We understand, it’s frustrating. We’re here to help.
Have you had to put your plans for the La Paz real estate market on hold? Maybe you’ve been watching Mexico Life on HGTV and yelling at your TV, “We should be there right now!” Or maybe you were planning to sell your La Paz area home, and now you can’t travel here to get your property ready to list. If it’s any consolation, you’re in good company. A lot of folks planning a visit to La Paz are in the same boat right now (or not, and that’s the problem!).
Well, take heart, friends. We have some good news! For our clients who already had accepted offers, we have been able to continue closing transactions. How are we able to do that? Using a combination of Power of Attorney (POA), electronic signatures and online wire transfers, we have been able to keep business moving along, safely. You can see our March 2020 Newsletter here for more details.
We’re Upping Our Game
Now, we are taking this opportunity to up our game when it comes to helping our clients purchase or sell their La Paz area home. The next phase of our “quarantine marketing” plans include:
- Hiring a professional photographer to show our listings in their best light.
- Doing “live” property tours using FaceTime and Zoom video technologies for our remote clients who want to view unoccupied properties.
- Using our new drone to capture birds-eye, aerial views of each of our property listings and the surrounding neighborhood, so you can experience views that you wouldn’t get even if you were here in person.
- Creating 360° virtual tours of our listings, so you can walk through the home from the comfort of your couch, (almost) as if you were here.
Drone footage offers a unique, birds-eye view of your listing.
What You Can Do
Those are just a few of the things we are doing to help our clients experience La Paz real estate remotely. All well and good, you say, but you were still really looking forward to coming here in person to walk through that property you’ve had your eye on. Fair enough. Let’s make sure that, when things do open up again, you are prepared and ready to seize the moment when you do find your perfect home! Following are a few things you can do to make the best use of this time to get prepared.
Keep in Touch
Communicate with us often. The more we know about what you are looking for in your dream home, the better we can help you find the perfect property. Even if your search is still in the early stages, we always appreciate anything you can share with us. Tell us about your lifestyle, what you like (and dislike) in a home, your must-haves, and of course your budget.
Research Listings
You can view current properties for sale here. Send us links to any properties that catch your eye, even if they are already sold or in another area. This helps us understand what you are looking for and alert you when we see a new property you may not be aware of yet. And don’t forget to let us know if you want to schedule a virtual video tour of a property you might be interested in seeing.
Get Notified of New Listings
If you haven’t already, sign up for our listing notification service here. You can tailor it to your search criteria, and get automatically notified of any new listings as soon as they come on the market or have had a change in price.
Get Your Documents in Order
It’s never too early to get organized, and make sure you have the documents you will need when you do make an offer. Many times clients will make an offer and ask for a quick close as part of the negotiation, only to discover they are missing one of the key documents needed to even start the closing process. The closing agent will not even begin to process your closing until they have all of the documents from you necessary to complete the closing, so now is the time to get organized!
Here are some of the documents you will need when the time comes to make an offer on a property:
- A valid passport: You must supply valid passports from everyone listed on the fideicomiso (bank trust). Now is the time to check your passports and make sure they will be valid for at least the next year. If it’s due to expire in the next six months, it’s a good idea to renew now, and NOT when you are in the process of closing the transaction.
- Utility bill: Make sure you have a recent bill from the home where you live now that shows your name(s) and address. Utility bills are essential to showing you own and reside at your current property.
- Marriage License: If you are married, make sure you dust off a copy of your marriage license. You will need to submit a copy in order to close on your property.
- Beneficiaries: You must name beneficiaries when you apply for your fideicomiso (bank trust), which is your property ownership document. Start thinking now about who you want to list as your beneficiaries, and make sure they have valid passports, or at least a driver’s license and birth certificate. These are required in order to be listed as beneficiaries.
- Power of Attorney: Getting a POA notarized and apostilled (an official verification step for legal documents signed outside of Mexico) takes at least 2-3 weeks, so now is the time to start that process if you aren’t sure you can be here in person to sign the closing documents.
Create Your Financial Plan
Buying a home in Mexico usually involves a cash purchase, so it’s important to have your finances in order before you make an offer. When you make an offer on an existing property, you will need to send a deposit (usually 10% of the purchase price) by wire transfer within seven days of the offer being accepted. The funds will be held in an escrow account until closing.
If you are planning to build a new home, your payments will be spread out and paid at key milestones throughout the building process. You will still need to put a deposit down, and make sure you have the funds in an account that can be wired to your builder to keep your construction on track.
Before making your offer, make sure these funds are in an account from which you can wire the deposit internationally. Every bank has different requirements, so planning ahead is critical.
Some buyers use a home equity loan on their current property or other financing in order to generate the cash needed to purchase their home in Mexico. If you are planning to use this or some other type of financing, now is the time to get that financing in place, so you can have ready access to the funds when you find your perfect home.
Learn About La Paz
Okay, so getting your documents in order doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. We understand. Luckily, we have a few fun things you can do to get ready for your visit when things do open up again.
- Learn About Neighborhoods: We have several neighborhood pages on our web site. Get a feel for what each one is like and decide where you want to concentrate your search. Start here.
- Read our Blog: Learn what it’s like to move to and live in La Paz by reading the articles on our blog, where we answer a lot of the common questions we get from our clients. Want to know what the food is like? Whether you’ll need to speak Spanish? What’s the healthcare like? It’s all here in our blog.
- Follow us on Facebook: Like our Facebook page, where we post pictures and updates regularly. Even if you can’t be here right now, you can still feel like you’re part of the community!
- Sign up for our newsletter: If you aren’t already getting our newsletter on a regular basis, you can sign up here. We send the latest news updates about La Paz, and feature new properties available for sale.
- Download our guides: We have gathered our favorite restaurant recommendations, Things to Do in La Paz, Visitor’s Guide, and more on our Resources page here.
These are just a few of the steps you can take to be ready when the time comes to make an offer on your Baja dream home. The best way to successfully purchase a property for the best price is to submit a fair offer with few or no contingencies, have the funds ready to wire, and have all of the required documents ready to go so that we can close quickly. Our job is to help you get ready so when the time is right you can make that offer and have it accepted.
As always, if you have any questions about the process or other steps that are required to purchase a property here, we are here to answer your questions. You can contact us here. We hope to see you soon!