Buying
or
Renting Before Buying in Puerto Vallarta
Most people arrive at this question having already decided, and the decision is usually “buy.” It is worth slowing down, because the people who end up happiest here almost all did the same thing first, and it was not buying.
Renting before buying in Puerto Vallarta is what this page recommends, and it is worth knowing that the recommendation comes from somebody who sells property.
Rent the first season. Probably the second one too.
Doug sells property. He will still tell you to rent first, and so will most people who have been doing this a while.
A season in a rental is the only way to find out whether the area you chose is the area you want. It costs you a year, and it saves you from the much more expensive version of the same lesson. It also lets you test the things a viewing cannot show you: what the building is like when it is full, how the walk to the shops feels in April, whether the drive you thought was nothing is actually the thing you resent most by March.
Renting twice in two different parts of the bay is better still. It is the closest thing there is to a controlled experiment, and the people who do it buy with a confidence the rest do not have.
What renting actually looks like here
Seasonal rentals are normally furnished, which makes arriving simple and means what you are really renting is somebody else's taste. Leases run by the month rather than the week, and they are treated as a different thing entirely from a holiday let.
The contract is usually longer than the stay.
This is the one that surprises people. Landlords here generally want a commitment of one to four years, even when you are only in the place for six months of each of those years. It makes good sense from their side. It changes the decision on yours.
You are not choosing where to spend one winter. You are choosing where to spend several, before you have spent one. That is the strongest argument there is for doing the area work first, and for not signing anything in the first fortnight.
Book the next one while you are still in this one.
If you are renting now, the time to secure next season is while you are standing in front of places, not in the autumn from home. The good ones go to the people who are here, or who asked their landlord back in February. Leaving it until you have flown home is how you end up with whatever is left.
How you find it matters more than what you pay for it.
A reputable local company costs something and removes most of the risk. It is the straightforward option and for a lot of people it is the right one. If you would rather search online, the question to ask yourself first is whether you have somebody in the area who can go and stand in the place before any money moves. If the answer is no, solve that before you start looking, not after you have found something you like. A listing is a photograph until a person you trust has seen it.
Do the area work before you sign, not after.
Every part of Banderas Bay is its own place, with its own pace, noise, walkability and crowd. The one that suits you is not necessarily the one that suited whoever recommended it to you. Work out which is yours before you commit to something that runs for years.
Then the ordinary care you would take anywhere:
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Get in writing what is included and what is not. Utilities in particular.
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Ask what the electricity actually runs to in the months you will be there, rather than as an average across the year.
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Photograph everything on the day you arrive. An inventory list protects both sides.
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Understand the deposit terms before any money moves.
Timing matters more than people expect. The middle of high season is the hardest time to find anything at all, and the easiest time to take whatever is left.
And the cost of renting that nobody mentions: your things have nowhere to live.
After Doug and Charlotte's first six month rental, the scramble at the end was storage. They had bought bikes, kitchen things, and all the ordinary stuff you accumulate once you are actually living somewhere rather than visiting. When the season ended, none of it had anywhere to go.
Storage was hard to find back then, and finding somebody with a truck was its own problem. The facility was thick with dust, so every bin had to go inside a large garbage bag to keep the dust and the insects out. They did the whole thing in April, in the heat. It was grueling.
There are considerably more storage places now than there were, so it is an easier problem than it was. It is still a problem, and it is worth knowing about before your first season ends rather than during the last week of it.
It is also the one genuine point in favour of owning that this page will make. When you own, your things stay where you left them.
Why renting before buying in Puerto Vallarta is worth the year it costs
What owning actually asks of you
Owning here is straightforward once it is set up. Getting it set up asks more of you than buying at home does, and the difference is mostly process rather than difficulty.
The part people underestimate is not the purchase. It is the other six months.
Something of yours sits shut up through the hottest, wettest part of the year. Heat and humidity do not wait for you to come back. Things need airing out. Somebody needs to be looking in on it, and somebody needs to be reachable when something goes wrong while you are thousands of kilometres away.
That is not a reason to avoid owning. Plenty of people manage it with very little trouble. It is a reason to answer the question before you sign rather than in year two, because the answer changes which buildings are on your list.
Two ways it gets answered
In a managed building, the building largely answers it for you. Security, management, maintenance, somebody on site when something goes wrong. You close the door in April and come back in November to a place that has been looked after.
For a part-time owner that is not a convenience. It is the difference between owning something here and owning a job here.
That is most of the argument for a building in the Hotel Zone, and for the gated developments with professional management in Marina Vallarta. If the empty half of the year is the thing that worries you most, those are the two parts of the bay where the structure itself answers it.
Everywhere else, it is yours to arrange, and that is entirely normal. Property management here is an ordinary service rather than a luxury. You are hiring somebody to do what the building would otherwise have done, and the thing to get right is who, agreed before you leave rather than after something has already gone wrong.
And the fee is the other half of that trade
The buildings that do all of this charge for it. A development with pools, a gym, security, management and underground parking carries a monthly fee, and that fee is the service rather than an extra sitting on top of it.
It is not a hidden cost. It is the cost, and it is the first thing to ask about in any building that is selling you ease.
Four questions, none of which are in the listing:
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What is the monthly fee?
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Exactly what does it cover, and what does it not?
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What has it done over the last few years?
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What happens if the building needs major work?
The answers decide whether the lock-and-leave promise is real or just the way the building describes itself. Ask them before you are attached to the place rather than after.
Insurance, early rather than late
What a policy does and does not cover in the wet months is the sort of question you want answered before you need the answer. It is worth being specific about it at the same time you are asking about the fee, because the two together are what the empty six months actually cost you.
What closing up actually looks like
Everything above this is structure. Here is what Doug and Charlotte actually do, which is the part no listing and no brochure will tell you.
The vehicles are the hard part, and the car is the thing Charlotte worries about most.
She picked up a friend's car one autumn after it had spent the wet season in underground parking, which everybody involved had assumed would be fine. Dead battery, flat tires, and the inside covered in mould.
So their car gets cleaned and dried out properly before it is left, moisture control goes inside it, and the negative terminal comes off the battery. The scooter battery comes out altogether and spends the summer upstairs in the condo on a trickle charger.
And here is the honest part. Nobody agrees on the right method. They looked it up and asked a lot of people who live here, and got a lot of different answers. What you end up with is your best guess, and whether it worked is something you find out in November.
Inside, it is mostly moisture and anything that will spoil. Clothes go into vacuum-sealed bags. All the food is given away or thrown out, including anything that would expire while they are gone. The batteries come out of the remotes.
And somebody has to be looking in on it. Their cleaning lady, who has become a friend, comes every other week through the summer to clean the place and check on it.
That is the whole answer to the question this section opened with, and it is worth noticing how ordinary it is. Not a company and not a system. One person they trust, going in regularly.
The last thing on the list is not a job. Saying goodbye every spring is bittersweet, and it is easier than it sounds because a good many of their friends live here all year round. Those are the people who will still be here in November, and they are worth having.
Renting it out when you are not in it
Renting it out when you are not in it
Plenty of owners offset costs by renting their place out for part of the year. Before you build that into your thinking, three things decide whether it is available to you:
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Whether the building allows it. Not all do, and the rules are set by the building, not by you.
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What registering as a landlord involves here, and what it obliges you to.
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Whether the income changes your tax position at home as well as here.
None of those are reasons not to do it. They are reasons to find out before you buy rather than after, because the answer can change which buildings are on your list.
Where the numbers come from
There are no prices on this site, and that is deliberate. The bay is not one market. What things cost varies between the two states, between towns fifteen minutes apart, and between one season and the next, and anything written down here would be out of date before it was useful to you.
Doug tracked the rental and the sale side of each area before he and Charlotte chose where to live, and he tracks them now because it is his job. When you are close enough to a decision to want real figures, ask him. You will get current ones, for the specific areas you are considering, with the reasoning attached.
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Ask Doug about a specific area
The honest summary
Rent first. Rent in the area you think you want, and buy when you have stopped guessing. If that costs a sale this year but gets you the right place in three, that is the trade Doug and Charlotte would make.