We Closed on the Mexico City Apartment (Premium)

This past week, we closed on our apartment in Mexico City and were able to stay there for most of the trip. We had a lot of work to do. And still do. But we did make some progress.

Here, I’ll provide a high-level overview of what happened this past week here for the curious and will look at some of the tech-related decisions we made for the new apartment.

We were originally supposed to close on the apartment on Monday, April 18, and six weeks prior we had booked flights, a hotel, the dog kennel, and someone to feed our cats for about a week around that date. It was a long and stressful six weeks that involved us laboriously transferring money in small amounts from our U.S.-based account to an intermediary account using a service called Wise, and then watching the exchange rate so that we could transfer it into Mexican Pesos at an opportune time. But then, just three days before our flight, we got bad news: a piece of paperwork required to complete the purchase hadn’t arrived and, because of the Easter long weekend—Mexico is a Catholic country—it wouldn’t arrive in time. We had to cancel everything.

This was deflating. And stressful because of the uncertainty: the seller had no idea when this paperwork would show up, but they would tell us when it happened and then we’d try to get there as quickly as possible. They were also nice enough to offer to refund us any change fees the flight cancelations had cost us, and that amounted to about $600. Finally, we received word, and we rebooked everything. And we flew to Mexico City last Monday, May 9, about three weeks later than originally planned.

There are two flights from Newark, New Jersey to Mexico City each day, one in the morning and one late in the afternoon. We very much prefer the earlier flight and had always taken that one to date. But because it was almost twice the cost of the later flight on this particular day, we went with the latter option. And it started off fine: we had no issues at the airport, and I heard the pilot mention to someone that we were expected to arrive in Mexico City about 45 minutes early, or around 9:30 pm. That would make a big difference because our closing was the next morning. Or it would have.

As we were approaching Mexico City, the pilot warned us that there would be bumps towards the end of the flight because of some rain. And there were. As we descended, the plane bumped around as rain hit the windows, but I just continued watching whatever movie on my iPad, knowing we’d soon be on the ground. Then my wife touched my arm. The pilot had informed the plane that we were no longer landing in Mexico City and were instead diverting to Toluca because of severe weather. Ugh.

Without dragging this out, we ended up sitting on the ground in Toluca for a few hours and arrived in Mexico City two hours late, not 45 minutes early. And by the time we got to the hotel—we had booked for three nights because we wouldn’t be able to get into the apartment until our money transfer cleared—it was 1 am. We had an 8:30 am appointment to meet in Roma Norte for a final walkthrough before the closing, and given travel times, that meant about five and a half hours of sleep.

The morning came quickly, but we ate and headed over to the place. Everything seemed fine there, so we headed over to Polanco, another area of Mexico City, for the closing, an event we were told could take most of the day. Which was great, given our general bleariness.

Here, again, I won’t belabor the point: nothing in Mexico happens quickly. Real estate closings are, if anything, just as complicated as they are in the U.S., and they involve a lot of signings of papers and checking of IDs. It was complicated by us not speaking Spanish, too, and that added time. But after a few last-minute hiccups—they wanted the payment to be split so that half came from me and a half from my wife, an impossibility, something about Mexican law and co-ownership—we were done. And we headed out with our rep for lunch, and then to try and calm down.

We were pleasantly surprised by one thing at the closing: we could meet again at the apartment at 5:00 pm that same day and they would give us the keys. This was a day or more earlier than expected, and that was appreciated: I was going to ask if we could at least be let in as needed so we could go shopping and leave stuff there. But now that wasn’t necessary. (Also, our money transfer completed in just an hour or so.)

There’s a lot of complexity to all of the things that needed to happen between electricity, gas, and Internet, but, again, I’ll cut to the chase: the seller basically hot-wired the electricity from the general area of the building so we’d have it on until the official switch and that enabled the gas to work.

And they arranged to have the Internet installed in two days. So we could have actually stayed there that night if such a thing was possible: among the things we had brought with us was an inflatable mattress. (Which we had checked in its own bag. We never check bags when we travel, but this trip was different.)

We got one set of keys that night, but we had to remain at the hotel since we had booked the three nights and I needed Internet for Windows Weekly on Wednesday.

The next day, we returned to meet with another representative from the seller, who gave us all the other keys sets—there are keys for the apartment itself, plus the front door (which also has 24/7 security), the bedroom doors (weird), the garage door (a clicker), and the storage unit. I recorded Windows Weekly from the hotel, and then we headed over to the apartment to just see what it was like at night. But again we stayed at the hotel.

On Thursday, we checked out and moved all our stuff to the apartment. It wasn’t much, but compared to what we usually travel with, it was more than usual. That day, the Internet was installed—we ended up with a base Totalplay 100/10 Mbps connection that isn’t ideal (though our upload speed is actually 150 Mbps), but will be OK for now; I’ll upgrade it later—and then started shopping.

Over the next few days, we purchased a couch, love seat, stools, and a King sized mattress from IKEA (over three trips) and had all that delivered—for just $20 per delivery for a total of $40!—and some smaller items—including a Nespresso machine—at various other places.

That was good, but we struck out on a lot of other things we need, however, including a refrigerator, washer, bed frame, various tables, seats, and lamps, and more. We will get those and other items, like a TV, on future trips.

Even in this very incomplete state, the apartment is mostly pretty great. We have some water issues—the water pressure and temperature both fluctuate, they will look at it—and one of the nights it was a bit noisy, though the rest were quiet.

We bought three fans because it gets warm during the day. (There’s no heat or AC.) Switching from an air mattress to a real mattress made a big difference. We met some neighbors, etc.

The apartment has two bedrooms and we’re going to use one as an office with a futon or similar for when our kids are there, or we have guests.

My wife and I plan to split our working time between that room, the kitchen table, and the bedroom, as needed, and this is similar to what we do on home swaps. We haven’t figured out a good desk setup yet, despite lots of looking at various stores. I hate shopping, and I did a lot of shopping on this trip.

I’m going to leave a laptop setup here that is similar to the More Mobile setup detailed here so that I can travel light when I visit. The only difference is that I brought a full-sized Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and Mouse (like I use at home) instead of a portable keyboard. And I won’t keep the USB microphone here because I’ll need it when I travel otherwise. But not carrying all that stuff home will be nice.

We were originally going to forego any smart home equipment, but we’ve both decided that we’d like to get some form of Nest/Ring/whatever smart lock/doorbell/whatever, and we’ll get a Google Nest Hub Max (or similar) for the kitchen counter, as we like our current Google smart display. So much for that.

We will need a TV and some kind of speaker system, most likely a Dolby Atmos soundbar—Sonos Arc or similar—that can double for music. We don’t really need whole-house anything per se because the place is so small. That means the Totalplay router is fine—the speeds seem consistent throughout—and that multi-room audio isn’t required. But those are problems for a future trip as well.

As I write this, there is a woman discussing blackout blind options with my wife—we have big windows here, and the Mexican sun can be brutal during the day—and we have someone coming later to discuss a Trex composite surface for our balcony. And that will be it for this trip, because we fly home tomorrow. It’s been another whirlwind.

Also, I guess I should reveal that my wife and I are trying to figure out a way to write more formally about what we’ve done and what our experiences are like, both so far and going forward. As you may know, we had at one time discussed starting a home swap blog and we in fact created a lot of content for that before COVID-19 hit and changed everything. We’re not entirely sure what form this will take, but we will use the Eternal Spring name. There is a YouTube channel with some starter videos available now—nothing useful yet—and there will be a blog.

And I guess that’s it for now. I’ll have more as soon as possible, though I don’t believe I can go back to Mexico until August. My wife and daughter will probably visit in June and get more shopping done.