No Wonder He's Bald

You should meet Victor, our real estate agent.  He was the result of a chance meeting in the Jardin while I was in San Diego helping with my father's last days.  Michael loves to go sit in the Jardin, read his Kindle, and observe life going on around him.  So when I returned to San Miguel, I met Victor, the agent he'd met.

Although we didn't have a lease for our current house, we had told our landlord that we would stay at least a year, if not longer.  And although we didn't move to SMA until last July, the house was ours as of April 1st. Our Pedro worked on it during the intervening time, painting accent walls, painting the entire third floor, painting all the woodwork white instead of lime green, installing light fixtures, mirrors, et cetera.  We had the broken rooftop skylight replaced, sealed the glass bricks set into the roof terrace floor when the rains came and they leaked into our office, installed light fixtures, chandeliers, sconces, new electrical switches, rheostats, added lights in the entry 'garden,' replaced the burnt-out exhaust fan and added a light to the masonry hood over the kitchen stove, and even installed a purified water system in the house.

I think I've written about the way rentals work here in Mexico, no?  Light fixtures are non-existent; bare bulbs are the rule.  If the previous tenants put up mirrors in the bathrooms, they took them with them when they left.  Our previous tenant even took the curtain rods in our home, requiring new ones which had to be fabricated to size.  We promised ourselves that we wouldn't completely strip the house when we left, but some things will be coming with us.

So a year had passed and we started looking around for new digs.  We still like the house and we'd customized our household goods to the property, but there still wasn't much doggie-friendly area.  True, there is a small garden area inside the front door, but it's very small and mainly supports a tree.  No wonder the kids like to go to the Doggie B&B when we travel - it's out in the campo and there's a huge, fenced yard in which they are free to run to their hearts' content!

So we decided that it might be best to find a new home that had some semblance of a yard for the dogs.

And we looked at a ton of houses.  Some rented out from under us while we considered them. Others changed from for-rentals to for-sales.  Some were too grand; others to simple or didn't have any lawn - Why are we looking at this one? Victor searched for them; we referred additional leads to him; we looked at homes that came back on the market from last year.  We went out looking with Victor regularly, becoming friends with Victor during our many house visits.  We even asked on a local web forum how we might compensate him if we finally rented a home that came from our referrals and didn't have a commission attached.  Those responses are another story....

At last we had narrowed the choices down to three: A stand-alone home in Los Frailes on the outskirts of town with a large back yard but little storage; a home in La Lejona on the edge of town (just down the street from our gym, as a matter of fact) with a reasonable backyard and lots of storage; and lastly a home in Guadalupe that was a reasonable, flattish walk to the Jardin at the center of town with a small garden and little storage, but a nice terrace.

After much hemming and hawing and two visits to the home, we decided to make an offer on the La Lejona house. 

Curses!! Another party had just made an offer on the house which had been accepted.  Then - when it was time to sign their contract - they tried to renegotiate the amount of the rent and the landlord nixed the deal!  Relief!

 At least we found out what the landlord's minimum acceptable amount of rent would be (they had been asking a lot at the beginning; weren't even sure why we were looking at the property).  So we submitted an offer and sat around on pins and needles when we were told another party had submitted the same offer just before us.  Which offer would the landlord choose? The gringos' or the nationals'?

Victor swung into action, convincing the landlord that we were the more responsible tenants.  But by that time we had persuaded  ourselves that the Los Frailes house was better and we called the deal for La Lejona off! [One should note that the house was new construction and not completely finished.  The final work was to be done after we rented the house!  We were not pleased....]

So another restless, sleepless night: Did we make the right decision; is there a way to guarantee that the work would be done (shades of our moving experience preyed on our minds); surely there's a house out there - some where - that would be right for us.

On my return from Saturday's Tianguis Organico market, we talked about an idea that I'd had to guarantee the prompt completion of the home.  Thought we'd call Victor just in case they hadn't already rescheduled the other party to come in for the signing of the contract.

He had, of course, already informed the landlord's agent that we'd decided against the property, but Victor swung into action yet again, convincing the landlord and their agent that we would offer the acceptable rental amount, be ideal tenants [after all, we were gay, so we'd take the best care of the property, right?], and we'd work with them to make sure the completion work could be accomplished speedily.  The landlord agreed to finish the electrical and complete the kitchen cabinetry before we moved in May 1st.

We quickly got on the internet and moved money down to our Mexican bank from our US bank, we collected the funds, and trotted off to meet with the agents and landlord.  Money changed hands, agreements were struck (the landlord seems much more sincere than our mover proved to be), and the contracts will actually be signed tomorrow night.  (They will provide us a contract translated into English, though the 'real' contract will be in Spanish. Victor will make sure they say the same thing.)

So we've been amusing ourselves by making scale drawings of the rooms, fitting our furniture into the rooms as best we may: there are two living rooms - one with fireplace, a dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, five bedrooms, a huge roof-top deck with laundry room/bathroom/wet-bar in addition to the backyard, front yard, and balconies running across the front and rear of the house.  And there are provisions for adding two fountains, too. Not surprisingly, there's a need for some additional furniture (haven't yet told Michael this...), so the catalogs have come out, lists are being made, and a shopping trip to Texas included in the plans for driving to Kentucky in June.

Once everything is signed and sealed tomorrow night, we'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief and tell our current landlord that May will be our last month here in Colonia San Rafael.  The overlap will make the move simpler for all concerned, I think. Besides, we go to Cabo during part of May, too.

Did I mention that the walk to Centro from La Lejona - though longer than that from San Rafael - is at least a predominately flat walk?  (We all know there's no such thing as a truly flat walk living here in the mountains, right? Even if such a walk is frequently advertized.)  Living on top of a hill in San Rafael provided great views, but walking up the hill every day encouraged the use of taxis or apoplexy.

Oh, yes - and Victor isn't really bald - he simply wears his hair cut very close to his head.  But I wouldn't be surprised if there were fewer hairs after dealing with us!