STR or cell in Cabo Mexico

[Sharon Bonadie]

Hi. I'm trying to get advice on how I can determine whether i should keep my new condo for STR or sell it and purchase something in the US. I'm new at this and not sure which option is best long term. Appreciate any guidance or suggestions.

[Mike Lambert]

@Michael Baum

While I know quite a bit about the Mexican market indeed (thanks for the shoot out), what I'm going to write below can be understood by anyone as I think it's kinda common sense.

The average US traveler might in theory avoid Mexico and Cabo because of the violence but the reality is that they don't. That violence has been going on for decades and not only the number of American visitors and residents has kept increasing, that growth has been accelerating lately.

While that might seem counterintuitive to some, if you calculate the total number of victims of random shootings in the US in schools of grocery store parkings or other places, you'll find out that they way outnumber the amount of the US deaths in Mexico due to violence. While the latter have been highly publicized, at the end of the day people aren't stupid and they know about all their friends and family members who regularly go to Mexico and come back without anything bad ever happening to them.

I arrived in Cabo today and it's packed with Americans and fellow Canadians and increasingly people from other countries. I had to wait for the last minute to do my short-term rental booking and 86% of the inventory was unavailable! No surprise. Rental rates are through the roof. Don't take my word for it and check on Airbnb if you need any convincing.

This shouldn't come as a surprise given that traffic at Cabo airport in January was up 34% compared to the year before, following growths of 22.4% and 25.4% in the prior years!!! Compounded over the three years, this is huge. Can you find me an airport in the US that has a performance that gets even close to that?

Finally, allow me this analogy. Even though I risk getting run over by a car when crossing the street, I still do it because the statistics tell me that the odds of being run over are very low. It's the same thing for Americans traveling to Mexico and being shot dead.