Investors from Mexico Snapping up San Antonio Houses
 Meena Thiruvengadam - Express-News
| | The Dominion is home to many of San Antonio's celebrities and professional athletes, a gated estate community with the #1 ranked Country Club Facility in the state of Texas, just 20 minutes from downtown San Antonio. |
For much of her 23-year career, real estate agent Connie Ramirez scouted San Antonio's most expensive neighborhoods looking for $700,000 to $800,000 homes for wealthy clients from Mexico.
High-end neighborhoods like the Dominion, Sonterra and Alamo Heights have long been popular second-home locations among wealthy Mexican home buyers. One North Central neighborhood in the 78258 ZIP code even is nicknamed "Little Monterrey" after homeowners from the Mexican industrial hub.
But lately Ramirez has been spending more time searching for $100,000 to $150,000 homes for middle-class Mexican buyers.
"There's been a tremendous increase in that market," she said.
With Mexico's presidential election next month stirring economic uncertainty, San Antonio real estate agents are reporting booming interest among Mexican nationals for properties priced at or below $200,000. While personal security still is a major draw, most often these Mexican buyers are seeking the financial security that comes with owning a home in the U.S. even if they never move into it.
"I'm getting phone calls left and right from Mexican nationals wanting to invest here," said Michael Reyna, president of TC Austin Properties, a local commercial and residential real estate firm. "They see San Antonio as a good, stable place for investment money."
Many of his clients are leaving the homes they buy vacant, Reyna said. "They're looking at it as just another asset in their investment portfolio."
When home builder Steven Saide moved to San Antonio from Mexico a few years ago, he chose a subdivision off of Prue Road.
"It is what I could afford," the Monterrey, Mexico, native said of his 1,700-square-foot, two-story home.
The property is appraised at just under $108,000, according to county records.
"I want our kids in the future and my wife to have a safe place to live," Saide said.
The government doesn't track trends among foreign home buyers and does not place restrictions on purchases.
"Anyone from outside the United States can buy property in the United States," said Robert Barnett, a partner with San Antonio-based law firm Cacheaux, Cavazos & Newton.
Appropriate visas are required only to legally live, work or attend school here.
"Some people basically see the U.S. as a safe haven for their investment, and real estate is a good investment," said Jorge Gonzalez, a Trinity University economics professor. "As economic conditions in Mexico improve somewhat, more people there have assets to invest, and some of them want to buy houses in San Antonio."
The city's booming real estate market is making investments here especially lucrative for foreign buyers. In the first quarter of 2006, the median price of a house in San Antonio hit $131,900, 9 percent above the first quarter 2005 median price of $121,200.
Fortune magazine in December touted the city as the country's hottest real estate market.
Real estate agent Robert Elder said 20 percent of his current clients are from Mexico, twice the norm. "People are really worried about this election," he said.
Longtime front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a Mexican presidential candidate often compared to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and other left-leaning Latin American leaders, is in what local observers call a "statistical dead heat" with the more conservative Felipe Calderón.
"If López Obrador wins, I would expect many more people will move to San Antonio. If Felipe Calderón wins, I don't think that will be the case," Gonzalez said. "People have a lot of fears for the economic policies López Obrador could put in place."
Pedro Torre, an entrepreneur who closed on a property in the Dominion a few months ago, said he has taken all of his financial assets out of Mexico.
A few elections ago his parents bought a house on the North Side "just in case," but uncertainty over this year's contest is only a small part of what's behind the migration of Torre, his money and his businesses.
The son of an airline pilot and an entrepreneur, Torre spent most of his life in Mexico City, where he was robbed at gunpoint several times and kidnapped once.
"When I got kidnapped a few years ago, that's when I really started thinking I have to move," Torre said. "For me personally, Mexico City was just an unsafe place to live."
Torre is among an estimated 44,000 Mexicans who own homes in San Antonio, according to local market research firm EG&A Direct International Inc. The firm has spun off a separate entity, EG&A Investment Properties Inc., to meet the demand of Mexican investors.
"We are surprised because we are making more deals than we had planned," said EG&A founder Luis Escobar González. The company set a goal to attract $2.5 million in real estate investment from Mexico in its first year but surpassed that mark in six months.
"We're getting a lot of interest still," he said. "But July will be the month when a lot of investors thinking of coming to San Antonio will say 'yes' or 'no.'"
meenat@express-news.net |
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