Events about the town…

Last night there was a wonderful Flamenco performance held at the restaurant Caio Tree (downtown on Morelos), by Karla Moreno and her team. Excellence dancing; felt like we were in some small restaurant in Barcelona! Karla is planning to have something like this every couple of months.

If you missed this performance, the dance group will also be performing (along with other acts) at Miguel Angel Lemus’ “Winter Festival ‘09″ at the Peninsula Plaza. As well, he’s going to be talking about trends and projects in Mexico for 2010. That’s at 8PM.

-51º??? No wonder so many Edmontonians have been buying in PV

This story was featured on Canadian TV this past week.

Granted, there are many Edmontonians who prefer the climate when the mercury plunges. There are also those who are resigned to the fact we live in a winter city, and get annoyed by the perennial shock that accompanies the first deep freeze of the season. But then there are always others who cope with the first blast of the white stuff another way: They choose denial and escape to a warm getaway.

But with a record-breaking dip in temperatures on Saturday night and throughout Sunday, CTV decided to catch up with Edmontonians returning from a sojourn to Puerto Vallarta to see how they’d cope with a blast of cool reality.

Call it a social experiment of a very Albertan stripe if you will. Within Edmonton, overnight temperatures dipped to -36 C, breaking the 1929 record set at -32.8 C. Sunday is also the coldest December 13th in our city’s history: Environment Canada says as of 5 a.m. the temperature at the Edmonton International airport was -46 C, or -59 C with wind chill. The new figure shatters last year’s record, set at -36 C. Outside the gate, Marie Scott was pre-empting shock for her daughter, son-in-law and grandson by getting winter apparel ready.

It’s unlikely the travelers returning from sunny Mexico knew they were returning to the second coldest place on earth, behind only Zhilinda, Siberia, which boasts -48 C weather. ”I think they’re going to want to turn around and go back – I would,” she said with a hearty laugh. ”I’m just trying to warm their jackets because they’re going to freeze just putting them on.” As the diligent grandmother prepares, it happens. The sliding doors open, reuniting the bronzed travelers to their bundled-up loved ones.

First out of the gate is Bob McDonald. The well-tanned man wearing a cotton t-shirt greets our camera with a docile smile as he speaks of two-and-a-half weeks of +35 C weather. At the time it was -51 C outside – a difference of 86 degrees. We break the news and his eyes bug out. ”I am in shock,” he said simply.

Others enter the concourse, most dressed like McDonald. One of the stragglers is Christopher Toutant, wearing not only a t-shirt, but also Bermurda shorts. It appears his return to a cold snap didn’t occur to him until the pilot announced Edmonton’s temperature while they were landing. ”My smile kind of fell of my face and I think my tan fell off along the way,” he said with a chuckle. Still, he dons the sombrero he bought for his brother before heading on his way. Olé!

Well, Sr. Slim has made some pretty good calls up to now…

Billionaire Carlos Slim, who controls Mexico’s biggest wireless and land-line phone companies, said now is a good time to invest in the country because of its low interest rates, a favorable exchange rate, and government policies that promote fiscal stability, as printed in Bloomberg yesterday.

“In this situation, the company that invests gets stronger than the company that does not invest,” Slim, 69, told reporters today at an event in Mexico City. “I don’t have a doubt it’s the moment to invest.” Slim said the central bank’s record-low interest rate was increasing the supply of cheap credit, and that the weaker peso would help exporters. He praised President Felipe Calderon’s nominations this month for new leaders of the central bank and Finance Ministry, and said the government was pursuing sound fiscal policies. “With this change that the government has made, there will be more of a push for growth,” Slim said. “There’s a lot of money at low interest rates.”

Mexico’s central bank has kept the benchmark interest rate at a record low 4.5 percent for four months as policy makers seek to spur growth without fanning inflation. The country’s peso has fallen 16 percent over the past two years against the U.S. dollar, making its exports cheaper for companies in the U.S., which buy 80 percent of Mexico’s goods sent abroad.

Slim said his companies will continue to invest in telecommunications, infrastructure and housing. He said Nov. 17 that they will spend about $7 billion next year, partly on networks in Latin America and real-estate and construction projects in Mexico.

Mexico’s mining industry will benefit from high prices for metals, and it may be a good time to open mines, Slim said. The world’s third-richest man, according to Forbes magazine, Slim controls America Movil SAB, Latin America’s largest wireless phone company, and Telefonos de Mexico SAB, the country’s largest fixed-line phone company, as well as Grupo Financiero Inbursa SA, a Mexican bank, and Grupo Carso SAB, a holding company with industrial and retail properties. He also holds a stake of about 7 percent in New York Times Co. and provided the publisher with a $250 million loan in January.

Riviera Nayarit’s new development launched: Nahui

Yesterday Riviera Nayarit’s newest real estate development, Nahui, was launched with an afternoon lunch for Realtors on the future development site at Destiladeras Beach in Costa Banderas. This 2,100 acre development has begun sales and marketing for their first phase, which will encompass a town village on the beach, sites for timeshare and hotels, condominiums developments and residential lots and homes on the hillside above and behind the town village. Marketing and sales for Nahui will be handled by Wally Lopez and Jonathon Smart of Riviera Partners and Brock Squire of Coldwell Banker -

Nahui Team

La Costa. You’ll find more information about the development at www.nahuivillage.com.

Vallarta Real Estate MLS Statistics for November

1. In November the average condominium sold for just under US$150,000 while the average sales price for year-to-date was $250,000. Compared to last year, the average sales price for a condominium was $338,000; a substantial drop. This drop has had more to do with demand than actual depreciation as Realtors report they have people looking for condominium under $300,000 as the most popular price range.

2. (Recently corrected). The difference between list and sales price was 12.4% (the average here historically has been about 6-8%) year to date (YTD) for both homes and condominiums. For just condos YTD the difference was 9.6% and for homes it was 16%. However, if you took out the Million-Dollar-Plus home sales (and there weren’t many!), this dropped to just a 5.4% difference between list and sales price. The over a million price range has seen substantial price drops.

3. Number of listings at Multi-List Vallarta remains constant at just over 1,000 listings with 101 new listings for the month of November.

4. Top visiting regions in the US to MLSVallarta.com, the public-side website for the Vallarta/Riviera Nayarit website, were California, Texas and Washington. Top visiting Canadian cities were Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton.  The website had 8,688 unique visitors in November with a total of 95,600 for the year. This is down from 10,200 unique visitors in November of 2008. Interesting that visits are down as it has averaged over 10,000 visits throughout the year. Especially when Realtors are reporting an uptick in activity in November, the best in some time.

5. Unfortunately number of real estate sales and sales volume are not reported by all agencies so we do not publish these numbers – they would not be accurate.

Vallarta Realtors attend NAR Convention

Harriet Cochran wrote recently at PVMirror about her recent attendance at the NAR convention:

Recently a group of local realtors in Ampi* attended the NAR or National Association of Realtors convention in San Diego, California. This meeting gave us the opportunity to meet and talk to realtors in the rest of North America. While the NAR is USA based, there is always a large international presence of Canadian and Mexican realtors.

This year we were told that attendance was down from 35,000 participants to 19,000 and the number of vendors offering real-estate related products had 400 booths instead of a normal 800. These figures meant at least a 50% decrease in participation in the single largest real estate event for professionals in the United States.

Those are huge drops in attendance and participation and are telling on the state of the real estate markets in the USA.

All agents, once meeting us and realizing we were from Mexico, asked us how safe it was “back home.”  Fear of health and safety, made it difficult for the agents to even care if we have good news about great values for sale in our market.   The amount of misinformation spread in the media coverage about Mexico, seemed to be the only information the average agent in the conference had in his memory bank.  These agents certainly have been busy with their own problems, and another country’s problems are not a priority to them at this moment.

Until we can overcome the fear of going to Mexico, USA and Canadian agents will not be interested in talking about our real estate market.  They will not appreciate our property prices are not volatile.  They will not care we do not have highly leveraged mortgages with borrowers paying little or no down payments. Our 10% appreciation each year for the past 10 years, with 20% in 2004 and 2005, doesn’t mean anything when fear of the swine flu or drug wars and murder is in one’s head.

Very good points, and what the local real estate industry should be concentrating on in getting the word out on how things really are in Vallarta. The “fear” of going to Mexico is the market’s biggest obstacle to overcome. What makes it most difficult is that, at least for Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit, it is unwarranted. But in this case, perception is reality, and that’s what needs to be dealt with.

For the near future, we need to network and make personal contact as often as possible with agents from the USA and Canada. We need to invest time in writing blogs, sending newsletters, and using social networks. We need to present in as many ways as possible, the other side of the news to our clients and friends of what is happening in Mexican real estate. We want them to appreciate quality of life we have.

Its good to hear a local Realtor saying this. This is what the local real estate association should be concentrating on, trying to overcome the negative reports generated about Mexico. They should begin a campaign involving blogging and social networking efforts to get the real story out, involving testimonials from the many American and Canadian homeowners that truly enjoy their lifestyle in Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit.

Read Harriet’s full report here.

Good news for Mexico?

From the Wall Street Journal:

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s economy, battered by the financial crisis, expanded for the first time in a year during the third quarter, growing 2.93% from the second quarter, official data showed Friday. The expansion followed three consecutive quarters of contraction. In Mexico, the slump put more than a million people out of work at a time when drug-related violence has soared amid a crackdown on drug gangs.

“With this result, the Mexican economy has left behind the worst recession in the last seven decades,” Alfredo Coutiño, director for Latin America at Moody’s Economy.com, wrote to clients. Mexico’s 2.93% expansion translates into an annualized growth rate of roughly 12%. Compared with the third quarter of last year, Mexico’s economic output was down 6.2%, according to the National Statistics Institute. That shows the effects of the slowdown in the U.S. economy, where Mexico sends more than 90% of its exports.

Mexico also has been hurt by lower oil prices and oil production, fewer remittances from workers abroad and a decline in tourism. The outbreak of swine flu in March hurt restaurants and other businesses. The U.S. cash-for-clunkers program fueled demand for cars and helped Mexico’s export-oriented auto industry in the third quarter, when several plants lifted technical work stoppages.

Talk over Thanksgiving dinner with real estate friends, it continues to be very positive – they are busy! And the outlook of existing, returning PV homeowners, with regards to Vallarta/Nayarit, is positive as well. It should be, with the fantastic weather they are all returning to…

Google Maps Real Estate Update

Google has launched another upgrade to their Google Maps that gets closer to looking like a national or international real estate search engine, as noted at SearchEngineLand. This follows with Google’s delivery of “Place” pages; information pages on businesses, landmarks, or, individual properties. If individual properties is the case, is Google looking at providing information on every real estate property, every home or condo in the countries it services? Hmmm… sounds a lot like what NAR just announced at their conference with the Realtor Property Resource (further explained at AgentGenius).

Google provides in the real estate listing place pages property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. They are moving fast on this, with a major upgrade to what they have to offer for information on real estate in July and again earlier this month. A sample page from a home in Seattle shows the pictures and information Google is providing, so far.

Not sure what this means for sites like Trulia, Zillow, or eventually mlsvallarta.com, although I’m sure its going to take some time to make its way down into Mexico. Its all quite interesting, watching this unfold. The way real estate information is marketed and distributed is going through a major transformation.

New Vallarta Condo Price Record set

A Realtor informed me recently that a condominium on the South Shore of the bay sold for $3 million this month. That’s definitely a record high price for a condominium in Puerto Vallarta, by a long shot. Good to hear there’s still that type of money floating around town looking at real estate…

UPDATE: Just informed that the actual sales price was actually $2.5 million. Still a big number for the Vallarta market…

FM-2, FM-3 or FM-T?

If you are not familiar with any of the acronyms above, they stand for different forms of immigration status for foreigners in Mexico. When you enter as a tourist, you are given a three-month visa called an “FM-T” with the “T” standing for Turista or Tourist. I believe it is still possible to get an additional three-month extension for this. If you are going to stay longer than this, if you plan to work, to study, and a long list of other reason you may be here, you would apply for FM-3 status. And after five years of FM-3 you can apply for FM-2 status. After that its “Landed Immigrant” status, which not too many make it to.

I’m not here to write about each of these and what they entail, but more about what is really necessary if you are a homeowner in Mexico. If you come down here for less than three months at at time, and don’t spend the majority or your time here, FM-T status is all you need. This way you avoid all the long line-ups at immigration and don’t have to have your little booklet stamped every time you leave or come back into the country. Even if you stay longer than three months, you can always get a three-month extension.

So why do American or Canadian Vallarta homeowners apply for FM-3 or FM-2?

Well, at one time it was to try and not have to pay capital gains on their Vallarta home. But those days are over. Unless you are really living in Vallarta for the majority of the year, and you can back it up with telephone and utility receipts that it is your principal residence, you are not eligible for capital gain exemption. You will be paying the taxes, just like you would be back in Canada or the USA.

So if you don’t live here more than six months of the year, why hassle with anything other than FM-T? Keep it simple – those line-ups at immigration aren’t worth it!