Traveling to Mexico – Free Vacation

North Shore, Hawaii sunset with fisherman. (Click to enlarge)

Traveling to Mexico to have 2-4 days free leisure time is a vacation to me since I am out at sea for weeks before we stop in for a port call to give the crew a break from sea life. At the current port we are pulling into soon I will get to surf some of my first Mexico waves. We are allowed to bring our surfboards on our ships unlike the Navy. Seems like longboard waves so I will be using my 9’1”. I totally prepared with my camel back for water and probably “coco loco” in it by the end of the night. Pesos are currently 10 to $1 USD. Prices are simular to a small town in USA, but real estate prices have not hit a boom yet in this tourist location on the west side of Mexico. You can buy a beachfront home 4bed 3bath 3000sqft for under $300,000 USD.

I am currently looking at small 2bed 2bath condo units on the beach or blocks to the beach for around $50,000-100,000 USD. I figure if I can buy two smaller units to rent out I might just do it. Because I wisely took a bit of money I made from the stock market and used it to pay off a second mortgage I have $15,000 in equity I can cash out or use as collatoral as a downpayment and closing costs on property. I will be going to other port calls as well looking at a future bachelors dream home location to fly off to or live permanently. First off it must be a good sized city, low crime, mixed english and spanish, lots of jobs (even if I become a fisherman), close to the beach, and waves for surfing year round of course for the surfer in me.

It seems if you are planning a vacation in Mexico you should really look around different websites and checkout every link because sometimes you can find a condo like mine I’m interested in renting for $300/week and others simular for $2000/week. You really need to find out what you are getting. Now there are some really luxurious places unless you are a family or couple with a budget in mind I’d say do a search on “mexico hotels on a budget”. A hotel I plan on staying in for a night is $18/Night. Granted it isn’t on the beach but a block from the beach. All I care to do is meet a banker to setup a bank account, talk to a realtor their with a large reputation for honesty, and do a whole lot of surfing.

While everyone else is drinking themselves day to night I will be looking at possible condos and small homes to buy for investment. I figured if I bought something for $100,000 USD I would just have enough to live comfortable in a $700-900 studio in Honolulu and have enough for gas and food when away. Of course I would rent them out and get a solid management company to advertise them and if they became profitable great, if not hold them and rent them out locally, or do advertising myself and setup a system to give a tourist a great deal on a place to live a couple of months a year to pay my mortgages on them so I could still save $1000 a month. If I did buy a condo and could not rent it out for some reason I could still handle the costs of condo fees and mortgage, but I would not be able to continue saving enough money to get out of the military like I plan. I do not want to be broke with nothing in the bank in 3 more years. I will be receiving pay raises for $200/month up to $700/month within the next 3 years which I could use to put into savings. I just don’t want to save at the very last minute. I’m sure even if I lost half a years rent on a condo I could break even renting out cheaply the other half of the year for tourist seasons to break even if my mortgage and condo fee came out to around $700/month I could rent it out for $1,400 or $350/week to break even which is an extremely low cost in this tourist location to live in a condo in a tourist district with 2bed and 2bath roughly 1000sqft.

I can not say what Mexico location this is yet because I am underway and it is considered classified. I will return on it more with location and more about the city and cities I am interested in after we go into the port call and the USCG has sent out a public affairs press release.

Let me know if you are interested in renting one of my units out. I’ll have it all ready for you when you come to this paradise. -FN