Living in Cabo San Lucas vs. San Jose del Cabo

Want your Tequila straight up or…. mas suave’?

A No BS article by David Mandich – Baja California Real Estate and Consulting Advisor

Cabo San Lucas being only two beers away by plane from Southern California is fast replacing Hawaii as the preferred quick-trip exotic vacation and 2nd home buying destination for many Americans. Almost three million tourists travel to Baja California Sur each year visiting its towns, bays, beaches, islands and golf courses for an average stay of 3.5 days. Some, like me, come for a visit and never go back. Some stay for a week and return to the States with a stuffed marlin, condo, dental make-over or breast implants. Make-Overs are big here – from cosmetic dental and plastic surgery to lifestyles.  It’s all about feeling, and being young again. With the Nikki-Beach Club in Cabo to any of the surf, golf, fishing or gentlemen’s clubs that abound – Los Cabos is sure to put some life back in your life style.

So how do you make it happen? How do you find the right building lot, condo or that dream house overlooking the sea?  Where does one find the perfect casa for ones lifestyle, and per many peoples criteria… a casa that makes for a sound investment...? Do you look in Cabo? San Jose del Cabo? The mysterious East Cape? The artists colony of Todos Santos? Or perhaps someplace in between…

More below...
 

Here’s the No BS on living in Cabo San Lucas proper. The greatest percentage of luxury homes and condos in Cabo are used as vacation rentals, investments and tax write-offs. So many in fact that the local hotel association has taken umbrage and declared war on the owners who are using their homes as short-term villa rentals and competing with their hotel room rentals, time-share sales, fractional ownerships and resort condo sales. The owners receive $300 to $3,000usd per nite for their rentals – the same as the hotels charge. Given a choice – would you rather rent a luxury ocean or Cabo bay view home that sleeps eight for $400 a night or a hotel room that sleeps two for the same money? Touche’  If you want to own a five thousand square foot villa overlooking the crashing Pacific and be able to charge $3,000 per nite to wedding parties etc. to use it – then be sure to pay your fair share of the local hotel tax. That’s basically what the hotels are howling about. If you want neighbors, a sense of community, want to avoid traveling through downtown congestion – then better head out of Dodge (Cabo) to find your nirvana.
 

Cabo San Lucas is the main tourist destination for people visiting the Los Cabos area for the first time. It sits on Cabo San Lucas Bay which is flanked on the west side by a series of monumental rock formations known as Land’s End. This outcropping of land is the end of the nearly one thousand mile Baja California Peninsula where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez. The water and air temperatures can be 20 degrees cooler a few hundred feet on either side of the tip. On the inside one can snorkel in crystal clear warm waters swarming with colorful tropical fish around underwater pinnacles off the cove known as Lover’s Beach. The fish there will literally eat out of your hand as they’ve all heard the place is a game sanctuary. This is what all the tourist brochures say. But the reality is that all the friggin fish in the Sea of Cortez will eat out of your hand any day of the week if you’ve got bread, tortillas or fish entrails in your hand.

You can find crystal clear water for snorkeling for the next 900 miles beginning in Cabo and going on up the inside of the Sea of Cortez. If your fantasy place in the sun involves water sports – start in Cabo, head East and then North until you find your slice of paradise. And you can surf and wind surf all the way around the East Cape. The Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula is generally rougher, cooler in the summer (nice), and compared to the Sea of Cortez – underwater visibility for divers is much less. But compared to anywhere back home in the States – it’s ALL GOOD. Some say its paradise. If you want cooler Southern California coastal temperatures in the summer as you plan on living here year around – start looking North of Cabo. The land rush in this area right now is Cerritos, Pescadero and Todos Santos.

Cabo San Lucas is actually a part of the municipality of Los Cabos which includes San Jose del Cabo located eighteen miles to the east, and in some ways, a hundred years in the past. For all the millions of dollars in tourist hotel development in Cabo San Lucas and in the Tourist Corridor in between the two towns, San Jose del Cabo still evokes the roots and spirit of Mexico as opposed to Cabo San Lucas, with its faster paced, more commercial and touristy atmosphere. There are luxury condos on Medano beach located on Cabos bay, up on the hillsides in the luxurious Pedregal housing development and over on the Pacific side of the Lands End mountains. They’re all beautiful, affordable (compared to California beach communities) and many come with fantastic views of the Pacific, or Cabo downtown, its bay and the Sea of Cortez.

In Cabo San Lucas, one can party nearly twenty-four hours a day at the clubs, on the beaches, around the pools and on the yachts. Buying a place in Cabo is for the truly young at heart, or those who have business interests there. Those wanting to really LIVE in Mexico i.e. avoid the Cabo tourist crowds etc. may want to consider buying in San Jose del Cabo eighteen miles to the East and eighteen miles closer to the airport. Or, in the 18 mile corridor between the two towns. Some view Cabo as more like Vegas and San Jose more like Santa Barbara California but with warmer waters, colder margaritas and fewer tourists. It has soul. It was a colonial town over two hundred years old when Cabo was just a few ranch houses, a dirt airstrip and a tuna packing plant a few decades ago.

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First a note on living in Corridor developments. It’s a compromise. A big one. It’s miles of gated communities, golf courses, luxury resorts and wonderful beaches. People who buy homes or condos in the corridor enjoy the peace and relative security of living in gated enclaves. Same as some places back home in the States. Homeowners association rules keep out the local door-to-door peddlers, sound trucks advertising the circus, neighbors raising fighting cocks and other ambience destroyers.  I’ve lived in and out of these places. Personally, I kinda liked the hombre that would rattle our gate at our home in the barrio every so often to offer us fresh camarones or fish. Or on one day – a sack of live lobsters for four bucks a pound. “You come back every week” I told him… the gate is always open for you amigo. If you like to VISIT Cabo a lot, but don’t want to live IN Cabo, then the corridor is a good compromise. Just remember, major grocery stores, and other necessities will be three to ten miles away in Cabo or San Jose. Its like living in the burbs without the malls – without much of anything. Just you and your neighbors, behind those big guarded gates, next to the ocean. Oh, yes – Costco and Home Depot are across the highway on the Cabo end.

Over the past several years and ongoing, developers have been putting in scores of townhouses on the land side of the corridor at prices starting in the low 200’s and going up from there. They usually have a community pool and other amenities, and a view of Cabo bay if you’re lucky. Appreciation has been good – some doubling in value in two years. Some are safe investments, some are dicey – depending on the strength of the builder in general. One has to be circumspect when buying anything here. More so than in say California where more real estate disclosure is required. Title insurance is critical, so is working with knowledgeable professionals who will look out for your interests first. Not the developers interests. We try to do that here at BajaInsider.

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Additional Resources

Booking Activities in Cabo
Luxury Rentals in Cabo
Cabo is Booming
Group Sailing Charters in Cabo
Cabo Fishing Report