Development? What development? As we bowl south from the walled city of Campeche, iguanas the size of foxes scuttle across the dual carriageway and there are tantalising sapphire flashes of the Gulf of Mexico through the trees. We negotiate the centre of a sleepy fishing village straddling a river mouth. But where are the sunshine properties a handful of potential British buyers and I have come to Mexico to check out? After about 45 minutes, we arrive at the 760-acre site for the Campeche Playa Golf, Marina and Spa resort. There are no buildings to be seen, apart from a few palapas, palm-thatched huts, on the 1.6-mile Esmeralda Beach.
But there is something much more interesting: 82 baby hawksbill sea turtles are hatching. The eggs have been brought up the beach to protect them from natural predators, and the babies, each small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, will be returned to the sea by the conservation group that occupies one of the palapas and will continue with its work when the resort is built.
Of course, we had been told there was nothing of the resort to see yet. Phase one — hotel, marina, nine holes of the Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course and 1,200 apartments — will not be completed until the end of 2008. It will be the first (currently the only) development to have been given the green light along this virgin coast.
Jorge Carlos Hurtado Valdez, governor of the state of Campeche, is in no hurry to sacrifice his domain to the kind of overdevelopment that has blighted parts of Cancun on the other side of the Yucatan peninsula. Unlike those high-density, low-budget package holiday areas, he says: “We are working hard to put Campeche on the world map, but we want to attract a niche market.”
The master plan involves investing in roads, beefing up the local airport for international flights — and encouraging residential development. “We want a combination of tourism and second homes.”
As he claims “400,000 Canadians running away from the cold leave Canada for the winter,” which is an awfully big potential rental market. He is confident they can be lured by the nature reserves that make up 40% of the state, its impressive Mayan ruins and its history and culture. Campeche city, with its grid system of gaily coloured, mainly single-storey houses within 18th-century fortifications, was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 1999.
But Valdez is adamant that none of this development will happen at the expense of the area’s “clearly regulated” ecology. Jorge Munoz, Campeche Playa’s architect, and Dr Jorge Mauricio Valdes- Pastor, an ecologist and oceanographer, had to submit a detailed “environmental impact” report showing how Grupo Mall, the Spanish developer, would manage to build 3,000 apartments and townhouses, and berths for 150 yachts, while simultaneously protecting the natural balance of Esmeralda Beach. So the turtles will be given their own 650-yard stretch of shore, more than 440 acres of the site will be left undeveloped as a “biological corridor” for mangrove swamp and endangered species, and the golf course will maintain its blemish-free greensward without the aid of pesticides.
There are nods to the local “built environment” in Munoz’s plans. The “organisational geometry” of the ancient Mayan sites, such as the pyramids of nearby Edzna was, apparently, “very inspiring” and the vivid colours that make the streetscapes of Campeche city so jolly will be putting in an appearance at the development. The tallest apartment block will be nine floors high, and buyers have a choice of beachfront or golf course locations. Every unit will have a spa bath on its terrace, where movable shades will provide respite from the tropical sun.
Prices for apartments in phase one, a seafront site, range from $238,000 (£130,000) to $345,000 (£190,000) for a two-bedder and £165,000 to £325,000 for the three-bedders. The American dollar is the usual currency for Mexican property transactions in the international market, but Grupo Mall is in talks with Spanish banks about providing euro mortgages at 70% loan to value.
Vicky O’Connor and her friend Claire Dyer, who both live in Essex, have been investing in property for a few years in a syndicate with O’Connor’s sister and their husbands. From humble beginnings with terraced houses in the north of England they now find they’re happy to look anywhere in the world “if the maths stack up”. Their last venture was in Canada.
They have put down the £3,300 reservation fee for a flat in phase one with a price tag of £130,000, on the grounds, says O’Connor, that, “there are only a few frontline beaches left in the world, and where there is you pay a massive premium — more like £500,000 than £130,000”. They foresee capital growth and decent rental income. “We haven’t seen the furniture packages, but know the kitchens and bathrooms will be Porcelanosa,” says Dyer. “If they kit it out at a certain spec we’ll be able to get premium returns.” The development, which will charge owners about $100 (£55) a month maintenance fees, will also run a lettings service.
Peter Harrison from Oxford, is another of the new breed of Brits whose interest in property has taken them from local to long-haul. He will add Campeche to a portfolio that includes South Africa (“potentially volatile”) and Canada (“stable but not dramatic returns”).
“I was sceptical, but from what I’ve seen I wouldn’t say it’s high risk,” says Harrison, who has also put down the reservation fee. “The infrastructure is there but it might take a few years to become what they want it to be. I’ll probably buy three, spin one and ultimately keep one.”
He shares a trade secret or two. “You need to negotiate the right terms on the purchase contract so you can assign the property to someone else — flip it before you even pay for it.”
He thinks that he will “offer a phase one unit at phase two prices — the benefit for the buyer is that they get immediate occupation, and you have parted with very little cash.” The hard-nosed businessman was surprised at how moving he found the turtle-hatching, although he quickly converts his awe at one of nature’s little miracles into a market perspective. “They’re a big selling point: the key to rental is repeat visits, and the turtles will bring people back.”
O’Connor and Dyer think they will attract holiday rentals from the UK — you can fly direct to Cancun, five hours’ drive away, but not yet to Campeche — but Harrison is looking to “well-heeled North Americans — a good market to have”.
Energetic and adventurous have-a-go-heroes should probably be looking within the walls of Campeche city. American buyers are already embarking on restoration projects — and it might be just the thing for jaded Brits seeking a challenge more exotic than an increasingly Ryanised Europe. Since the Unesco imprimatur, says local agent Martha Buenfil Berron, the price of houses in the historic centre — which have their exterior colour schemes chosen and maintained by the local council — have gone up by as much as 50%, and will go up “much more”.
“Probably,” qualifies her nephew Alvaro Buenfil, an architect who is nevertheless showing his confidence in the town’s property market by building a seafront block of three 200sq m (2,200sq ft)apartments just outside the city walls and pricing them at £99,000.
But it is the old houses that are a revelation. Behind the dolly-mixture facades lurk interiors that go back some 160ft, with 15ft ceilings and thousands of square feet of living space around one or more inner patios. The layouts follow a pattern: wide hall with traditional tiling, leading to a glazed garden room and, beyond that, a courtyard with, ideally, fruit trees, palms and succulents in profusion. It is a variation on the patio houses of Seville in southern Spain, though the majority are single-storey for coolness.
Berron gets us invited into the home of a local transport magnate — Campeche is the sort of friendly, open place where you can do that kind of thing — to see what a restored house is like. We inspect the old floor tiles, whose aged lustre gives them the rich patina of an antique carpet, and the bathrooms in pale local stone — and as we leave I am presented with two ripe mangoes from a tree in the inner garden. The owner paid £250,000 for the house, done up, three years ago, Berron confides, “a very good price”.
Just down the road, there’s an unrestored 5,000sq ft house (8,000sq ft including the patios) on the market for £120,000, although the owners would accept £100,000, Berron reckons. Buenfil thinks it’s in better shape than some of the “fixer-uppers” in the town, costing about £80,000 to restore, and would be worth £275,000 when it was done up.
Though, of course, Buenfil chips in, the city could do with a few more boutique hotels and upmarket B&Bs for all those discerning visitors it is trying to attract — and an eight-room house with two patios at £165,000 would be just the place Have-a-go heroics have never seemed so tempting.
