Right now I’m in Merida, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula (3 hours west of Cancun and a short flight from Miami or Mexico City) where a lot of expats have winter houses, so I thought a Manhattan/ Merida comparison would be fun. A real estate broker friend, Ross Schiering, just sold a spectacular house he designed and built, Mesón Mejorada, for $760,000, so that was my budget for a New York comparison. It is enormous with 4 bedrooms, a huge portico, master suite with a sitting room, giant closets, a shower for 6, and tree atrium facing the pool, pavilion, yard, roof terrace and more. (The downside with anything in Merida? All cash.)
For that $$ in the NYC you get a nice little one bedroom apartment in Soho. It’s sort of the difference between a used Kia Sportage verses a new Mercedes 450SL, but in the used Kia, you can get to MoMA in 10 minutes, in the Mercedes it takes 10 hours.
In NYC this is a one bedroom in SoHo on Thompson Street on a great block. It’s not a steal but it’s a competitive price for good apartment with a reasonable monthly maintenance of $900. (No photo of the bathroom, so it must not be so hot…)
I’m probably not getting a house in Merida anytime soon (prices are rising fast) but now you CAN get a fixer-upper colonial house in Centro for $60-100,000. You’ll need to put that much more into it for updated wiring, new kitchen bath and a pool. Here’s a newly renovated one I was in last night for a party that is $289,000.
And here’s an amazing one new to the market for $699,000. Have a look around to see what you can get in Merida for YOUR cash $$.