Buying property in Mexico.

Planning a retirement and dreaming about the perfect place to spend a more relax life can be very challenging, specially when we have a budget to work with. So the adventure starts by the search of the ideal location that would have all what we're looking for and then by taking the decision of renting or buying a property... Decisions, decisions!
When JJ and I  decided to retire in Mexico, we sold our house and all of what we had in Las Vegas. We wanted to have the freedom of a mortgage payment, taxes  and to be able to move from one place to an other without being worry about having to maintain a house, so our idea was only to rent.
We have been exploring different cities and we have found beautiful places to call home but, some of these places can have a higher cost of living because of the expats communities. We actually looked into buying a property to remodel but we were surprised by the high price of a simple house that needed a lot of work to be done, again they had the "American prices" and me as Mexican, I knew that I would be able to find a better deal so we kept looking.
Visiting my family in Cuauhtémoc which is a municipality of the state of Colima, we found the perfect house at a great price! Cuauhtémoc is a medium size town with great infrastructure and it's surrounded by rivers, canyons, mountains, the amazing volcanoes and the Pacific ocean is about 40 min by car. The capitol, Colima, is only about 10 min drive and offers a very cosmopolitan life style and all the amenities you can look for. What we like about living in Cuauhtémoc is the tranquility of a small town, the great weather and the low cost of living. There are some expats living here but not to many which makes it a great place to find property for investment.
The house we bought is about 1300 sf., two bedrooms, office room, two bathrooms, car garage, family room, dinning area, kitchen, big roof top terrace with room for a second level and a nice back yard. We paid $45,000 USD for it, and we invested about $15,000 USD to remodel it.
This house has been a great project, remodeling the architecture of it and giving the interior design touches has kept me busy all this time and we're very happy with the results.
The cost of our utilities are incredibly low... Power $20 dollars every two months, water $45 dollars a year, cable and internet $34 dollars a month, house taxes $83 dollars a year...
We made a good choice buying this house because not only we have a place to call home and to relax between our traveling, it was also a great investment.

These are some picture of our house in Cuauhtémoc... Home sweet home!