Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Real Estate Madness in Puerto Vallarta

If you’re looking for a cheap place to live in a foreign country, I can say with certainty now that Puerto Vallarta is not where you want to go. I am down here on an assignment to review hotels, but can’t help but noticing there’s a construction crane around every corner, mostly building new condos that are being sold for pre-construction prices of $350,000 and up. Yes, you read that right–ads will say “Starting at $350,000.”

That’s just for the condos. Routinely there are houses for sale for over a million dollars–some not even at the beach–and I’ve heard rumors that a Punta Mita home lot near the Four Seasons just went for six million dollars. Six million for a piece of residential land in Mexico. A (huge) beachfront villa is for sale for $7.5 million.
The scary thing is, both will probably end up being a good investment. There are so many near-retirement buyers pouring in here from the overheated California and Arizona markets that these prices still look like a bargain to them. They get custom construction, nice tile work, more space, and a killer view. So what if it’s triple the price of places up the coast a ways and ten times the prices of Mexican places on the other coast? Most people are too lazy to look further afield, so the prices will continue to skyrocket. “Reservations now being accepted” says one ad for condos that haven’t even broken ground yet.

The big worry among locals and long-time residents is that the already snarled traffic is going to get totally out of hand and that the infrastructure will buckle under the pressure. Will this become another Costa del Sol in Spain? There are a lot of chips on the table hoping not, but it could get ugly.