Travel, live, and retire in Mexico!

with
Rosana Hart

Example of a Mexican Unfurnished Apartment

This page shows a pleasant unfurnished apartment -- or you could call it a semi-detached house -- that happened to be for rent near where we were staying in Guanajuato, Mexico. It rented for 5,000 pesos a month plus utilities -- about $455 US. It had three bedrooms, with one bedroom and bath a half-flight down from the living room, one bedroom and a bath a half-flight up, and the nicest bedroom directly over the living room and thus half a flight away from the bathroom. There was also a carport.

I was impressed with how much storage space was built in. Unlike many Mexican apartments, the electrical wiring looked pretty good, though much like most Mexican wiring, it wasn't grounded. I could have lived in this place quite happily!

Mexican real estate prices can vary quite a lot from place to place, and often renting is a better deal than buying a home... especially if you are not 100% sure you want to stay there, as another characteristic of of the real estate market in Mexico is that things move much more slowly than you might be used to at home. So if you decided to sell, it could take you years.

The refrigerator that shows in the first picture had been moved out of the kitchen for cleaning, and wouldn't have to remain in the living room-dining room!

The living room (sala) and front door. As there was no separate dining room, this could also be called a sala-comedor.

More of the living room, shown for scale.

The kitchen (cocina) photo didn't come out all that well. It's a compact space just off the living room. You can see the sink, cabinets, countertop, and gas stove. The refrigerator would be a little to the right, and I was standing in front of a good-sized pantry of shelves.

Taken from the bedroom (recamara) half a flight up from the living room, looking down at the living room and up at the top bedroom. It has built-in shelves, and the dark door on the left is the bathroom (bano)door. This bedroom didn't have a door itself but had a sturdy curtain rod.. great excuse to buy a nice Mexican rug to hang.

The top bedroom. All 3 bedrooms had reasonably good closets; this one didn't have any built-in shelves, but the other two did. There was room for a dresser or two behind where I stood when I took the picture.

You can see that this sink has a corrugated bottom, but it's hard to tell that it slopes. This is the laundry facility, on the same level as the top bedroom, and there was a rooftop place to hang clothes. I think this is what the ads call a patio de servicio.