We have some goals for our trip in March to Puerto Rico. Most obviously, we want to look for a property to buy in the western side (Aguada, Rincon, Mayaguez area). This is difficult because in Puerto Rico there is no MLS (multiple listing service), so you have to go with various real estate agents to see houses and you have to look all over the place. The best place we have found so far online is Clasificadosonline. It seems that most Puerto Ricans haven’t gotten too much into Craigslist, which I think is an absolute necessity here in Colorado. But Clasificadosonline pretty much fills that need in PR.

Anyhow, it is difficult to gauge the market in PR because of the lack of MLS or central resource of properties. Plus, a lot of people sell as the owner without a real estate company involved at all. We are planning on seeing a house with a real estate agent (Jose Marti Realty) and asked if we could see others with him, including others he has listed and he tried to sell us a house-hunting service! ! For like $500 a day just to drive around with the realtor! That is ridiculous. I can’t imagine it is such a seller’s market that they are discouraging possible buyers through this “service”.  If I were selling my house, I wouldn’t put it through this company just for that reason alone.

So our main goal is to find a place that works with what we are looking for (a little bit of land and a comfortable house that we can rent out a portion of, not too far from the beaches and a town) and put in an offer. We would like to close on it this year if possible. We are not sure if we would be moving out right away or what, but we would like to have a property ready for us.

Other goals include meeting some of our blog friends and enjoying Puerto Rico as we always do. We are flying in to San Juan, although I am getting very tempted to fly into Aguadilla, but we just never have before. Then from there we are taking a rental car to Rincon where we are staying as roommates with two women who rent out their house in that way. We talked with one of them on the phone and she sounds like she will help us out in finding a place as well.

We also found this great reggae musician, Mishka, and so we plan on listening to a lot of his music in the rental car while we are driving around.