There was an important (if subtle) change in my lifestyle
here in Loreto Bay effective at the beginning of this New Year. For the first time since taking possession of
my home over seven years ago I no longer have a Property Manager. With over 600 occupied homes in the
Development there now are about 10 Property Management companies operating
here, down by almost half from several years ago – due mainly to survival of
the fittest.
For most people here a Property Manager is an important part
of owning a Loreto Bay home, since a large majority of the owners spend less
than half the year in residence.
Although the menu of services offered varies from one company to
another, one of the most important functions that they all provide is regular
home inspections – because it is unadvisable to leave a home in this climate
unattended for over half the year.
Regular home maintenance can also be provided by Property
Managers, either “handyman” type services by their staff, or for more
complicated work and renovations they can sub-contract with local trades, oversee
the work, handle the payment for it, and finally billing of the Homeowners.
Another basic service is landscape maintenance inside the
home, since all Loreto Bay homes have some open areas inside the home, most
have main floor courtyards with landscaping and often potted plants on the
second floor terraces and some have private garden spaces as well. Pruning and tidying these plants, as well as
checking the irrigation system that waters them, is “in-home” maintenance that
is the responsibility of each Homeowner, while the HOA maintains the extensive
common area gardens and courtyards outside of the homes.
A small, but not
insignificant service is paying taxes and utility bills – something that cannot
be done unless you are here “on the ground” in Loreto. Property Taxes, payable to the town of Loreto,
are low, by North American standards, and (because of chronic municipal budget
shortfalls) there is usually a further discount available before the end of the
calendar year for pre-payment of the next year’s taxes. This practice has become common over the past
number of years, and now that that pattern is established it is unlikely to
change in the foreseeable future and Property Managers can take advantage of
the discounts available by seeing their Client’s taxes are paid before the
discount deadline.
Utility bills are a different situation – and one that may
be, I think, uniquely Mexican.
Electricity is billed every second month, after a “CFE” employee on
bicycle reads the meter at every house in the development, followed a week or
so later by the same employee delivering a paper bill which he tucks into the
crack of the front door of the house – or delivers a batch of bills to the
Property Manager for the homes they take care of. If, however, this paper bill say, blows away,
or is otherwise lost and the Owner or their Manager is unaware, the power can
be cut off, without further notice, requiring a reconnection charge not to
mention an inconvenient period of time without electricity.
Because I have been living here for more than six months
annually for the past five years, it was probably time for me to take over the
responsibility of managing my own home, which happened at the beginning of this
year. As luck would have it, just a few
days shy of the New Year there was a water leak somewhere under the kitchen
sink and when my Property Manager sent one of her staff to check it out they
determined that the leak originated in the faucet and he could not repair it. After managing with only hot water at the
sink for a few days, on the first working day of the New Year, I left the house
for my three minute bicycle commute to the Real Estate Office, and bumped into
(figuratively speaking!) Rick, the “premier plumber” who works here in Loreto
Bay.
Arrangements were made on the spot for him to make a service
call at the end of that day, when he confirmed the leak was in the faucet and
it had to be replaced not repaired.
Which, given our limited access here to such things as plumbing
hardware, could have posed another problem.
Except that (thanks to Loreto’s apparent synchronicity) Rick just so
happened to have a brand new, high end faucet he had replaced in a custom home
(because it was the wrong plated finish) that he could let me have at his
cost. The following day he returned with
this beautiful new faucet, which when installed, was a big improvement over my
original one.
But this was not my first accomplishment in self-management. Last winter I had become dissatisfied with
the landscape maintenance services provided by my then Property Manager and so
I opted out of that service and did my own maintenance of the courtyard plants
and the upstairs pots. This worked
reasonably well while I was here, but I needed to make arrangements to keep the
garden maintained when I was away over the summer months.
That is when I spoke to Lenin, who I had gotten to know back
in the “early days” of Loreto Bay when he worked for what was then the only
landscape company working in the Development.
Over the years since, Lenin had pieced together his own small
maintenance business doing gardens and some pools as well as other odd jobs in
the development to subsidize his “main” job working at a restaurant outside of
town.
It was there that I met him and first spoke to him (his
English is self-taught, and superior to my Spanish) about taking care of my
garden during the summer. By the time I
was ready to leave I had also contracted for him to repaint the exterior of my
home after some plaster repairs were completed during the time that I was going
to be away. On my return this Fall I was
pleased with the job he had done and he has continued to my maintenance ever
since, including a big project late last year which involved digging up all the
plants in my courtyard, reconditioning the soil and replanting a new collection
of plants.
This past week I took another small step towards my
“independence” – the first electricity bill of the New Year was due and so I
took my aforementioned slip of paper into town and found the CFE Office, which
I recalled having been to once before several years ago. When I arrived at the small cement block
building in the Zaragosa district of the town, I didn’t think much of the fact
that there were no other cars in the small parking lot, but as I was getting
out of the car I noticed that the office hours painted on the office door said
that they closed at 2:30 – and it was then after 3:00.
Before I had the chance to gnash my teeth over the vagaries
of Mexican business hours, a smiling uniformed security guard I hadn’t noticed
before approached me and with our combined “Spanglish” he confirmed that I was
there to pay a bill and gestured me through the unlocked door to a vestibule
area inside where there was an ATM-type wall mounted machine. With a little help from the guard I quickly
figured out how to scan the bar code on the bill which brought up my account
details on the small screen and after feeding the required bills into the
machine it coughed up the change owing and printed a receipt – one of the most
high-tech transactions I have experienced here in Loreto!
Reflecting on these events while I was driving back to
Loreto Bay afterwards, I took some real satisfaction from this admittedly small
accomplishment as being yet one more step towards my independence here. By taking responsibility for handling the
small day-to-day things that make up a real life here in my adopted community,
that is another important part of “Living Loreto”.
P.S. Due to the nature of this week’s Blog it didn’t lend
itself to pictures, but as a special treat I am passing on the following link
for a great new video that I was sent this week – just the thing for any of my
readers stuck in the mid-winter blues up north – enjoy!
Loreto Adventure Tourism 2013
