The Space for Expatriates

Living in Los Cabos: First Quarter Market Report

Mark Twain said it best: “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.”

So many people told me they enjoyed the market report I put out at New Year’s that I thought a quarterly would be even better. And best yet? Our MLS system has a nifty feature I just found that will automatically generate a pretty table summarizing our market activity. Of course I found that feature after I’d done manual searches to pull out the data. Sigh. Which is how I began to notice some discrepancies in the data.

For example, my searches found there were 64 listings pended in the first quarter (that means an offer has been accepted but the deal isn’t closed yet). Yet their table for the same time frame and the same areas shows 105 listings pended. Big difference! Turns out they were double counting: once the listing closed it wasn’t taken out of pending. There were a number of other problems even within their document and after spending a frustrating few hours with their tech support group trying to find out why nothing jived I’ve decided to do this the old fashioned way. At least I know where I got my numbers! So here are the numbers for closed sales and pending sales from January 1, 2011 to March 28, 2011 as taken from the FLEX MLS system (manually):

	2011 YTD

	AREA	Number	Low Price USD	High Price USD
Pended	Cabo San Lucas	9	240,000	2,700,000
	San Jose	26	119,000	4,500,000
	Corridor	20	74,500	4,100,000
	East Cape	9	30,000	600,000
	Total	64


Closed	Cabo San Lucas	8	65,000	2,075,000
	San Jose	13	80,000	920,000
	Corridor	15	170,000	4,600,000
	East Cape	5	6,000	250,000
	Total	41

The good news is that activity is up, particularly for Palmilla (must be the movie star factor) and very affordable properties. And interest rates for third party mortgages just tumbled, with rates being offered as low as 5.75%.

Bottom line: we’re a long ways from where we were, but things are definitely looking up. And that’s no statistic!

Carol Billups is Broker/Owner of REALTY EXECUTIVES Los Cabos. A Certified Home Marketing Specialist, she has enjoyed working with both buyers and sellers for over ten years and still thinks hers is the best job on earth. She is also the real estate columnist for Los Cabos Magazine and Chairman of the AMPI Los Cabos Board of Realtors. You can read more of her articles on www.reloscabos.com. You can reach her from the U.S. or Canada at 1-760-481-7694, or in Cabo at 044-624-147-7541.