The following is a guest post from Shari Levine. Shari Levine currently lives and works in Portland Oregon with her husband and son, but longs for the day when she lives most of the time in Manzanillo. Do you have a story about Manzanillo that you would love to share? Then please Write For Manzanillo Blog and share your story with the world!

Shock And Awe In Manzanillo

We didn’t set out to buy property in Manzanillo.  Really.  We were perfectly happy with our vacation digs at La Posada, on Las Brisas and looking forward to other times in other Mexican towns. We’d actually only landed in Manzanillo by a fluke:  having scored two free passes by being willing to be bumped on a prior flight, and pushed up against the calendar of their expiration, my husband Alan took a map of Mexico, closed his eyes and pointed. We had only been  playing our favorite vacation game “what if we lived here” and driving around town, looking at For Sale signs and dreaming.   Then we noticed the sign for Medina/Aguilera Real Estate Company on Audencia Road

Adriana, the wife of the husband and wife team of Medina/Aguilera, was in the office that day.  When we asked to look at her book of listings she handed it over and then said, “I have four properties I can take you out and show you, no obligation.”

“No, no,” we insisted, “we aren’t buyers, don’t waste your time on us, we’re just playing”.

“That’s okay”, Adriana said, “no obligation.

The first two were in a middle class resort (as opposed to a really high end place) and selling for about $67K, USD.  Both needed work, new kitchens and lacked light.  But, they seemed like really good deals. The resort came with a brand new clubhouse overlooking the ocean within a short walk of the condos.  Lovely grounds, lovely pools, this was good information for when someday we were ready to buy.  The third place was right on the water, near Wal-Mart, and was selling for $160K, USD.  The water view was amazing, but the first floor condo was dark.  We figured this was the price for being on the water.

The last place was on Las Brisas, within a .5 mile walk from La Posada.  It was a small, white, four story building with about 35 units, right on the beach.   The place Adriana showed us was on the top floor.  It was selling for 1,110,000 pesos, which was roughly $85K USD in the fall of 2008.  It was a light, bright, freshly painted, two bedroom, two bath condo.  (And, I am here to tell you, that’s one more bathroom than we have at home in Portland).  It overlooked the ocean.  This is important: right outside our living room window was a view of Playa Las Brisas, the same incredible beach we’d fallen in love with earlier in the week.  Still, we were just playing.  Right?

“Come upstairs,” Adriana said, “I want to show you something.”

What she had in store for us was a private, rooftop palapa with a footprint as large as the apartment below, overlooking the ocean.  Private.  Rooftop.  Overlooking the ocean.  I turned to Alan. “I think we need to buy this”, I said, feeling surreal.  He nodded.

Our vacation was over.  We spent the next 24 hours agonizing over whether to make an offer.  We knew about setting up a trust to be held in our names, we knew we could buy it with our equity line, rather than trying to go through the process of getting a loan.  What we didn’t know was the rest of the process, and we were entrusting our hard earned cash to people we had just met.

Still, we could not drop it, every time we tried to say, “let’s forget it, it’s too impulsive, it’s too fast” we sank.  Not getting this little slice of paradise seemed just too sad.

The door to the condo was left unlocked, so we went back a couple of times, spending several hours on the palapa, walking the rooms, looking at the ocean sunset. We made an offer.    Learning on the fast track what it meant to buy property in Mexico, we transferred money for a deposit, signed papers and visited the notary, who we learned in Mexico was akin to having a lawyer looking out for our interests.

Adriana has held our hands every step of the way.  Her caring, capable service, along with her attention to every detail helped us relax about this big purchase in a foreign country.  We were able to return to Manzanillo last February to furnish our place and put in a new cement and tile kitchen. We had a delicious birthday dinner at La Pergola with Adrianna, her husband and several of their friends.  We’ve welcomed our first renters and are booking our place out well into next year.  We just got back from a glorious ten days, taking our teenage son and his friend with us, introducing them to Mexico for the very first time.  They begged to stay on, we wished that we could.

Our long term goal currently vacillates between two options:  split our time between Portland and Manzanillo once we get the boy launched and out and continue working, or just sell it all and move down, into the next phase of our lives.  We’ll figure it out.

On that first trip home, dizzy with adrenaline, I called my son to say we were in LA and would be home soon, so he’d best get to restoring the house to the way it was when I left.  In our family, we come home from trips bearing gifts, so naturally he asked, “What did you get me?”
I took a deep breath, shaking my head in near disbelief.  “Beach front property”, I said.

Local plugs:
La Posada:  http://www.gomanzanillo.com/hotels/posada/
Medina/Aguilera Real Estate:  http://www.medinayaguilera.com/
Notaria Publica No 6, Lic. Jorge Armando Guitan Gudino: notaria6mzl@prodigy.net.mx
La Pergola

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