About to Sign My First Mexican (Yucatecan) Lease

Like she promised, my real estate agent sent me a copy of my lease to peruse before the official signing tomorrow. As expected, it was six legal size pages of bla bla bla that could mostly be summarised in a few sentences.

As a former rental agent and tenant in Canada, I was first struck by what was not in the lease — the monthly rental amount and terms for renewal — and what was considered pertinent, like the owner’s proxy’s person details (age, address) and the exact specifications and location of the house (things I’d expect to see in a legal land description), rather than just an address.

Otherwise, the lease was exactly as I expected, with the standard clauses about having to pay my utilities, returning the house in the condition in which it was received, not subletting, and not turning the house into a meth lab (that clause was more PC than that, but that’s what they mean). I have zero qualms signing that document, although I do have a few questions, like what are the terms, if any, for renewal. The lease says that I have to vacate in two years, but it’d be good to know today if there is zero hope for a renewal or if the owners are also hoping this works out well enough for a renewal.

The other thing we need to clarify is the address, which is super confusing. The address is given as actually being in Colonia Felipe Carrillo Puerto. If I put my address into Google Maps or my GPS using that colonia, I end up right across the city. You can see my colonia at the top left there, but in red at the bottom right is the area that Google and the GPS think is my colonia.

What I’m worried about are silly guests ignoring my instructions and insisting on using just an address, as well as deliveries, but since with the latter, you have to give the nearest intersections and, ideally, a landmark, as well as your postal code I should be fine.

Now, here’s to hoping I actually get access to keys tomorrow so I can go take pictures! I don’t have any other listing ones really worth sharing as a teaser, but here’s part of the master closet. It has its own window so it could actually double as a secondary bedroom as I’m sure there’s enough room in there for a full size mattress and it also has a ceiling fan!

I’ve started to window shop for what I need to move in so I can firm up my budget. A mattress will be new, of course, but since I have a good mattress topper, I can get something on the lower end of the scale. I’m going used for appliances, though. A super cheap placeholder fridge fell through, but it made me realise that I should get a super cheap placeholder fridge for now and upgrade later. I’m also waiting to hear about about a reasonably priced Bosch range. It was immediately evident from the photos that it’s better than even a higher end Mabe because it had cast iron grills, rather than cheap enamelled ones that will wear down and rust. I am not opposed to a Mabe fridge and washer, though.

I really don’t want to buy anything until I actually have access to the house to avoid having to move things twice or worry about storing them in the meantime since the storage room here is pretty small. It’s going to be wonderful to start moving in and see my new home take shape!

Now, I leave you with this curious fact from my lease that surprised me, considering how big the house is. The house lot is about 4,600 square feet, with the house being about 2,600 square feet. My “small” lot at Haven is 5,000 square feet!