In an email to her sister written on December 10, 2025, Pat, who is a much better writer than I am, captured the last chapter of My Great Mexican Misadventure. I have added some of my own thoughts below hers. And I have redacted the names of The Entitled Mexican Woman and Our Mexican Builder.
Well, now it's time to catch you up on our saga.
A lot has happened here in the last few months. I don't even know where to begin.
This year has not gone according to plan. We thought we would get an offer on our house in the first couple of months. Other real estate agents told Tom, our real estate agent, that it would sell within weeks. We had showing after showing and prospective buyers had positive comments, yet there were no offers. Tom couldn't understand it. He sold a house listed for $779,000 in 17 days, yet ours just sat there. We thought we were close to getting an offer several times, but no.
Finally 9 months in, we got an offer. They came to see it 3 times and really liked it but we had to reduce our price to $520,000 US. They had 5 days to make a 10% deposit, which they did. At that point, the deposit is theoretically non-refundable. However, in Mexico the funds are held by the real estate company representing the buyers. Shortly after that time, one of our neighbors, who knew these people, learned that they had put in an offer and informed them that there was an encroachment issue with our lot and the empty lot #8 beside it. (We learned about this encroachment about 5 years ago but that's another story which I won't go into right now.) Around the same time, the owner of lot 8, The Entitled Mexican Woman, listed her lot and learned that her actual lot size was 99 square meters less than what was defined in her deed. So that became a very significant issue that needed to be resolved in order for our deal to close. This understandably spooked the buyers. They wanted written assurance that The Entitled Mexican Woman would not come after them. We didn't blame them but were worried that they would get their deposit back and the deal would collapse. A local Notario Publico, which is the highest class of lawyer in Mexico, and someone who we had previous dealings with, also knew The Entitled Mexican Woman. He had done business with her for 20 years. He offered to mediate our issue. We met in his office. The resolution of the issue required us to purchase 81 square meters due to our encroachment. The rest of the meters were encroached on by the property behind us. The Entitled Mexican Woman came after us with guns blazing, which we expected because she is greedy and rich. She put an excessively high valuation on the land and expected us to pay our portion based on her ridiculous inflated price. In our first mediated negotiation, we made a low offer. She was insulted. After some negotiation we both moved somewhat but failed to reach an agreement. The Entitled Mexican Woman played the victim the whole time, and we had to remind her that we were also victims (thanks to Our Mexican Builder, the gift that keeps on giving). We decided to pause negotiations and try again a few days later. At the second session on Zoom, with a lot of help from the notario and Tom, we reached an agreement. The notario did a lot of translation because The Entitled Mexican Woman wasn't as comfortable doing everything in English. We went back and forth for awhile. The Entitled Mexican Woman kept saying "precio ridículo" (ridiculous price) referring to the numbers we were coming up with. We had a walking away price in our heads but ended up exceeding it because we just wanted the whole thing to be over with. We came up more than she came down. (We kind of felt we were extorted.) All of this was captured in a legal agreement. In one of our meetings, when The Entitled Mexican Woman was not present, every single person mentioned that she was a "difficult" person. Our condominium association over the years had had a lot of problems with her. She hadn't paid her condo fees for years and the Board (which John was on at the time) showed her leniency and forgave half of her debt in order to get something out of her. It will be interesting to see what her lot ends up selling for. We would be surprised if she got anything close to what she is asking. But we're done with her. She sold her house in Guadalajara, bought a place in Puerto Vallarta and she and her husband will be spending 6 months there and 6 months in Barcelona.
The notario emphasized several times that he was neutral but we really felt he was on our side.
There were other problems as well. The second builder who completed our house failed to initiate the paperwork required to authorize occupancy. This resulted in two more issues for which we hired a second lawyer, who we also had previously dealings with, to work on. His initial assessment was that one of the issues would be very expensive to resolve. However, he was able to make that issue disappear in a way that we fully do not understand. This was the same lawyer who was able to "facilitate" the resolution to our car issue a few years ago. The second issue was resolved the morning of our closing but was not significant enough to have prevented closing. There were other minor issues and we don't even remember them all, but all of this angst, interspersed with a few glimmers of hope, went on for a full 2 months and we were not sure the deal would close right up to the actual day of closing. In the interest of brevity (ha!) there are more details which I have left out. But in the end, everyone got their pound of flesh. We paid The Entitled Mexican Woman (we had to do quite the dance there, because she didn't want to pay taxes), we paid our mortgage holder, we paid the real estate fees, we paid our lawyer and we paid our notario. In addition the buyers got 81 square meters more than was listed on the deed. So we took a big financial hit.
It was a nightmare building the house and another nightmare selling the house. But we sure enjoyed the 10 years in between.
John and I tend to feed off each other's anxiety and there were a few meltdowns, but we're fine now (until the next one ). One thing we know for sure - if we ever win the lottery, we will never build in Mexico again.
During all this time, not sure if the deal would ever close, we couldn't focus on finding the right rental for us. Just a few days before we were scheduled to move, we finally ended up signing a one year contract for a rental in a fairly new development that has 5 houses west of Ajijic. We thought we were moving into a brand new place, but it was obvious to me after we moved in that there had been previous occupants. Right now, only 3 of the 5 are rented out but our neighbor said that all of them were rented at some point. I won't even go into all of the issues with the new place, but we have hired an American electrician/plumber who we had used before to fix them. This place is several notches down from what we had and we are already talking about moving out. It is SO HARD to come down from what I now consider to be a luxurious lifestyle. There is no view, no pantry, no linen closet and no storage. Every square inch of the place is jam packed and we have boxes everywhere. Yes, we have too much stuff and will be doing a big cull to charity. We left behind our furniture but now we have to buy some cabinets to store things. I hate living in such chaos. It is all so overwhelming but slowly we are making progress.
It turns out that Tom's boss, Mark, who is the owner of the real estate company we hired, who was also in some of the meetings, lives right across the street from our development, as does our notario! What are the chances? After we moved in, Mark came over with a bottle of wine and apologized that it took so long to sell our house, that we had to reduce our price and that we had so many issues to deal with. That was a real nice touch. We really felt we had a lot of people on our side.
Anyway, it's over now and we are looking forward to starting the new year fresh.
We were advised of one more requirement that we will need to deal with in 2026. We must file a nil Mexican tax return. If we don't we will remain at risk of having our capital gains exemptions reversed and facing a tax assessment. This is not a big deal. I am confident that I can easily find a trustworthy Mexican accountant to assist us.
Pat and I are quite independent, perhaps too much so. In this case, however, we desperately needed the help of others. I am deeply grateful for the help and support we received from others, particularly our Notario and our agent, Tom, during this difficult time.
Pat and I did not ignore our encroachment issue when we first learned of it. But in hindsight, we got poor advice from three trustworthy individuals. In hindsight, we should have trusted our own intuition.
We bought our first home in 1979 when I was 28 years old. At that time, satisfying my own ego needs was in play (but not the whole story). My identity was attached to the status of owner which was a higher status than renter. Now I will live the rest of my life as a renter and I am totally fine with that. In fact, I am relieved. Had I died before Pat she would have had to face all of our house problems alone.