Thursday was the big day. We bought a house.

We first called the number in Guadalajara on the for-sale-by-owner sign in late August. I was anxious about speaking Spanish on the telephone, but I knew the phrases: casa, se vende, and cuanto cuesta. That would be enough to get started…

We saw the house that Saturday. As we guessed, it needed some TLC. It had never been lived in full time, and showed it. It had been owned by the couple’s grandfather (Don Manuel) who had passed away. It was fifteen years old and needed a whole new kitchen and other renovations and improvements - a bit of a fixer-upper. But, it had a good feel to it.

Although we had been occasionally looking at real estate, I had convinced myself not to buy - at least to wait until the bubble burst in the United States. Prices would be better then. But renting long term had its problems too. We had just recently gone back through the rental market - there wasn’t much of interest in our price range. And there’s always the lack of control. I couldn’t feel comfortable moving our things down until either buying, or locking in a very long term rental.

But with this house we overcame our hesitancy to buy. Basically, the price was right. We wouldn’t lose too much if prices decline, and in the long run it should be cheaper than renting. At least that was the plan. It seemed big enough for all our stuff (about 2800 sq. ft.), and we knew we liked the neighborhood.

We communicated via email in English. My contact would then pass the information along to his aunts and grandmother. He joked about them all having different opinions. Before long, they arrived at their lowest price. Our choice seemed to be to either act at this price or play a waiting game, hoping that a couple months might bring a new lowest price. We decided to have a building inspector come see it. He thought it was very well built by local standards. And his estimate of the cost of the repairs was in line with our guesses. That pretty much clinched the decision.

The legalities of executing the transaction are very different than in the US. There are lots of interesting details, but I’ll summarize by saying everything went quite smoothly. The most surprising thing was that we never signed or paid anything until about a week before the closing - and even that was to the government, not the seller or Notario. That gave us some concern the whole while that something might go wrong or that they’d get a better offer. But in the end everything was quite proper.

The process concluded on Thursday with us having the highest regard for everyone we worked with: the seller’s family, the Notario, his office manager. Everyone dealt with us with respect and professionalism. It was a very positive experience.

And finally, here are photos of the front and back of our project: