came here it was seeping water because this is against us we're on the bottom floor a house and kitchen area and this was pretty nasty so what we decided to do is if you want to be very specific to can and actually for this wall entire world and so we actually have kind of a wall it's gunpowder but it's a little bit random but it really does do have a different pattern in it and how do you want this is what we want and they did exactly what we asked our kitchen we originally had it done works but that being said we wanted to have something that was specifically we're looking for it just just specify that with a contractor otherwise like I said we let them do what they wore five boxes of 90 yeah 99 tile for the $100 yeah yeah I was actually the prices things are all hand-painted yeah about couple hundred bucks to actually have them do the wall so yeah so yeah so it really wasn't expensive and yes it took care of that seeking problem so it's good to go but there isn't there's another area stairs on the fire stairwell that hassle with that eating water will probably end up doing the same sort of thing maybe in different to powder a little less crazy but for this so yeah and then you have a couple things that are so tile concrete steel everything is painted and the paint does fall off in certain places you just paint again or or you know I like to do stuff I'm not any person at home but here it's it's it's like it's like you know to have someone just come in and do touch-ups it just makes a lot of sense and they give someone some work other things yeah just general maintenance propane there's no natural gas because pipe than you actually have to you know have your tank and could feel critically ours we've got a hot tub which does take up a lot of gas but pretty pretty simple I think it was 3/4 yeah yeah and then outside of that you know just little things like if you buy more complex things like a hot tub it's gonna break down our hot tub needs a little bit work on today anything electronic is gonna be a little harder down here you know I have some connections for my my MacBook and they corroded I literally put them put them in a closet they corroded from one trip together and our wireless thing what went down there today because there was a slow power outage and they came back a little a little plug in so they have to get that thing so there's things like that that you know it just things to consider here trash you know we have that we're up 65 steps we have to haul our trash down most we try to minimize the amount of trash as possible well I think one thing that you there are places outside we've got little gathering area if somebody puts down a piece of trash that all assenting everybody else does and so we try to click that keep that as clean as possible to set expectations and make sure to take the track down to the trash area and there's no trash bins here people just POW it up and then the guys come off the truck and you load it on the truck oh yeah yes they're all kind of the first one that got me where the termites because everybody when we first got the place we bought a bunch of wood furniture they go oh you know about the termites don't you know so in the springtime they swarm in so what they'll do is there's a type of termite that will come and they'll see them in big swarms if you have lights on in your house they'll swarm at your house and if you have your windows open everything will come in their house and then we'll look you know to to establish them so what we did and then we have a whole video on this vinyl wood furniture we've got some really cheap furniture and it's possible just really rustic and not worried about that but they do is they put oil but if you like this yeah so on the termites the key thing is is that dust don't keep your lights on and windows oh and just watch that closely we've had our neighbors of enter - they're actually not that big a deal they usually attack one thing I'm not we are going to get into houses are made out of wood here sleep act like a date or something and then you'll see like a table you know people come back yeah they had a few people in the rain unlikely and so I do know the port of art is theirs from what I've heard as their Sprague mosquitos around the area but you know compared to like the Midwest I grew up in the US with nothing like that well basically kinda like Patagonia where just one of the scales just I ran one here they're usually my other things because they come in different seasons like one one month we had a bunch of beetles and they're attracted by the lights outside and they're just these heart beetles and I never see want to live but we get up in the morning with a bunch of dead people laying outside just clean about and then the only thing that is I would say consistent it's just these really weird mods that they have like the sand case it looks almost like a sunflower seed and I didn't know what they were I thought they were just things that were starting on the wall I kept knocking down that I see that the next day and evidently his worms in these cases would crawl up the wall and what they eat is spider webs and so we do get those periodically we just knock them off clean them up it's just a random as weirdest thing I've ever seen [Music] and there are a lot of geckos gecko is everywhere they're almost like mini pets I like geckos are awesome but yeah anything that you know you will like you you open up like a picture frame rather than the bath you look at your frame won't go outside and you got a 50/50 chance of the get go back there or just like crawl away they're really afraid of you but there are cats there's a couple inside our house I woke up one day we went downstairs everything was locked up I'm looking on the floor and there's this big piece and it didn't I thought cat super small this was like almost like sighs I'm thinking how did this get in here this place is locked up and yeah definitely as a cat we've had a couple cats come to our house we have the windows open yeah they do yeah so that's it so holy didn't scare anybody but it just want to give you a reality of it and nothing you know there's no cool we have no coverage is around here there's a couple you see running around outside but nothing here mosquitoes aren't bad to get those are awesome the cats are cats and yeah that's it that all right so one little side note on the whole bugs and storage and humidity is how we keep things here like in the in the US and other places we like to have things nice and stored but here just to keep things open and airy to see actually what's in there the key we just bought out of this is Costco or sample but basically this still container where we have all of our food that that we've laid out here that way we know that it's getting there it's nothing molding musty and we also see if there's got any buggies in it because sometimes if you leave something open you know that that can be a problem getting a little critter so so our standard of course party is the public's Costco's which which actually makes baggage a storage container is exactly oh yeah so we store a lot of a lot of things that were just like we want to make extra sure no bookies get into yeah exactly and we leave our fridge on when we're not here I talked to her fridge guy once he said don't keep on turning an oven off just primarily because it'll try and expand and your fish will go out so we bought this use of courage and one of the things that we do is for anything that we've got open that we think that we want to protect we actually put like pasta and things except in the fridge when we go because they can't put it and actually we'll see so portal carry just put some magnets on it magnets for the fridge and of course you're talking about in an area we wanted to watch our water video this is our key that works tremendously well we don't buy water types or anything we use our art here we filter that and that's what we use everything to drink it's worked out really well we've done that for that's been a really good lifesaver not having to do things we also have a SodaStream we're trying to figure out where you find so discrete bottles you're quite a part that we have to be mailed in so we don't have to buy enough plastic water bottles anymore or have to exchange it'll go up 65 stairs with you know a huge huge it was a five-gallon jug of water all right so talking a little bit more about items a one thing where we didn't mention her aunts there are ants every so often and you know they may pick up a dead bug and walk away with it at any point in time and pretty amazing actually to watch other items that that I have noticed here is I do try to work from here you know I have a normal job in the United States and when I do try to work from here sometimes and noises it can be something when you're living in a Mexican town you hear so many different things that I'm not used to in the States I didn't maybe they can make roosters in the background roosters in the back of Maine's just families living life but then you've got you've got a train whistle that that they'll come by with cooked corn and they'll literally have this train whistle at night the water guy will yell the people paying guys a little music the propane oh my god I think that's the most annoying jingle these propane trucks like house it's like the Sun do-do-do-do weird thing and you hear you hear that stuff like throughout the day which is fine but like I said if you're trying to be on important conference call you might want to yeah you know it's it's truly part of the experience you've got to accept it because you know that's that's what life is like down here and you just need to accommodate it but but there's it is pretty funny that the noises that you hear at random times during the day and oh by the way New Year's Eve I think they started at about 3:00 in the morning on the earth on New Year's Eve and they went like all day and all night just block parties it's just a lot of fun [Music] but you just got to be gotta be prepared for that if you want to live downtown in Portland yeah and there's definitely quieter areas I mean like I said there's there's there's something for everybody depending on where you want to be and like I said I think going back to just our overall experience of just really enjoying our life here is the fact that we have neighbors and friends that are both you know people who are from the United States from Canada but also just our local neighbors and you know the other day we had a really fun gathering and we ended up one of our neighbors he plays guitar one of the little and a few of the little local restaurants here and so he came up and we had we ordered pizza to deliver they deliver up these stairs and and we hung out and they played music yeah yeah his name is trasero he's a he's a cover artist basically and he'll play around town and maybe at the end of this we'll put some put some of this music at the end but well put his link down to his his I think that Instagram if he has one on the end of it and we've got so many people that have such really great interesting and unique experiences that we've met since we've been here well what we'll do a whole new videos on on everybody right it is a great community so anyways hope you enjoyed this and we'll go we'll see you next time on our next living simply in Mexico so remember to Like and subscribe yes and send us questions we or comments we love when we read them we get excited about them because this is not about building this massive audience this is about engaging everybody and love to hear from people who are excited about thinking about moving down [Music] you

Channel: Living Simply in Mexico

Views: 53,210

Rating: 4.8837838 out of 5

Keywords: Puerto Vallarta, Real Estate, Mexico, Buying a House, HGTV, Mexico Life, House Hunters International, Vacation Home, Puerto Vallarta Mexico, vlog

Id: u8YRSrDGk74

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019