Become an Isla Mujeres millionaire

Quite a number of people have become property millionaires on Isla Mujeres over the past few yeas, and so many more could have done so, but held back because they felt land prices had peaked.

 When we first started building on Isla Mujeres we bought a plot sufficiently large to build three detached properties, each with their own private pool and gardens, for $50,000 USD. We then found that part of the land we had bought was federal land, and we negotiated the price down to $45,000 USD. Still  leaving plenty of room to build the properties.

We sold those properties quite quickly, should we have sold them? Probably not, because they went up in leaps and bounds in the following years. And the same applies to all the property we have sold over the years.

We bought a number of prime lots at South Point for $50,000 each, it seemed like a lot of money especially when a neighbor told us they had bought a large lot some years earlier for $700.00. We knew, on the one hand, the purchase was a good deal, but we had this nagging feeling we had missed the boat. We bought our lots in 2002, they had bought theirs in the eighties. They told us that at that time you could go out into the water at knee height and pluck lobsters out off the sea; a different world.

Of the six lots we bought, we sold one for $100,000 and then bought it back again in 2017 for $175,,000,  The lots are now built on, but just the land value alone is  a little under $400,000 each. The little free land that is available on Isla Mujeres will continue to go up in value.

Not realising the high cost of land on Isla Mujeres people come to the island with a view to buying property with a budget of $500.000, seeking a waterfront villa. Nowadays waterfront lots are sold for over $1,000,000. It must be disappointing to find that $500,000 doesn't buy much more than an apartment, and even then some penthouses are over $1,000,000. So we should have all held onto the property we owned on Isla Mujeres, but we didn't because we didn't have a crystal ball.

Many Americans who  visit Isla Mujeres and even those who live here are unaware that there is an excellent, highly experienced English doctor on the island who came here to do voluntary work after  hurricane Gilberto im 1988 and stayed till this day. Whist she is mainly here to support local people who often have little money, she is also quite happy to treat visitors to the island. Greta Shorey, Tel/WhatsApp, +52 998 402 6874.