Category Archives: Travel

Countdown to Encanto

6 Replies

We are about to start the countdown to Puerto Rico, La Isla del Encanto (Isle of Enchantment). In approximately one month, on May 21 we will be on our way. We are planning on being down there for 2 weeks and we hope to close that Monday or Tuesday. We have lined up an air mattress (thanks Rosa and Summer and Stefan for this!) and will be staying our first few nights with the Kruses.

We’ve also called to cancel the other deal. We wish that it hadn’t worked out like that. The place in Isabela was an excellent deal with nice land and house, and we had every intention of buying it. On the other hand, if we hadn’t signed the contract for that place, we wouldn’t have been so bold with our negotiating to get the deal in Rincon talked down by $170,000 from what it was listed, and $270,000 discount from its original price! So it seems that everything has happened for a reason- it’s just sometimes you can’t tell it when it’s happening real time. 


Our place will be sort of near the border of barrios Puntas and Rio Grande

Our lawyer David, a friend of the Kruses, is also willing to close in Rincon and has asked us to remind him to pull the title work the week before we close to make sure no last minute liens are placed.

We have our plane tickets to Aguadilla. We still need to secure the car rental and find out what the situation is with the water/electricity. I would like to talk with the current owners of the house and let them know they can leave the hammocks, books, etc. We would love to have them. I’d also like to find out the history of the place. When it was first developed, who the builder was of the wood house and the cement studio cabana, etc. Some of that we might find out from the title search.

In any case, there’s a lot to be excited about! We are scared and happy all at the same time. This is a culmination of a lot of hard work and focus. Britton always says, “Step one: buy a place in Puerto Rico”. Boy there sure have been a lot of steps to get to Step One!

So stay tuned! In about a month there will be some major activity…

What do you think of this post?
  • WOW (0)
  • Awesome (0)
  • Interesting (0)
  • Useful (0)
  • Bummer (0)
  • Whoa (0)

On Our Way to a Life in Rincón

7 Replies



The gate to the property, if you look straight above the agent’s head you’ll see the ocean!!

Well, things are moving right along. We are on our way to living in Rincón, Puerto Rico -or at least we’re at the first step of buying a house there. Here’s a list of things we’ve done so far to buy this place:

  1. We have received the final signed contact by all parties.
  2. They’ve deposited our escrow/earnest money.
  3. We’ve contacted and started the inital work with our lawyer (a friend of the Kruses, thanks for the recommendation guys)!
  4. We’ve received approval for our time off of work (two weeks, end of May).
  5. We are pulling our money together from various accounts.

Things we still need to do:

  1. Book a flight to BQN-Aguadilla. Britton says we will never again fly into San Juan if our final destination is the west coast of Puerto Rico!
  2. Get started on the lawyer stuff -title registry look up, writing up the deed of sale, etc. Our lawyer says we can wait another month or so to make sure nothing ties up the property (like a lien) between now and the sales date
  3. Cancel the Isabela deal
  4. Pick the closing date
  5. Reserve a rental car
  6. Confirm where we’ll stay when we get there before we close
  7. Get the cashier’s check for remaining balance
  8. Get a blow-up mattress to sleep on when we first stay the night there! 🙂
  9. Prepare for the adventure of our lives!
What do you think of this post?
  • WOW (0)
  • Awesome (0)
  • Interesting (0)
  • Useful (0)
  • Bummer (0)
  • Whoa (0)

From Up Above

Leave a reply

Well I found the property on Google Maps.  It looks as though my memory was right in that we are the only house in the area.   I had a GPS location from my phone I grabbed during my last visit but I couldn’t figure out exactly where it was at.  We are excited for this new year and the things it will bring. The real estate agent received our contract, so we are on our way to an exciting year!


Click for larger View

There are 2 clearings (triangle shaped and one directly across from the property that is squarish shaped).  The clearing across the street had been filled in with Greenery by the time I got there but the triangle clearing was pretty much the same from what I remember.

Both areas would make for good places to build additional housing.  In total there are 11 cuerdas (acres).  Our plan today is to build another cabana and a pool on the property and visit as often as we can.  Over the next couple of years we will work towards moving permanently.

We have a plot plan and I am trying to match it up to the picture so we know our borders.  That will help us with the planning out of where to build the next structure and where to put our pool!

Well I wanted to put up a brief update as to what we were doing.   I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and has a happy new year!

What do you think of this post?
  • WOW (0)
  • Awesome (0)
  • Interesting (0)
  • Useful (0)
  • Bummer (0)
  • Whoa (0)

Compromise Accepted

8 Replies

We had asked for a closing date June 15 and the sellers came back saying that they only wanted to do 90 days (March). We responded that we could probably swing May 15. They came back wanting to know why we want to delay. This is the response Britton and I sent them:

 Well we have a few reasons.  We are trying to leave enough time to gather our financial resources, secure vacation time from our jobs to travel to PR to close as well as contact a lawyer who can verify and check the title work, surveys, and inspections for us.  We know that this takes some time because we have tried to buy a house in Puerto Rico before and we uncovered some title issues which caused the closing date to be continually pushed out. 

 We want to give ample time for this process plus we have to coordinate everything from Colorado which makes it a little more difficult.

 I want to let the sellers know that we are very serious about purchasing the property at the proposed price and time.  I hope we can come to an agreement that will please everyone involved. 

 I think we laid it out just about as clearly as possible. The only thing we didn’t suggest was that lowering the price could possibly make this happen more quickly. We didn’t want to go back two steps– to negotiating price again. So we waited…and yesterday we received the response back:

     Hi Britton,

      I spoke to the sellers, they have agreed to the terms, we will go

     thru with the deal, hope everything will go o.k..

       We will draw up the contract, please let me know if we can e-mail

     you the  contract or have it faxed.

So…it sounds like we are buying this property in May! Hooray! Well, we can’t get too excited yet. There is still a lot of work to do and as we mentioned in the email to her if any of those things goes wrong, it could push the date out. It is not exactly like buying property in the states even though I am glad this isn’t my first house-buying ‘rodeo’ or I’d be even more freaked out.  

But, this is a huge step! The compromise has been accepted!


Soon we will be hanging out in the jungle in our hammock

What do you think of this post?
  • WOW (0)
  • Awesome (0)
  • Interesting (0)
  • Useful (0)
  • Bummer (0)
  • Whoa (0)