Things to consider when renting or buying in Manta Ecuador

 I am slowly settling back in to life in Ecuador.  I did miss it a ton, and felt a definite sense of peace driving around those first few days, seeing the familar building, neighborhoods, landmarks, etc.  It is not just the beach I have grown attached to.  I am also slowly seeing friends and re-acclimating back into the people and places that made up my fond routine in February.  It is slightly harder than I thought it would be.   Selling the house, setting up the apartment , moving out of the apartment, immigrating, the long 10 day journey to drive Maya to Miami, fly her to Quito, and have her driven to Manta, and showing up to a foreign country in a home with no furniture or household items, all took energy.  Then flying back and re-establishing myself at a new job, being gone for long hours took emotional energy, even given it was an usuasally pleasant travel assignment.  Then I had to say goodbye again.  So I arrived back at the condo, now mostly furnished feeling a little depleted.  Not unhappy, just a bit overwhelmed.  We lived in our home in Aloha for 24 years.  So this has been a lot of change.  It took over a week just to start regularly practicing Spanish again, something my brain did not have room for in the 11 hour work days in Portland.

So there is not much content of late.   Today's blog post is going to be things to think about if you are buying or renting an apartment/condo in Manta Ecuador:

The first list is more important for buyers in particular:

1) Is the HOA solvant?  Specifically, are a large number of owners in arrears of their HOA fees.  This is important.  HOA fees are generally very reasonable, so there is not a lot of wiggle room in budgets.  The fees must pay for building maintainance, salaries of a building administrator, 24 hour security guards, groundskeeper/maintainace man (yes, is going to be a man) water, etc.  

2) look for deferred maintainace on the building - how old is it?  In general, HOA fees pay for the things listed above (find out if water is included in HOA fees), but the owners will have to pay extra for extrodinary costs.

3) Earthquake damage - there was a substantial earthquake in 2016.  The HOA minutes should have assessed and addressed the damage.  The building we live in brought in industrial xrays.

4) what are the rules on renting out the unit - many buildings have rules against Air B and B, for example.  If you are buying the unit with the hope of Air B and B during the times you are not using it, don't be surprised if this is not allowed.  People that live in the units full time don't want to deal with a roving group of Air B and B guests partying it up, and not showing respect for the common areas.

5) have a VERY GOOD, vetted bilingual real estate attorney.  You don't know what you don't know, and you want a trusted person making sure there are no back taxes, back HOA fees, etc.

and continuing list applies for both renters and buyers.

6) is there a generator and what does it power?  Power outages are very, very common here.  Many buildings do have generators, but they just do things like keep the elevators, fridges, and emergency lighting going.  We did NOT ask this ahead of time, and were just crazy lucky that our building's generator powers everything.  As Brian is a software engineer, our livlihoods depend on this.

7) If renting, do they allow pets - as an owner, you are allowed your pets by law.  However, that doesn't mean you can leave your dog barking on the balcony, and leave, you should still have a well socialized, reasonably well behaved boy or girl.  Many rentals decline pets, and if dogs are allowed, only teeny tiny ones.

8) What does "Oceanfront" mean?  Most of the buildings that ex-pats end up in seem to be some sort of oceanfront.  People looking for a bargain will sometimes live slightly back (like just across the street from the oceanfront buildings) because this does drop the price pretty dramatically.  But many want that direct big view of the ocean, with a nice big balcony.  However, a lot of those buildings do not actually have beach access, either because the building is not built to access the beach, or because when high tide comes, there really IS no beach.  This can be hard to tell from real estate photos, as the photographs will be taken at low tide, if they are taken at all - sometimes it's just a shot of the view from the infinity pool.

9) If you are not planning on buying a car (getting a driver's license down here is a whole another ball of wax, driving customs are very different, and Gringos are targets for fake speeding tickets), are you within walking distance of places that you visit frequently?  A Western style mall is right across the street from us.  This is important, because it has a large Fred Meyer type grocery/home goods store - and that is the place we need to go most often.  The area of town with the "disappearing beach" that has coveted luxury highrises is close to restraunts, but unless you eat out every day, that is not nearly as helpful to me as being next to the Fred Meyer like place where I can find most of what I need.  A reasonably appointed hardware store is right across the street as well.

10) Internet - not every building has access to every provider.  If high internet speeds are important to you, ask before you buy or rent.  Brian has 2 internet feeds, the "good" one, and a much cheaper, back up provider in case the first one goes down, which it has a couple of times.

11) Noise level - I have mentioned this before.  There are a couple of buildings that are particurly bad.  If possible, try to spend a weekend night in the building you are interested in.

12) It is a good idea to get a list of all the HOA rules, and have them translated.  There may be customs you are unfamilar with.  There may be rules such as the number of guests you may have in the pool area, if people can smoke on the balcony, and what hours you can have deliveries, or labor done on your apartment.  For example - we got in trouble because the airconditioner broke down, and Brian was not able to tolerate not having it, and was particularly concerned about his office, with his computer.  As has been our experience thus far, it was easy to locate a qualified person to replace it - and they came right away.  BUT it was a holiday, and the building admin was not happy about it, and they finally agreed he could replace the one in his office, but had to wait until business hours for the otheres.   Also, there were rules about how the unit could be positioned on the exterior of the building.   In the early days, when we were having furniture delivered, we learned quickly it had to come before 5 pm.

13) and finally, speaking of the pool - is it heated?  Many are not.  Unless you are swimming laps, this is not a particurly pleasant experience.  Also, out door jacuzzis are also not always heated, or will just share water with a heated swimming pool, so although while not cold, they are more like luke warm.  I love almost everything about our building, but it does have one of the worst hot tubs I've every been in.   This is not very important in the grand scheme of things, because it is a warm climate, and we do not have much need for a hot tub, but if it is important to you, don't make assumptions.

Things not to assume:

Units for sale or rent (especially for rent) may very well come with furishings.  I would say it is more common that not for at least some basic household items to be included.   Ours did not, because the previous owners were building their own house close by, and took everything they could, down to the fridge, hot water heater, washer/dryer, and RO system.  Although it was an awkward first couple of months, it has ended up being better in the long run - the unit is more affordable and we were able to get furnishings we liked more suited to Brian's frame. Because, like the weird hot tub, and lot of sofas only come up to the middle of the back of a taller person.  And the dainty wicker outdoor furniture is also insufficent for Brian.  At this point, we probably have 3/4 of the stuff we need.

Hot water - that it will go everywhere in the apartment.  Ours, for example, does not go to the laundry, or the "social bathroom" (1/2 bath).

Water in general - tap water is not drinkable in Manta.  Many of the newer lux highrises have RO systems, as I mentioned, the previous owner took the one he had installed when the building was built with him.  Eventually, we will spend about 2K to install one, and will be able to cook with and  drink water from the kitcken sink, but for now, we just have a water system like the ones in office buildings everywhere, we we have big jugs of filtered water feeding into a system that heats or cools it as desired.   We both really like it - the water tastes good, and is served chilled, room temp. or the perfect tempturature for our morning coffee.  So it is not a huge priority right now.

I will add more things as I think of them, but that is all for now.