Hola, amigos! Our apologies for being MIA recently. We’ve got back to traveling for work, have been making local friends and exploring, and spending quality time with family vacationing in town recently. Oh… and most importantly…. we bought a house!
It is hard to believe almost two years ago, we hit the road from Colorado to give full-time life south of the border a go. We started this blog, at the time titled “There & Back Again”, as a play on the plan to eventually come back to Denver to settle down after our Baja adventures.
With no hard end date in mind for our time of living in paradise, we figured by now we’d have a date in the calendar to be heading back. Granted, the global pandemic left us feeling like we missed out on time to explore, but we assumed we would have gotten our fix of ‘Mexico life’ by now.
Fast-forward the past two years and the truth is: we cannot get enough of this beautiful, magical, and friendly place. The exploring is endless and we still feel like we’re just getting started. While we still plan to put roots down in Colorado, considering the housing market bubble in Denver (and everywhere else) is exploding, we decided to explore the opportunity of buying in Cabo first.
FINDING VALIDATION ✅
As our time in Baja has passed, we’ve met more and more like-minded people who have uprooted their lives and moved down here for a new pace of life. With everything that’s happened in the world recently, the Cabo real estate market is on fire. January and February 2021 were the best months in Los Cabos real estate history, driven by climate migrators and a new ‘work from home’ workforce due to COVID. We couldn’t help but think, “is this our chance to buy before this investment opportunity passes”?
We went to dinner with local friends that were, at the time, expecting their first baby in a few months. Aside from the tasty coconut shrimp and the epic mariachi band that played for us, we recalled at one point in the evening asking them, “Did you plan on having starting a family down here?”, and they simply responded, “for us it wasn’t where, it was when”. They told us about the wonderful experiences at all of their Cabo doctor visits with 3D ultrasounds, hiring a doula, lining up a full-time nanny (for half the cost of US daycare), etc. After thinking about their stories and realizing that starting a family didn’t have to bring our Baja adventures to a halt, it started to validate this decision further and get us excited about our future.
“What do you want to do?”, “When are we planning on moving out?”, “Do YOU want to go back?”, “Do we NEED to go back?”. Eventually, those questions between us turned into, “Could we just stay here?”, “What would life look like for us here long-term?”. These questions got us interested enough to start looking and see what could be possible.
THE SEARCH BEGINS
Still with no decision to stay or go, just for fun, one evening we signed up for a few email feeds to receive new to-market property updates. What started as an occasional browse turned into an everyday activity. Over time we realized that on top of being interested in finding “our home” we were also spending time analyzing price, location, bedrooms, amenities, etc. to get a better understanding of the hot Los Cabos real estate market.
At first, our net was wide, looking everywhere up and down the Corridor from San Lucas to San Jose del Cabo. The idea of building a home was even teased out, after getting some inspiration from a friend, but eventually ruled out and decided we wanted to look for something more turnkey that we could spice up and make our own.
A FEW TOURS — ¿POR QUE NO?
We met with our real estate agent, Justine Schock (@loscabosliving on Instagram) to learn more about the buying process. Justine is a long-time local from Seattle, and has bought and owned properties in the states and here, which made it easy to relate given her recent home purchase in Baja. We decided to start doing a few property tours to further validate or invalidate our itch. She gave us lots of great information to review and soon enough, we had a few places lined up within our buying parameters to check out.
With that, picture you just flipped to the latest episode of HGTV’s Mexico Life and this digital nomad couple and their pup from Colorado were about to embark on their new life adventure together in Los Cabos. Action.
House #1: Casa Mexicana
It was a beautiful Saturday morning. Justine met us at our first property to tour in the El Tezal neighborhood of Cabo, right down the street from where we currently live and rent. This was a turnkey 2 bedroom, 3 bath home, in a gated community with a small shared pool. The house was modern and new, but we quickly realized we weren’t interested in a tight square footage, cookie-cutter home with limited ability to customize and make it our own. While it had a view of El Arco in downtown Cabo, and great patio space to take in the views, we also didn’t want to look out at dozens of rooftops for our view to the ocean.
Funny enough, we ended up making friends with the selling agents, so this was a bonus of House #1. As far as buying goes, onward to House #2!
House #2: Casa costa azul
Location, location, location! Situated minutes from Hotel Row in San Jose, this 3 bedroom, 3 bath, fully furnished house caught our eye for the close proximity to the beach (< 0.5 mile as the crow flies), as well as downtown San Jose where we have enjoyed spending a lot of time. The home had lots of outdoor patio space, a huge rooftop patio, ocean views from all 3 floors, and lots of potential for upgrades and add-ons. As we toured the home, we knew it was going to take vision and effort to transform the inside into our dream beach house, but the views of the ocean from all three floors and overall location were hard to beat.
As we pulled out of the driveway, the wheels in our brain were already turning. Could this be the one? Did we want to venture down the road to a remodel?
House #3: Pool Party Place
This was a unique 2 bedroom, 2 bath townhome that had been recently fully renovated, located in one of Cabo’s oldest beachfront neighborhoods. We scheduled this visit purely to make sure we weren’t falling in love with House #2 too quickly. While the rooftop pool deck was epic, with unobstructed views of El Arco, the inside living space was tight, a bedroom less than we wanted, and just didn’t seem like a good fit for us.
Decision Time
Pescadito Break, a new restaurant featuring excellent pescado tostadas, situated right on the Costa Azul beach.
Obviously the next course of action was to sit down for a cocktail, HGTV style ,and discuss/rule out options and narrow in on our decision.
“We’ve only seen 3 houses in person, shouldn’t we keep looking? Are we jumping into this too soon? But if we wait a few more weeks, will we lose out on a prime opportunity?”
After thinking a bit, we were also informed that a few offers came through on House #2, Casa Costa Azul, adding to the suspense and urgent timeframe. With that, we looked at each other, smiling in excitement and disbelief, and decided we were ready to move forward with making an offer.
Wait, are we actually doing this?
A lot of emotions come flooding in when you’re thinking about putting in an offer on your first house together, but the extra considerations of doing so in a foreign country had us wanting to be extra confident in our decision.
A quick sanity checklist:
Continue living in and exploring a beautiful place we love? Check.
Spend quality time with family visiting Cabo 4-5 weeks every year? Check.
Local friends are starting their families here and don’t regret it? Check.
Denver’s housing market at an all-time high with Cabo’s steadily rising? Check.
The list goes on, but we felt this decision checked a lot of boxes for us. We had made up our minds, so we put in our offer accompanied with a nice letter to the seller, and after a few counters, we landed on a deal. House #2, Casa Costa Azul was… ours!
Signing day & Keys in Hand
After a few weeks and many digital signatures on pre-paperwork, it was time for us to all sit down and put ink to paper to make us the official homeowners. We’ll spare you the fully-detailed version for another blog on the process specifically, but for now, just know it was necessary to go to a notary with all parties and witnesses involved to make the sale official.
The sellers, our agent, and representatives from our mortgage company all met at the Notaria. After being walked through the English translations of the many stacks of legal documentation in Spanish, we added a few dozen signatures later, and it became official. We made our first home purchase …in Mexico! Time to pop the champagne.
Our First (unofficial) Housewarming party
The timing of our closing was special, because after officially getting the keys, we got to share some of the “firsts” with Kyle’s parents, aunt and uncle, and cousins who were in town on vacation. We celebrated over drinks at the pool at Cascadas and a cheeseboard from Picnic Cabo gifted to us by Justine. The squad even came up to see the house, with Kennedy, for the first time. We catered in dinner and showed everyone our new home.
WELCOME TO CASA TURNER
We’ll give you the MTV Cribs version of the house tour once we are done with a few renovation projects, but for now, here’s a few photos of our new digs and a link to a video of the home on YouTube.
A beautiful first sunrise over the Sea of Cortez.
THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD
We continue to feel blessed to have stumbled into this home, especially after experiencing our first sunrise and sunset out our bedroom window. The neighbors have welcomed us with open arms, offering kind words of advice and sharing their own stories of when they first made the move down to Cabo.
There are two top-notch grocery stores within a 5 minute drive, and we can get to downtown San Jose in less than 10. The airport is about a 20 minute drive vs. the 50 minute one we’re used to right now. We’ve got the beach a short walk or quick drive down the street with beachfront parking and two oceanside restaurants, Pescadito Break and Zippers Bar & Grill. There are a ton of cute cafes nearby for breakfast like El Wine Shop, Cynthia Fresh & more. Being the foodies we are, we’re very excited to be able to easily pop around to all these local favorites.
The only thing missing is grass, which we’ll be sure to install in some way, shape or form in the backyard so Kennedy can make herself at home too. The neighborhood pups have also been welcoming, one even joining us for our first walk around the block.
So, What’s Next?
One of the many reasons we loved this home was the opportunity to pour our own creativity, style, and love into it. In typical fashion, we’re diving right in — drawing sketches, creating ideas for the interior and exterior designs, and populating spreadsheets and slide decks with inspiration.
Our “first phase” of projects begins soon, so we will keep you posted on our experiences with doing a home renovation in Mexico as well as the finished product!
We look forward to hosting our friends and family very soon. Until next time… salud!
