Any Canadians who have retired/immigrated to Cozumel?

[budaman]

Well, we vote on all those assessments. If the place is well run, they should not sneak up on you. We have relatively long discussion for special assessment of $290. Depends on the condo association I guess. Our dive tank was on pledges. I don't imagine it would have passed on an assessment vote.

We looked at Budman's place when were were looking for a place. They are very nice with the top deck and all, but we wanted a little bigger for bringing family and friends along.

If we ever come into some more peso's, we've thought about buying the other top floor unit from Henny and connecting them. Other than sleeping, we don't spend much time in the condo...most of the time up on deck!

 

[judydivescoz]

Hi Judy!

Now that I connect you here, I think we dove together several years ago before we bought. Stayed at ScubaClub during Carnaval in 2010. Went back in August & bought the condo. ScubaII because we were all taking pics. Was that you? I think it was Debbie cracking all the blond jokes.


Mike

Must be the wrong Judy! I have never stayed at ScubaClub. During Carnival 2010 I stayed with a friend who lives in Corpus Christi and dove with Albatros Charters and Blue Xta Sea. Must admit, blond jokes are popular amongst my Cozumel peeps! Looking forward to diving, visiting friends and enjoying your condo.

 

[BTravlin]

Hubby is worried about the special assessments. Surprise! You owe us $5K. LOL A friend had to cough up $10K to fix the underground parking garage but I don't thin Coz condos have that, do they?

Thanks for sharing

We have a place a El Cantil and, as Marg said, it does have underground parking. No problems so far (knock on wood).

As for special assessments, we voted to increase our HOA fees so that a portion goes into a reserve account until a limit is reached and then it disappears until the account is tapped for some project, say a new roof. Much easier to plan a budget.

We looked at just about every condo on the island plus a few houses before choosing El Cantil. The biggest draw for us was the location on the water near town. We can walk to the main square in an easy ten minutes and have two grocery/dept stores within a block of the front door. We're making the big move in 2014 and the convenience factor will be huge as we grow older. Speaking of which, I wouldn't mind being two years older right about now.

Hope you guys find something that's a good fit for you!

 

[Mike]

Hubby is worried about the special assessments. Surprise! You owe us $5K. LOL A friend had to cough up $10K to fix the underground parking garage but I don't thin Coz condos have that, do they?

Thanks for sharing

It certainly can happen. Some of it depends on how the HOA is run. With owners involved in running the HOA, you usually see people resisting having to pay for major repairs until the very last minute, this can be a bad thing too, especially if for instance it's a major roof issue and nobody wants to vote okay to fix it because you all found out it's going to be a huge expense due to the poor way the condo roofing was constructed, it's great to vote no and stall it out as long as you're not one of the owners who is on the top floor and is experiencing the leaking. On the other hand, HOAs run by a third party have no skin in the game and spend money sometimes a bit too freely for the owners tastes.

I have different rentals here in the states and have many different HOAs to deal with, and all I can say is everyone of them is completely different, some are hands off, some are crazy with seems like no rhime or reason to what they do, some are run well financially and some seem to be run by idiots, some are continually hounding my tenants, and some you can't find with a search warrant. I have no idea how you can guarantee what you'll experience, since even if you buy only after asking around and feel comfortable with the way the HOA currently runs, it doesn't mean that within 5 years things won't change completely. I;d want an HOA that ends up somewhere in the middle, with some sensibility to how they spend your money, but also isn't scared to spend it when they need to. Nothing worse than having a property in a complex with an HOA who doesn't or can't maintain it and watching the place deteriorate into a dump, making it impossible to sell out if you want to.

Be careful of places that are too small also, since you need some scale to the ownership to spread out costs. Buying into a 6-8 unit complex would make me very nervous. The newer the complex the less likely you are to see any big assessments for awhile, but buy into a place 20-30 years old and you might end up timing it badly and end up having to shell out a lot of money as maintenance has gotten to the point that they are spending huge sums of money because they've put things off for so long.

It's a real crap shoot, I get assessments now and then from the places I own, it's no fun, but I don't think you can totally avoid them.