Expat Community > Ecuador

marciaz
Joined 2011
Posts: 85

My Move to Ecuador: A Trilogy, part III

13 years ago

Once we got settled into our rental condo, after our 24 hour fiasco, we decided to start looking for a condo to purchase. We absolutely loved Chipipe beach in Salinas, so we started there. We hired a real estate team that was ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL! But we did our own homework also. And the more homework we did, the more we discovered that this beach seems to be a lot of Ecuadorian “old money”. As in, most of the condos on this beach have been owned by generations of the same family. Also, they have a price they want, and from what we saw, do not want or need to negotiate. Everybody owns these condos free and clear. They don't need the money. So they ask for a price that they want and usually don't negotiate. Again, this is what I have found to be true. Other people may argue this fact. But we literally walked the malecon and talked to all of the guards, got phone numbers, called owners.... we did our research. With that knowledge and the infinate wisdom of our agents, we realized that this left us with 2 options. Move to the other beach, or go back off the beach a few blocks. Both options were attainable. We looked a few blocks back from Chipipe beach and found nice condos, just not ON the beach, which is what we wanted. Our realtors showed us everything from houses, to nice condos on the beach, to fixer-uppers. We decided against houses, as the block walls made us feel claustrophobic. After much research both with our realtors, and on our own, we decided to go with a condo that our real estate agents showed us. It was a fixer-upper, but was well within our budget. The only drawback was it is on the noisier, busier beach. But it ended up being a beautiful condo after we remodeled the entire thing. We took out walls, redid bathrooms, new tile, paint. We tore out the entire kitchen and had it completely redone. We have a beautiful balcony that looks over the malecon and beach.

The moral of this story? Do your own reasearch. Get a realtor. They have invaluable information. With these two things, you can't go wrong. We had a blast talking to people, looking at homes and condos, and just learning so much about this wonderful country.

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