You all know I love it here, I brought my kids here and I’m investing here, but it’s not for everyone, and the last thing you should do is jump into something without trying it.  I strongly recommend renting a place short term before buying a house or selling everything in the US and moving down here.  I met one reader recently who told me, “I moved down here because of your blog, if things don’t work out I’m going to blame you.”  I assumed she was kidding.

Anyway, if you’re thinking about moving here, please rent something first.  I highly recommend Antigua Rentals for short term, furnished rentals.  I know those folks personally, they manage the properties well and only work with owners who are reasonable people.  On the other hand, if you’re ready to jump into something longer-term, then I recommend Alberto at Qmec.   He speaks English, is honest and reliable, and knows the market place.  You can get a 3 bedroom condo in a quite neighborhood for around $500.  When you visit with him ask him about the finca he lives on.

The normal arrangement on a rental here is one month’s deposit and the first month’s rent.  Anything more and you’re getting taken.  A copy of your passport and cash is all that you’ll need.  All contracts are in Spanish, and you have the legal right to have it read to you in English.  An English contract won’t be enforceable.  I suggest you hire a competent, trusted attorney to help you, otherwise you are very likely to be taken advantage of by your landlord.  For example, I have yet to meet an expat who ever got a deposit returned, even when they left the property in better condition than they found it. I do know expats who’ve rented properties only to find that the owner didn’t know his property was even available for rent.  That can make for an awkward situation.

Chapin:  Excuse me, who are you?

Gringo:  Uh, I live here.  Who are you?

Chapin:  Fijese, I own the house.

Gringo:  So who is Juan Roberto Something or Other?

Chapin:  That’s my ex-wife’s brother’s cousin.  But he doesn’t own the house.

Gringo:  But I paid him six months’ rent two weeks ago…

Chapin:  Fijese, but my family will be here in a few hours and you need to be gone.

If you have a lawyer who understands how the scam works, your odds of ever seeing your deposit again increase to 50/50, plus he can check to see if the person renting the house really owns it.  That can be tricky since much of the property here isn’t really titled in the sense that you and I think of.  It’s more like Tombstone, AZ, or Atlanta circa 1865.  And never, ever, ever, use the attorney recommended by the seller/landlord or their agent.  You’re going to pay the attorney, so it should be your guy.  Your guy should be my guy.  Sure, their guy may only charge 300Q, but you’ll end up wishing you owned stock in Unilever.

Make sure the contract says explicitly that if you (tenant) deem the property to be uninhabitable, you can move.  That way if your neighbor is born again tomorrow and his house becomes an evangelical church, you can move.  Or if someone decides to open a saw mill in what yesterday looked like a nice, quiet home.  Or if the roof and windows leak so much when it rains that you need an industrial wet vac six months of the year.  The reality is that you can break a lease and lose your deposit and nothing more, but it’s better to have the contract on your side, so when your former landlord tells everyone in town that you’re gringo scum and wouldn’t pay your rent, you can sue them and lock up their bank accounts, assets, seize their passport and get them on a DHS watchlist.  It’s a shame that the wheels of justice can take so long to turn, too.  Like six months to get a hearing.  Ask me about it sometime.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Never, ever inherit a gardener or maid.  If you’re in the house for a few weeks, you might think you can’t avoid this, but believe me, you can.  Just say, “You can pay the maid if you’d like, but I’ve got my own maid and I won’t let yours in”.  The landlord’s maid knows she works for the landlord and you’ll be gone in a few weeks, even if when you leave you’re light an iPod, a ring, or 5lbs of sugar.  Plus she’ll just ignore you and clean-or pretend to clean-the way she wants to.  So hire your own maid.  Worst case-although not by any means uncommon-she’ll tell a ‘friend’ what you have and when you’re not home and you’ll return to find your passports, cash, computers and anything else they can carry gone.

If the unemployment rate ever falls below 30% (according to the Don Marco Index of Vital Economic Indicators), you might have trouble finding help.  Until then, you can have a line of people at your door tomorrow morning.  I can help arrange that.  It took me six tries and then we figured out the formula and have two fabulous ladies.  It’s good sometimes to do this and interview them in front of your existing staff.  You think I’m being cruel, but this is the way it works here if you want to send the signal that you’re not to be, how can I say this delicately…taken advantage of.

Hey, you asked for it, I’m giving it to you straight.  If you want the touchy-feely GuateDust in the eyes version, navigate to one of those PCV blogs on the blogroll.

Welcome to GuateLiving.

I found it hard to believe the house was really on fire given the house is made from concrete and tile, and when the Wife got on the phone she explained that the finca next door was burning stuff and the house was covered in smoke.

I thought she might be exaggerating, but on my way home I could see the cloud of smoke enveloping the neighborhood from more than a mile away.  Naturally all of the windows in the house had been open to take advantage of the perfect weather, which meant now the entire house was filled with smoke.  I arrived home to find children coughing, crying, everyone with articles of clothes tied around their faces, and the smoke just hanging in the air.

My original thought was that it would have been better to leave all of the windows open, hoping the wind would carry it through, but the density of the smoke was such that it was unbearable, so they had closed all of the windows.  This kept most of the smoke out but also meant that all of the smoke that had stayed in was trapped.

I climbed on to the roof to evaluate, and sure enough, workers on the finca which adjoins our property were burning huge piles of the leftovers from their recent harvest.  One fire was literally at the base of our wall, another was about 10 meters away, and the third closest was only 20 meters away, and the wind was carrying the smoke right across our back wall, into our patio and into the house.

I yelled at the workers to move their fires away from the house, explaining that it was not safe and that my family was getting sick of the fire.  I observed that they all were standing up wind of their fires and hand their faces covered with cloth.  They talked amongst themselves for a moment and then resumed.  I thought about telling them I would call the police, but realized they would see right through that and know I didn’t have a clue how things work here.

The roof afforded the cleanest air for hundreds of yards so I contemplated my options.  What I really wanted to do was hook the hose up and drag it to the roof and spray the fires from the roof.  After calculating the distance, I realized my hoses aren’t long enough to reach up to the roof and be of use on any but maybe the closest fire.

My next thought was to arm myself and the teenager with machetes and approach the fires with buckets of water and rakes and hoes, to dampen and then spread them.  I thought for sure my action would send the workers running, and that whoever they brought back might listen to reason.

The longer I remained on the the more bizarre the ideas got, evidence of the effect the smoke was having on my thinking process.  My final strategy was to buy boombas across the street and shoot them from the roof down onto the workers, hoping they would scatter.

In the end, I abandoned my plans to adapt to a GuateApproach to the problem and instead chose the passive, gringo approach, opened every window in the house and put the family in the van and left for the day.  When we returned 8 hours later, the fires were out, the skies were clear again and the house was mostly smoke-free.  Of course, all the clothes, beds, linens and furniture smelled like smoke, and we still had red eyes, coughing and sore throats.

As readers know, I’ve got a collection of real estate stories, but one lesson I never thought of before now was to make sure you don’t rent or buy next to a finca, or you’ll be dealing with these occasional, unannounced fires and smoke that will ruin your day, threaten your house, and cause all your friends to think you’ve suddenly taken up an extraordinary smoking habit.

The real estate agent showing us the property had told us the owner was asking $1000 but that the house could be rented for $750 on a two year contract.  So, we offered $750 for three years, seeing in the longer-term contract greater value for the owner, given the current economic conditions.  (I know, very naive of me).

The owner wasn’t impressed, and countered with saying her rent was actually $1000 a month, plus IVA, some sort of tax which adds up to 12% and which every agent tells me is never paid or collected.

So we increased our offer to $850 a month for three years, and explained to the owner that she was unlikely to rent this particular house to a family due to the traffic noise on the street, the lack of parking, the lack of hot water in the building, and that the distance from the park made it not as desirable as some other currently vacant properties on the market.  We also pointed out that the house would need some clean-up and painting, and that we would take care of those.

After initially claiming that she’d be better off just selling it (good luck), she agreed to $900 per month for two years and 11 months.  Apparently she wanted to avoid a three year contract.  We told our agent we could agree to the terms and to put things in motion.

Well, I wish I could say I was shocked by what happened next, but that would be an overstatement.  I was only mildly surprised when the agent reported back that the owner’s new offer was $1000 plus the 12% tax.

Let’s set aside the rather questionable negotiating strategy of dropping the price and then raising it or the threat to just sell the house instead of renting it; this is a dirty house on a loud street in Antigua without hot water that has a setup that would only work for a small number of commercial clients, and in the middle of a 30% drop in tourism and 40% drop in remittances and with vacant properties all over town that have been vacant since I moved here.  Despite all this, the owner has decide to increase her asking price after someone shows interest.

So, let me share with you how I will handle this situation.  I will now go to another real estate agent and have them indicate interest in the property in about a week’s time.  My offer will be $550 a month for one year.  This offer will be insulting to the owner and will call to mind the very reasonable offer she had from the other interested party.  It will also be a signal to the listing agent that the property can be rented, but not at the current offering price.

I’ll keep you posted.

The Wife found a house on one of the local agencies’ sites many months ago.  She was checking again recently and noticed that the house was still listed.  Now, she made the mistake of concluding that the house was therefore still available, while yours truly knows better.  (A full explanation of that will have to wait for another post.)

Anyway, she had been pestering me about this house and I had been pestering the agent by email to no avail.  I even tracked down the owner of the agency and told him I would love to rent a house through him if only his agents would call me back.  He dutifully expressed shock and surprise that I would have difficulty reaching one of his agents and promised that I would get a call within the hour and could see the house that afternoon, if I wished.  Six weeks passed and an agent calls and tells me he can show me the house, “whenever you would like to see it”.

We look at the house and it’s a nice place, well-furnished, big yard, generally a pretty good fit for us.  There were a few odd things, e.g., there was no laundry room.  There weren’t even hookups for a washer and dryer.  The other thing is that there is a full-time on-site caretaker who lives with her three children in a tiny shack on the property, directly adjoining the main structure.  I knew this before the agent told me because I was checking out the bathroom and could hear, through the wall, the caretaker scolding her children.

Eventually the agent introduces me to the woman and informs me that she ‘comes with the house’.  By this he

Big yard & a Gringo-sized cabana

meant not that her fee is included, but that if I rent the house I get to employ her as well.  It turns out her fee is only 200Q a month, although I never did figure out precisely what she does.  (It would be a mistake to assume that she does anything simply because she’s a ‘caretaker’).  As with anything else, the conversation grows more complex and it turns out her husband, who lives and works in the capital Monday through Friday, is also the gardener of the house on the weekends, and his salary is 1000Q a month.

I knew the wife wouldn’t be crazy about the prospects of having another family sharing the lot, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be committed to 1200Q a month with people that I had no experience with and wouldn’t be permitted to fire if, hard as it may be to believe, they turned out to be worthless.

However, the agent was very optimistic, saying the house had been vacant a long time and they wanted to rent it.  He even suggested the owner should build a facility for the washer and dryer since almost anyone renting the house would want it (why wealthy Guatemalans would build a nice big house and furnish it with great stuff and not have a washer and dryer is beyond me).  I liked the guy’s initiative and had high hopes for how these negotiations would proceed.

The asking price was $1000, and as I mentioned-don’t forget this dear readers-the house was fully furnished.  I told the agent to feel the owners out about the rent price on a long-term lease and building a laundry room of sorts.  He agreed to call me as soon as he spoke to the owner.

A big open patio too!

A week had passed and I had not heard from the agent so I emailed him.  A week later I emailed again and then called.  I continued this process for a month, until I finally reached the agent.  As is the modus operandi here, there was no apology for not calling back or not responding to my emails.  He simply stated, “Well, there was a problem with the owner”.

I’m a veteran at this now so I wasn’t surprised, in fact, I wondered what delicious tidbits there might be to share with blog readers.  He continued, “It turns out the woman we were dealing with is not the owner, she’s actually the sister of the owner.”  Okay so far, I mean, that’s not exactly a big deal, people here rent out other peoples’ homes all the time.  The agent goes on to say, “When I did talk to the owner, she said she might be willing to rent it for as little as $1,000 unfurnished.”

You can imagine my response to that, but this agent was savvy enough to somewhat imply that this was the reason he hadn’t called me back.  He never came out and actually said it, but he kind of stumbled around talking about an owner who might be difficult to work with.  Of course, he’s exactly right, and I learned early on that the only thing worse than an owner who is difficult to negotiate with is a landlord who is difficult to live with.

So, I’m not interested in pursuing that house at any price, and Gringos, read and absorb and remember these lessons from Don Marco so  when it’s your turn to go house-hunting you can smile knowingly and chuckle at it instead of standing there dumbfound.

The house is still listed if anyone is interested…

I found a house with a large Antigua real estate agency who has many online listings.  I have seen only one listing with this agency in the 10 months of looking, probably because when I expressed interest in the first house, the owner upon learning a NorteAmericano was interested, said the 4 bedroom house, equipped with beds for eight, could only be rented to a family of four, no more.

I continued to inquire of the agent in question about a house they had listed that was in a nice neighborhood, and appeared from the pictures to be well-furnished, and was $1200 a month.  I was interested in seeing it, but the agent would not return my phone calls or emails.  Knowing that there is no such thing as an exclusive listing here (as is common in the US), I started asking around.  My favorite agent, Alberto at Qmec, wasn’t able to make any progress.  However, a few weeks later I found among my circle of expat friends someone who lives in the same neighborhood as the house in question, and knows the owner.  It’s a small world, after all…

My friend introduces me to the caretaker of the house, who dutifully gives my number to the owner, a Guatemalan who apparently lives in the capital.  We eventually arrange to see the house and so the Wife and I visit-sin commisionista.  No doubt the owner is chuckling that he’s not going to have to pay a commission to the agent now.

It is a gorgeous home, well constructed and well furnished.  After visiting the home I contact the owner by email and ask a few important questions for any prospective expat resident:

1.  Does Telgua service this house?

2.  What other fees will I be responsible for (maintenance, security, water, etc)

3.  Does the caretaker remain with the property and will I pay him, and if so, how much?

4.  Will you consider a discount for a long-term (2 year) lease?

The result of some back and forth by the owner revealed that he would be happy to pay all the fees associated with the house, including cable and internet, and the lease price would be $3,000 per month.

Naturally, I responded that I would rather pay the $1,200 a month for the house and pay the expenses myself.  The owner didn’t budge…$3,000 was the monthly rate if I wanted to rent the house.  Let me put this in perspective for readers; the house I am in right now is in a safe, private, gated neighborhood about 2 minutes’ drive from Antigua.  The house is 3 bedrooms plus a maid’s quarter’s and a nice-sized garden, and is fully furnished.  It’s $750 a month.

All of the houses I’m looking at are larger, or have larger gardens, or both, than what I have now, and are in similar neighborhoods in or around Antigua.  I’ve seen some $1500/month houses, but have enough of a sense of the market now that it’s not necessary to pay that much to upgrade a little.  Usually you’re paying for the address (the ‘zip code’ in US lingo), and not the house itself at that price.

So back to the house in question. Why would I pay $3,000 for a $1,200 house?  Why would I pay $3,000 for a $2,500 house?  You could even ask, “Why would I pay $3,000 for a house 10 minutes from town when I can pay half that and walk to the park?”

Of course, I won’t, and I don’t think anyone will.  The house will sit vacant, just as it has since it was constructed, with a perfectly manicured garden and an owner who can brag to his friends that his house is for rent at tres mil dolares por mes.  They’ll sip Zacapa and no one will dare ask, “So how long is it actually rented for?”

Hi everyone, I’d like to introduce myself before I get into my juicy story:) But first, I’d like to say a huge thanks to Mark for inviting me to guest post. The first post I read by Mark was when he said that he took his wife out for an ice cream without the kids to avoid going to therapy. I immediately connected with him and this was before I found out he has house full of kids while I only have 1! If an outing for an ice cream can avoid therapy for them, for me it would be like a full on honeymoon:)

Plus, he’s a traditional practicing Catholic from Phoenix, Arizona land of sun and fun, while I’m a secular Russian Jew from New York City! Do you think we experience Semana Santa equally?

I actually started reading Mark’s blog while still living in Costa Rica where I’ve been an expat for the past 6.5 years. It was part of my due diligence for my move to Guatemala. I finally moved to Antigua about 5 weeks ago.

My quick background and why I’m here. I met my husband eight years ago while camping next to him in Tikal. He was the very first Guatemalan I ever met in my life and now I have a son that’s half Guatemalan. After getting married we moved to Costa Rica for him to get his Masters Degree. Since we’re not Ticos he couldn’t secure a job, so we moved to Guatemala!

My move wasn’t spontaneous, which would have been the case if I didn’t have a little boy to keep happy. That’s how I winged it in Costa Rica, and trust me even though it sounds romantic and all, it wasn’t easy! So this time we came prepared.

Few rules were laid out by me before moving here:

1. I don’t want to live anywhere near Guatemala City
2. I want to live in dead center Antigua
3. I want to be so close to everything that I can either walk it or take a scooter

With these simple yet etched-in-stone points, we set out to structure my move here.

First and foremost we needed a house. I am the type to do everything to the extreme. So I called every single real estate agent in the area. Quick FYI, there are very few listings for rentals by owners. And if there is one, they are overpriced because they are geared towards foreigners. So, I made appointments with every single agent there is. Century 21, Casa Nova has by far the most listings. And we started on our trek.

The very first house we saw, we fell in love! But it was way out of our price range. However, my agent reassured me that they would go down in price quite rapidly if it’s for a long term contract. No way did we believe they would go that low, but we went along with it. So holding our breath, but also having plan B in total swing, we continued with the rest of the agents. All of them showed us crap! Over priced, a good 10 minute drive from Antigua center and smelly! Disheartened, I was sure we would get nothing that we were looking for.

Finally, our agent called us and confirmed the house for 35% less than the going rate. Yeah I know – too good to be true? We were like, what is wrong with the place? Why did they go down so fast? Why was it vacated for so long? But, you know when you just fall in love with a place, you overlook all the doubts and concerns. So we signed a year contract, left a deposit and first month and prayed that it wouldn’t have gargantuan leaks, the toilets will flush and rats won’t keep us awake all night. Another little FYI, Guatemala is the only country that I have lived in where the renter has to pay the lawyer fee for the contract.

Next line of business, finding a god school for my son!

Bio

Marina has been living in Central America for over 7 years and her site Travel Experta is all about traveling in Central America. Marina loves to help people plan the perfect vacation to this amazing part of the world! Join the fun on her facebook fan page and follow her on Twitter at @MarinaVillatoro.

A few days ago a friend calls me and says he has a house for me to see.  “It’s in the most exclusive neighborhood of Antigua, they have many large gardens and the house is very nice.  The owner is flexible on the price.”  Sounds good, so I agree to see it the next day.

The next day turns out to be Guatemalan Father’s Day.  I didn’t think much of it, after all it’s one of those holidays invented to sell Hallmark Cards, right?  Well, I call my friend to find out what time we’re seeing the house and he says the house can’t be seen today because, “It’s Father’s Day”.

The next day we agree to meet at the park to go see the house.  I chose the park because I need to hit the ATMs almost daily to keep enough walkin’ around money on hand.  As it turns out, every single ATM in Antigua is out of service that day, at least if you want to withdraw funds from a US bank.  Eventually my friend arrives and I’m a little surprised to see that he is accompanied by the same commissionista that showed me my current house.  You may recall the story.

I’m surprised because she knows I signed a year lease here and I’m not quite done; I learned that I can break the lease any time, I’ll simply lose my deposit and have no further obligation.  Clearly it doesn’t matter to her, since she’s already been paid (agents get a commission equivalent to one months’ rent).  I hope that having looked at houses with her before will narrow things down a bit.

Imagine my surprise when, as I follow her out of Antigua, it appears we are headed toward the very neighborhood where I presently live.  I call my friend on the phone and say, “I thought we were looking at a house ‘in the most exclusive neighborhood in Antigua’”.  He indicates that the commissionista wants to show me a ‘fabulous’ house first.

Sure enough, we pull into my neighborhood and park in front of the house right next door to my own.  Literally, I share a wall with this house.  I watched it being built.  The owner gave me a tour several times.  He has already offered it to me, for $1200 a month, perhaps less.  It is a nice home, well-constructed, modern, lots of light, a wonderful roof-top terrace, but the garden is perhaps 10′x10′, less than 1/3 of what I have now, and the house is only marginally bigger (although it is generally better constructed and has a terrace with wonderful views).

I explain to my friend and to the agent that I left this very spot just 30 minutes before to meet them in Antigua to see the house in the aforementioned neighborhood AND that I’ve already seen this house.  “Oh, but it is a great bargain at only….$1500 per month”, the agent says.  I think I hurt her feelings when I laughed out loud, because she got all pouty, and turned her head a little like a scorned Miss Guatemala might.  (It’s not inconceivable that this woman was a Miss Guatemala 20 years and 20 pounds ago.)

I explained that I was very familiar with this house, that I thought it overpriced at $1200, and explained again that I wanted to see the house in Antigua.  She agreed to drive me back to Antigua to see the house.  Stay with me folks, because this is going to shock you.

We drive back to the north east corner of Antigua to a neighborhood called Santo Domingo Something0.  It’s a gorgeous community, with huge gardens, roman arches and columns with ivy growing on them and wide boulevards.  It’s the closest thing to Versailles I’ve seen in Guatemala.  It’s also familiar to me, as I was last in this neighborhood with this very same agent to see a house.  I must have been muttering under my breath because my 14 year-old asked, “Don’t you like the fountains?  We could go swimming in those things…”

As we wind our way through the neighborhood, we’re getting closer and closer to the house I remember.  I remember it well because it was unique, and also because it is only two doors down from the agent’s own house.  I’m trying to consider the odds she’s going to show me the very same house again, but by then we have arrived in front of it.

I thought about not getting out of the car at all, and simply continuing to drive leisurely around the neighborhood.  That idea was growing ever more appealing until I realized I was at a dead end and couldn’t simply disappear around a corner.  In my mind I imagined trying to turn my car around and race past her, with my poor friend standing by, stupefied.

We got out of the car and I mentioned to my friend that the agent had already shown me this house.  Apparently that didn’t translate because he grinned and said, “It looks great, doesn’t it?” I followed the agent around the house as she, apparently having been trained by the National Association of Realtors, very professionally said, “Este es bano…este es comidor…este es cocina”.

This is a very nice house.  It’s unique, almost like something from Middle Earth, with all sorts of cubby holes and arched ceilings.  With all the window shades back, it’s full of light, and has several small, indoor gardens open to the sky.  I meet the owner-again-who is herself a very elegant, attractive Guatemalan lady.  Each time the agent announces in Spanish, “Este es_______”, the homeowner turns to me and says in English, “This is the ______”.  This means I get to say, “Si, muy bonita” to the agent and then, “Yes, it’s very nice” to the homeowner.

I take as long as I can, pretending to be interested in the house, before thanking them both for letting me see the house.  Outside is truly stunning, acres of beautifully manicured gardens.  My friend whispers that the house is “only $1500″ a month, which I find odd since it was $1100/mo last fall and is still on the market.

Maybe there is a fundamental flaw in my understanding of economics, because I thought that as supply increases and demand falls, prices should fall.  Take a look at inventories online with the big agencies in town and you will see they are up dramatically in the last 9 months, and we’re in the middle of the rainy season.  However, as I’ve learned, and hopefully you are learning by proxy, some laws of logic and economics don’t apply in Guate.  That’s why prices rise during a recession; why prices go up during negotiations instead of coming down; and why some Guatemaltecos would rather have nothing than 150% of their asking price.  I could describe it in other ways, but I’ll stick with saying there exists an unusual inequity in the local pricing structure relative to supply and demand.

You might be wondering why I don’t like the house.  There’s nothing wrong with it, but the entire neighborhood is designed around quiet, proper upper-class people with 1.2 children who speak Spanish with the right accents and consider ‘rough play’ carefully kicking a soccer ball back and forth in the garden.  Contrast this with a normal day at my house, where packs of half-naked children re-enact scenes from Braveheart and modify the suggestions in Dangerous Book for Boys to draw enough blood to smear on their faces, lie down by the guard’s shack in the neighborhood and see who notices (the guard pokes his head out, laughs and goes back to sleep work).

Tangent:  One day recently, my kids came across another kid in the neighborhood who stopped and stared at the pack of gringo kids as though they were aliens.  The 14 year-old, who is sick and tired of the stares (and is otherwise impetuous as most teenage boys are), actually got down on all fours, started moving towards the kid with his eyes crossed and barking like a dog.  I understand the chico dropped what he was carrying and ran away, screaming for Mama.  I guess my kid will never serve his country as an ambassador.

Another time, a expat friend of mine who lives in the neighborhood dropped by to chat for a moment, and a kid comes running out of the house, completely nude, followed by another one rapidly shedding clothes.  They stand on the side of the patio and begin urinating into the yard, taunting one another with the size of their ‘arches’, and threatening to pee on one another.  They were oblivious to my friend and I talking business.

Before you think we’re uneducated people, I’ll have you know the kids speak Latin, English and some Spanish, they study the classics, they’re widely read, critical thinkers and well-adapted socially, whether with American or Guatemalan children, or with adults from around the world; I just think this is how boys are, at least when they’re allowed to be normal.

So…Santo Domingo Somethingo isn’t the right neighborhood.  If it sounds like the right neighborhood for you, I’d be happy to make an introduction.  I know a very nice, furnished home that can be had for only $1500/month…

One thing I’ve been surprised by are the anti-family sentiments of some locals.  For some locals the idea that you would voluntarily have more than two children is confusing.  It’s as though they equate a larger family size with ignorance and poverty (another way of saying, “What are you, Mayan?”).  This was driven home for us in a surprising way recently.

We looked at a house in San Pedro las Huertas (a community between Antigua and Ciudad Vieja), that was gorgeous.  The lot was huge by local standards, perhaps 1/2 acre.  The house itself was nice, well-decorated and modern.  The guard/gardener lives on site in a little two-room house of his own.  I looked at the house last fall and at $1200 decided it was too much.

Nine months have passed and the house is still vacant, and now that we’re in the middle of the rainy season and the economy continues to worse, I figured it might be a good time to approach the owner again.  A local agent showed me the home again and said that the owner had been asking $1300 originally but would now accept $1100.  I have learned that statement such as these are virtually irrelevant; either the agent is just making things up or has taken the true number from the owner and padded it, so I planned on offering $1000 as my first and final offer.

Imagine my surprise when the agent calls and says, “I’ve told the owner you’re interested, that you’re an American family that has been living here since last year, and she says she will accept $1500 per month for the house”.  I asked the agent why she would think I would be interested in the house at a price higher than what it was last year, and higher than what the agent had told me the previous day.

“Well”, she said, “because you have a family you should paid more”.  I’m not sure what kind of tenants would be expected in a four bedroom house with 7 beds, especially since the covenants of the neighborhood preclude use for commercial purposes.  I told the agent the highest I would pay is $1000 a month and to call me back when the owner had accepted.  She never called.

A few days later I saw another house, in a different neighborhood but in the same area.  This house was extraordinary; it was one house on three lots, and the owner had formerly stabled horses there.  Imagine central park with a small house at one end-no exaggeration.  It had gorgeous trees, a walking path, and was bordered on three sides by vacant lots. The house was a little small, and dated, but we loved the location.  The asking price was $1350.  This included a full time, on-site gardener, which I thought was overkill, especially during the dry season.

I asked the agent to approach the owner and see if they would be willing to exclude the gardener from the deal.  This agent (a different one from the aforementioned story), asked a few questions about our stay in Antigua, my occupation (rather than say, “as little as possible”-my normal response-I explained I was looking at buying businesses in Guatemala), and the length of our stay.  Imagine my surprise when the owner said the gardener could be excluded from the deal, but the property was available to a maximum of two adults and two children.

Did I mention that the house has six beds in three bedrooms and a dining room table set for eight?  Or that there are two patio sets with seating for 10?  I recognize most of these homes I’m looking at are owned by wealthy Guatemalan women (contrary to expat impressions, the culture here is very maternalistic, at least among the affluent), and they probably built these homes for weekend getaways, but why list it for rent if you’re going to turn away Gringos with cash?

Thus, the search continues.  (Yes, I’ll post pictures of all these houses eventually).

Along these lines, Jim is a Peace Corps Volunteer and, in a former life, an architect.  He’s written a post that gives you some insight into local construction techniques.  If anyone understands any of it, let me know.

The house is a 3 bdr, 3 bath plus storage room and maid’s quarters and was rented for $750 a month on a one year lease (with option for a second year), the deposit was one month’s rent, and the owner pays for water and the community fee.  The tenant pays for electricity, cable (90Q), internet (280Q) and trash pickup (35Q).  Locals refer to the garden as ‘huge’; it is about 30′x30′ in size.

I’ll post more examples of houses and prices soon.

Inside the private gate, a driveway.

The 'huge' garden.

Den

Kitchen

Community