| | |  Puerto Vallarta Real Estate 
In Colima, Mexico, New Zoning Laws for Assisted Living
 Glynna Prentice - InternationalLiving.com
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April 13, 2010
| | Being the first state in Mexico to zone for senior care facilities is a chance for Colima to raise its profile as a retirement industry destination. | |
In late March the small state of Colima, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, changed its zoning laws to include retirement and assisted living facilities. This minor amendment in a small Mexican state is just one of many separate events that, together, may well change the face of U.S. retirement.
Nearly 80 million U.S. baby boomers are entering their retirement years. Since the 2008 recession an increasing number of them are cash-strapped. They wonder how they’ll afford regular retirement, never mind any costly long-term or assisted living care they may need in their final years. Fortunately, a low-cost option is emerging: Mexico.
Mexico has long been a retirement and second-home choice for U.S. residents. Now, eyeing the big money in senior retirement care (and the potential size of the market), Mexico is bidding for a piece of that pie. Far-sighted investors and developers are looking to build assisted living and other senior health facilities south of the border - with U.S. consumers in mind.
Mexico has several key advantages. It has excellent doctors and other medical professionals, scores of first-rate hospitals, and a relatively low cost for medical care. (Most medical procedures and doctor’s visits cost a fourth to a half of U.S. prices. So do nursing and 24/7 care for the infirm, thanks to the low cost of labor.) Mexico is also conveniently close for retirees from the U.S. and Canada.
One challenge, however, is that most Mexicans aren’t familiar with the concept of assisted living; Mexico’s own elderly tend to live at home, cared for by family members. And that unfamiliarity extends to “the majority” of local zoning officials, contends Javier Godínez, president of the Mexican Association of Retirement Communities (AMAR in Spanish).
That’s where Colima’s zoning laws come into play. By explaining the concept of assisted living for zoning officials, the new amendment may help speed up approval of assisted living projects that might otherwise be mired in the bureaucratic process. And that “will make it easier for investors to be able to invest in this sector,” says Godínez.
Colima, historically a progressive state, is also one of the country’s smallest. It’s relatively unknown outside Mexico except for Manzanillo, a port and popular beach destination on Colima’s Pacific Coast. Being the first state in Mexico to zone for senior care facilities is a chance for Colima to raise its profile as a retirement industry destination.
To date, Mexican states with a large U.S. population have naturally been the first to attract investor interest. These include Guanajuato, where San Miguel de Allende is located; the Baja California peninsula; Nayarit and Jalisco, the two states of the Puerto Vallarta area; and Quintana Roo, home to Cancún and Playa del Carmen. San Luis Potosí, in the Colonial Highlands, has attracted projects thanks to the number of U.S. workers living in the area. And Mérida, capital of the state of Yucatán, recently held a conference to jump-start investor interest in that area.
While less well known, Colima lies at the southern end of what Godínez describes as the “Nayarit-Jalisco-Colima corridor” along the Pacific Coast. This corridor has several areas with sizeable U.S. and Canadian expatriate populations, making it attractive to the retirement industry. These areas include the Nayarit coast - the so-called Riviera Nayarit - and Puerto Vallarta. Colima’s port of Manzanillo, which has several thousand full- and part-time expatriates, is about 165 miles south of Puerto Vallarta.
Will Colima be able to piggy-back on investors’ interest in the area north of it? Time will tell. But “there are already people interested,” confides Godínez. |
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