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Construction in Loreto and La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico
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Should I buy a home in a resort complex or build my own home in Loreto or La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico?
In Loreto or La Paz, if you have the money and if your style is to duplicate your American environment (that's no crime), by all means, buy into a resort. There are all kinds of homes available to you if you have the money. You will pay a minimum of $350,000 to get a 1,200 sq. foot condo home in what is essentially a cookie cutter condo complex and pay a monthly association fee of $200 to $400 for life. Or, you can save a great deal of money and get much more value for your dollar and not have to pay an association fee by buying your own lot of land and have your dream house built. Using Baja-Lots you can get houses or a home in Loreto or La Paz for $130,000 to $200,000 US. Let's see, $350,000 1,200 sq ft. condo and no yard and $200 to $400 a month - or - pay 1/3 the cost of a condo for my own new house in Baja Mexico on my own lot with a yard and no monthly fees. Hmmm.
Who will build my house?
Contractor/architect approach. The typical way to get a homes built in the the Baja in Loreto or La Paz is to hire a contractor/architect (there are a lot of them in Loreto) to generate the construction blue prints and then build the house. This is the easiest approach because you do not have to deal with many different people and all the time that would take. Also, your contractor/architect can advise you on design aspects of homes that work particularly well with the available home building materials and also stay within building codes.
The contractor will get the building permits from the government agencies in the Baja Mexico for your property. You pay periodic progress payments to the contractor during the construction period to enable the contractor to buy materials and pay his labor. Yes, In Loreto and La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, they will accept US dollars.
This process keeps you out of the many, many details involved in home construction such as knowing what the local and state building code requirements in Loreto and La Paz, Baja Mexico are, what are the best available home building materials and where to get them. Also, there are special home building considerations for Loreto and La Paz and the Baja in general such as an underground pneumatic water pump necessary for providing adequate water pressure to the house and the yard, installing a propane tank on the yard and plumbing it to your house (the Baja doesn’t have piped-in natural gas). Since my lots are in a good neighborhood, you do not have to have a septic tank installed for the home because you can hook up to the street sewer system. Also, electricity and land phone lines are uniquely available to my Loreto Baja Mexcio lots. Top
Economical "abanil" approach
Another way to get houses built in Loreto or La Paz is to get involved yourself to a degree. Be your own home building contractor. You hire an architect to draw up your blue prints for the home construction so that you can stay in compliance to state and local home building code. Get solid recommendations for and hire an English-speaking “abanil”. The abanil is a very skilled construction worker who can read and follow the blue prints and build houses. He has hands-on experience in every phase of the home construction effort. Abanils are not licensed contractors. The abanil is a skilled construction laborer and working supervisor who will be on the job himself and will supervise the small crew of other skilled construction laborers. You don’t have to manage the Baja crew, the abanil will do that.
However, since you are actually in charge of your own Baja home building project, you will have to make sure that you get all the required building permits in Baja California Sure, Mexico. If you pay a little extra, you may be able to get your architect to do that for you. Also, you will have to work out an arrangement for a process by which to pay the direct costs of labor and home building materials as they come up. You will probably find that you will be making the purchases for the materials yourself. Abanil’s are less sophisticated than licensed contractors in that they don’t have a checking account or an accounting system of any kind. If you want changes or alternatives to some of the construction, your abanil may or may not give you accurate estimates of home building materials or costs. They are not that great at forecasting or calculating things. Basically, your abanil is a skilled laborer and supervisor, not an advisor or planner. You will need to be present during the entire construction phase to inspect the progress on the house and pay all the bills yourself daily. Top
Construction Costs
Typically, most all homes in the Baja, particularly Loreto and La Paz, are built with cement block and a concrete roof where often the walls are finished with stucco.
Construction and building costs for homes in Baja, Mexico are typically expressed as a cost per square foot of living space. The current home building cost circulated these days in Loreto and La Paz is approximately $90 to $100 US per sq ft. for the approach described above using a contractor/architect (exclusive of the cost of the land). Be advised that this number can vary considerably depending on the size of the house, the amount and type of landscaping, and the type and quality of upgrades you request. Top
Notice the "terraza" on topFancy or Simple? Homes in the Baja come in all types from mansion extravaganzas to simple match box construction. Do you want expensive tile and granite counter tops with the latest and greatest built-ins? Do you want custom solid wood cabinetry, sliding glass door closets, fancy Jacuzzi type bathtub and a separate glass enclosed shower? Do you want a dual-level living room and dining room with archways, oversized windows and two tons of cooling power per every 300 square feet of living space, double door entry, a two-car garage with windows, plumbed with water and electricity? Do you want a typical Baja terraza on the roof (essentially a rail-rimmed patio built on the roof covered with a palm leaf cover plumbed with lights, electricity, and water for a barbeque kitchenette)? Or, do you want the economic simplicity of a one story, one bath, two-bedroom house, no garage (just a simple carport), and modest cabinetry and outdoor landscaping, with or without stucco on the vertical walls?
Whichever you want, homes can be fancy or plain. I think that you can see that costs will vary per sq. ft. significantly (easily up to 300% variance) depending on what you want. That's just common sense. Top
Materials and labor costs in the Baja. What can be said is that total construction and home building costs per sq. ft in Baja Mexico is about 50% to 100% of American building and construction costs. The real savings in construction costs are in the simplicity of design and materials used in the homes, and in the fact that manual labor for the hands on construction is quite a bit cheaper in Loreto and La Paz, for that matter, in Baja Mexico in general. The reason why building and construction costs can creap up to the level of American construction and building costs is due to the fact that all the Mexican contractors and architects will quote you one lower end American price to do the entire job. That price will reflect near American pricing for building homes in the Baja. But (and this is a huge but), they will farm out the hands on building and construction work to cheap skilled labor. So, when a contractor quotes $100 per sq. ft., the actual labor cost that the contractor will pay will be in the neighborhood of $25 per sq. ft. and the materials will be $25 per sq. ft. and the contractor will keep the remaining 50% for his pocket. Here's the kicker, the contractor will have done little to no actual labor himeself. So, what the contractors typically do is have 2 to 5 jobs going at the same time and merely visit the sites to review the progress and to talk to his supervisors. The contractor is making a minimum of $250 per hour - on each job! That's more than the Baja medical doctors make. That's more than my CPA in Newport Beach, California. Unnecessary, homes built by Baja-Lots allow clients to get houses and save money. Top
Materials cost. Sand and gravel are cheaper in the Baja than in the US, and Portland cement per 94 lb sack is approximately $11 US. Cement blocks (6”x8”x16”) are approximately $1 US each. Rebar is about the same. Costs for cabinetry is more expensive in the Baja, but that is partially offset by buying simple design cabinets of low to medium quality. While the costs of materials are similar to those in the United States, the cost of labor is drastically less and that is where the savings are. The cost per hour for skilled construction labor in Loreto is approximately $5 to $10 US dollars per hour.
If you can manage to maintain a presence in Loreto or La Paz while your house is being built by an abanil, you can save a lot of money, maybe as much as 60%, otherwise, it is wise to hire a contractor/architect and have him do it all. Homes built either way will be a great investment. Top
Example: Simple houses. For example, buy one of my lots in Baja Loreto and hire a Baja contractor and/or architect to do all the building and construction. You buy my lot #13 for $19,000 US. Build a two bedroom, one-bath house with a kitchen, dining room and a living room. Total area of 900 sq. ft. with a carport –$90,000 ($100 x900). A total cost of $109,000 US. Not bad, you have a brand new house with underground water and sewer, asphalt paved streets with a concrete sidewalk, electricity, telephone, and cable, and you are 7 minutes from the ocean boardwalk and the marina and the best fishing grounds in the western hemisphere – IN LORETO! Just try to do that in southern California. With an abanil and your constant presence in Loreto, the building and construction cost for homes will be cheaper. Top
Example: Big fancy houses. You buy one of my larger lots, say lot #9 together with small lot #10 for a total lot area of 7,521 sq. ft and for a total of $74,000 US. This is a good sized lot for a vacation home. Build a large house say, 2,000 sq. ft., 3 bedrooms, large kitchen, family room, large living room and dining room, one main bathroom and a full bath off the master bedroom. What the heck, put a terraza on the roof and nice cabinetry in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, an island in the kitchen with a sink or stove burners, maybe an archway dividing the living room from the dining room and nice closets in the bedrooms. Let’s assume you pay a contractor/architect $100 per sq. foot. (The larger houses cause a lowering effect on the construction cost per sq. ft, the upgrades put an upward effect on the cost per sq. ft.) Total construction cost is $200,000. A total cost of $274,000 US for your Baja Loreto dream house.
Again, not bad. You will have a big 2,000 sq. ft. brand new house and you are 7 minutes from the ocean boardwalk and the marina and the best fishing grounds in the western hemisphere – IN LORETO! Homes like this just aren't that cheap in California, USA. Not near a beach and certainly not near world class fishing grounds like that of Loreto or La Paz. Top