From the Editor’s Desk: Fear (Premium)

We had an interesting conversation with a couple we met in Mexico City who were looking to buy an apartment in our area. In some ways, they are a lot like Stephanie and me, but a bit older and already retired. And they already split their time between the U.S. (San Diego) and Mexico (Puerto Vallarta), but are looking for a place with more moderate weather, which I certainly understand.

Anyway, it's always interesting comparing notes with people who have had similar life experiences, and there was plenty to discuss. They had made an offer on an apartment in the northern part of Roma Norte with a nice view of the Reforma skyline, the same row of skyscrapers we can see from our own apartment if we stick our heads around the corner of the building from the balcony. (Our place faces south and is further away.) But when the owner made a counter-offer, the price he came back with was higher than the original selling price.

I almost spit out my drink at that. Wait, what?

From what they could gather, the seller had discovered they were American and had jacked up the price. This was a private sale, with no intermediaries, and this couple had reached out to us because they had seen our YouTube channel were curious if we knew people in the area—someone to negotiate on their behalf, and a notario, which in Mexico is the equivalent of a lawyer—who could help them. We have good references for both, which is mostly luck on our part, but they certainly helped with our own purchase, so we texted them the contact info.

I was a bit outraged by news of the price hike, but the husband of this couple was more concerned about what this meant for the apartment they had fallen in love with. From what they said, they could still afford the new selling price—which was now about $70,000 more than before in U.S. dollars—but they were worried about what this meant down the line. What would happen later if they ever wanted to sell the place?

Sorry, what?

This confused me. A back and forth ensued in which the four of us tried, badly, and using the calculators on our phones, to figure out how some future change in the peso to dollar exchange rate might or might not impact them—and, on that note, my wife and me too—in the future. I have a hard enough time doing math at the even 20-to-1 peso to U.S. dollar exchange rate that no longer exists, given the relative strength of the peso these days. But at a bit under a 17-to-1 exchange rate, I'm in over my head: A rounding error on a dinner tab is one thing, but when you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, you need to get this right.

So we all did math, and we all blurted out mostly innacurate results, guessing what the world would look like if this exchange rate trend continued and, alternatively, what things would like if the dollar rebounded. The truth is, no one knows what's going to happen. And of the four people at the table, only my wife understood that selling the apartment now w...