It was time to buy, we’d decided. After 16 months in Mexico living in hotels, rentals, and our 1996 Toyota Tacoma, we figured we’d follow our own advice and put a stake down in the Mexico real estate market. So in the spring of 2004, we started house hunting.

We had several requirements to consider as we shopped. First, we needed a place from which to work, which meant buying in an area with good infrastructure. Second, we wanted to live in a place that we enjoyed—not too big, lots of local flavor, plenty of good restaurants and cultural venues, and at least a few like-minded expats to hang around with. 

For all these reasons, we chose to shop in San Miguel de Allende. We made the decision after spending the better part of a year renting in Ajijic on the shore of Lake Chapala.

Why We Chose San Miguel Over Ajijic

Since both San Miguel and Ajijic share all three of the above characteristics, it came down to simple personal preference. We loved living in Ajijic, but San Miguel offered just more local nightlife and cultural options for us.

Why didn’t we buy in Ajijic when we lived there? We’re still asking ourselves the same question. Instead of renting for a year, we should have bought immediately, even if we weren’t planning to spend the rest of our lives there. In hindsight, we believe that just a year later we could easily have sold almost any presentable property we’d bought in Ajijic for at least a 10% to 20% profit. Instead, we threw our money down a hole paying rent.

Looking For The Dog House

After deciding on San Miguel for our first purchase, we had another consideration to take into account—Jack, our large Labrador, with the personality of a precocious 5-year-old. Aside from a burning desire for our almost constant, undivided attention, he also needs a big yard to roam around in and protect.

That eliminated the downtown area of San Miguel, where yard space is hard to come by at a reasonable price. Fortunately, there’s a lot more to San Miguel de Allende than El Centro. We started our search in the outlying neighborhoods where properties with large outdoor spaces are more common.

It took only three days of searching before we found what we were looking for.

We found our house on a street called Privada Candelaria. Lane told us it had about 5,000 square feet of land inside the walls and a house of about 2,500 square feet of construction under roof. (Like many Latin American countries, square footage of construction means everything “under roof,” including carports, patios, storage areas, and permanent palapas).

Before we entered, Lane also told us the asking price—US$155,000. For that much space at such a reasonable price, we didn’t know what to expect. We had visions of a large patch of overgrown grass and a dilapidated “money pit” that would need serious renovation.

A Blank Canvas

Lots of yard—this house had that. We could see Jack having a good time running around the pomegranate, lime, palm, bamboo, and other trees and plants the previous owner had added to the yard’s landscape. And they looked good—they had been freshly planted and looked tiny in the huge yard, but Lane assured us that in six months they’d grow so much that we wouldn’t recognize them.

The house was solidly build in the local style—a framework of poured, rebar-reinforced torres or towers, floors and ceilings, with walls filled in with brick and mortar and faced with concrete.