I didn't think Americans were allowed to buy property in Mexico?
Last I heard was you got a 99 year lease. Only way to buy property was marry a Mexican citizen. This was about 5 years ago when a friend of a friend moved there.
I seem to recall that Americans cannot buy property within a certain distance of the border. i think the Mexicans are afraid Americans will buy property close to the border and then declare it part of the United States. I think the distance is somewhere between 70 to 100 miles.
"I didn't think Americans were allowed to buy property in Mexico?"
They aren't. They get a 99-year lease. Of course, since a 30 + individual will probably not have another 99 years in him or her, it's not much of a problem.
There's a lot more that goes with living in Mexico--- additional paperwork that allows you to move freely between the States and Mexico without a visa or passport, a legal "pay-off" to the local big shot (Paternos?), and more. My brother-in-law had a place in Punta Mita, just north of Puerto Vallarta and was always applying and sending paperwork (and cash) for one thing or another. He lived in a beautiful gated community on a hill above the ocean. We'd sit in the heated whirlpool outside his condo, swim in the pool and laughingly wonder what the poor people were doing.
I soon found out. We'd cruise the "village" below the hill, and it would kill me...packs of skinny dogs, some with a leg missing, that would run in packs---dirty kids living in adobe huts, no windows or doors on the building, potholes in the mud "streets" bigger than craters on the dark side of the moon.
Every six months or so, the federalis would dump a truck load of poisoned meat on the edge of town for the dogs and come back a few days later to dig a ditch and bull-doze the dead dogs into the hole...yeah, just like Hotel California.