Almost Local #68 | 15 Years in Mexico: Why This American Won't Leave with Greg Gunter

Discover what makes San Miguel de Allende one of the world’s most beloved expat destinations through Greg Gunther’s firsthand experience. From cultural adaptation to real estate insights, this episode charts a path for those considering a long-term move or investment in this vibrant Mexican town.

In this episode:

• Greg’s journey from a US architect and developer to a full-time expat in Mexico
• How San Miguel de Allende’s rich history preserves its architectural beauty and charm
• The exponential growth of the expat community and the town’s transformation over 17 years
• Practical tips on integrating into local life, including language learning and social scenes
• The affordability and cost of living advantages compared to the US and Europe
• A deep dive into real estate opportunities, neighborhood gentrification, and finding the perfect home
• Navigating healthcare in San Miguel de Allende: facilities, access, and quality
• Cultural nuances like the ‘mañana’ attitude and living the local lifestyle
• The importance of research and choosing the right neighborhood for comfort and safety
• How digital tools and social networks simplify moving and settling in

🎙️ Guest: Greg Gunter
An American architect-turned-real-estate broker who has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for more than 15 years. He helps other foreigners and prospective buyers understand the city, its neighbourhoods, and what it takes to settle into life there successfully.

🔗 Guest Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamprohomes/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SanMiguelDreamProHomes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dreamprohomes/
Website: https://dreamprohomesluxury.com/
Email: greg@gregorygunter.com
Phone: +1 877-878-4141

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Transcript

Today's guest is an American who's been living full time in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico since 2009, and who spent years helping other foreigners make the move from dreaming about Mexico to actually building a life there.
In this conversation, we get to both sides of it. The instant romance of arriving to a place and then the slower and real work of adapting to a different rhythm.
You arrive as an architect, first time you get off the bus or the plane or you walk in a tunnel, wow, this place is gorgeous because it's got so much preserved architecture. We were in those towns for about 80 years. So we've retained a lot of that old historic architecture and that's what makes anybody it's visually, yet into design, architecture and that sort of thing. You fall in love with this town the first time you browse the shore.
But once the beauty becomes your everyday, the real question is how do you live here with the paperwork, the community, the trade-offs and the cultural differences that don't show up on Instagram?
This part of the culture that I have to say is that many of us Americans are used to being played on. We have what we call the manana attitude in Mexico.
Today on Almost Local, the living abroad story of Greg Gunter. Let's start. Who is Greg Gunter for anyone who doesn't know you exactly? Well, I'm an ex-pat on the American, I was born and raised in the United States. I'm an ex-pat who's lived in central Mexico for 17 years. I lived in a little town called San Miguel de Argentina.
Dende, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in a lot of towns in Italy also.
And we were just named the number one small city in the world again for the seventh
year by Connie Nesbella.
Number one small city, I joked, I mean, as much as I love Florence, even Florence
hasn't been named another one city that will have me with IDO.
So I'm in a, I came down after the, you need to get into this more, I don't know
how it's supposed to do with my introduction, but I, I was a retail
developer in the United States and this little thing called the Great Recession
happened and wiped me out.
And I had already decided that I wanted, I thought it was going to be
semi-articulating in Mexico.
So when the Great Recession happened, I lost my business and my homes and basically
my entire network at least had one home waiting for me in San Miguel, at the end.
They had already built and I just hadn't been happy yet.
I said, well, I guess that's the sign it's time to move to San Miguel, the end date.
But I tell my clients and people that I did the Zen Buddhist thing, I adopted the
same belief and then that will appear because I came down there with a home, but
that's it no connections, no friends down there didn't know anybody and no one is
going to do for business.
So it was a very interesting and challenging adaptation, you know, I guess
we'll probably get into it as we go for the interview.
Absolutely.
So you said you're originally from United States, which part of the US you come from?
Kind of joking, when a Mexican asked that they need to know where were you born because
they don't really, and they respond in the same way, they don't really understand the
concept of a nuclear family, but we were a nuclear family.
My dad is basically working for the military so we moved here every nine months.
So even though I can say I was born in Wyoming, that was a wait for nine months
then we moved to the next place.
So I moved 28 times when I was a kid.
Wow.
Okay.
That's a lot.
I mean, it also trained you to move then, I suppose to Mexico, if you are used to
rebuilding so often and that also suppose affected a little bit your move to Mexico.
Obviously.
Obviously, I was used to coming up and moving to new places and meeting people the hard way.
So yes, I suppose that was a good acclamation for moving to Mexico.
Absolutely.
You said that you were already kind of like working inside of the world of real estate
and development back in the US.
Well, it was a different career.
I'm an architect by train so my background is architecture.
I was doing residential architecture.
I've been building homes since I was 15 and building homes with my own hands.
Since I was 15, I was the only kid in architecture school that ever built something before the
architecture school.
So I worked as an architect for a few years, but I made some kind of stuff in
the United States.
So I went back and got my any in real estate and I was a retail developer.
Really most of my career, but ironically, I've been in sales since I was eight years
old. My first job was selling a weekly newspaper going door to door, knocking on door.
And would you like to buy this week's issue of a newspaper?
But I do that since I was eight.
So, you know, the time my residential architecture experience of my sales experience
transitioning to becoming a little to seem to be a natural segment for me.
So I came down and I took out thinking originally that it's like my thing, the public
license, which I know I get as well as a large part of the state also.
But I did a couple of years of that said, waited to be full-time.
Will say I own the work.
Sure. I opened it the very first workshop that way on services franchise for all of
Mexico. So I was the first in flagship office from the country.
Well, OK.
A little brand by Warren Buffett.
Did you do that Warren Buffett?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's an impressive curriculum.
Now, like when you hear architect, MBA, like real estate development and broker, like
everything, like it's a lot.
And it feels like how you said when you moved to Mexico, you came here a little bit like
with, yes, with a house, which is a good thing to have when you move somewhere, but
nothing else, no connections.
So you needed to rebuild from scratch at that moment.
How was those early chapters in your life abroad in Mexico?
Ironically, one of the ways that I met people very quickly here, and we're really very
friendly ex-pat community here.
So just to get the views a little bit of background about where I live, we're a city of about
175,000 people, but we have about 30,000 American ex-pat that live here.
So that's a pretty good chunk of ex-pat.
And we know we are like the third largest ex-pat community in Mexico, but the most English
and the most popular.
One of the bigger ex-pat communities is Tijuana in the south of San Diego.
Because so many people, they live in Tijuana because it's cheaper than driving across the border.
They work in San Diego.
It isn't what counts as an ex-pat community.
So we're an ex-pat community where people are living really free and a real community.
Some of us work here.
And so it's a very popular town, and it has become a big ex-pat destination.
A lot of people love this second home, second, third or fourth home, or they'll be climbing the destination.
The transition of moving in this.
Yeah.
So what I was starting to say was, "I'm not an introverted guy.
I'm not a shy introverted guy.
Don't be good at that."
I really say I'm an introvert.
I can be extroverted and outward when I need to be, but you know, my natural tendencies would be
kind of in the midst of it.
So I created, and I love to write, so I created with our local newspaper.
We have a lot of people who work with newspaper.
I said, "Oh, you use social call."
So I said, "You know, would you let me write a social call?"
And he said, "Sure."
So that forced me, it gave me the opportunity to go out to social events.
You know, we have a lot of nonprofits here that have social events and fundraisers and parties and
things like that.
And so I'd go out and I would cover those.
Yeah.
So I'd take photos of everybody.
I'd say, "I'll give you your name so I can write your name down for the article."
So that was a really good way for me to meet people quickly.
So I didn't have to meet anybody in town.
That was the best way for me to meet people.
I was going to eat social events at two, three, four times a week.
And you meet a lot of people, and of course, they remember me.
So that was a really good way to enter the world of the edge tech, even though you were meeting a lot
of myself, ex-bats, and that was a great introduction.
It was a lot of fun things to do also.
Yeah. And then once I got into real estate, which is very quick, but I was in real estate, I did enough to, you know,
it's an ambitious effort to build a community.
So everybody jokes that I'm the mayor of San Miguel.
In fact, the mayor of the Greenville area of San Miguel, everybody has to know me, you know, I mean, I'm big on my face.
I do more marketing than anybody else in town.
So it's been a good segue.
We're a very friendly town, so it's really super fun.
I'll walk across town and three people will say hi.
I'm like, no, no, two of them. There ain't no need to, there's so much marketing.
Everybody says hi to each other.
Even the Mexicans. So I live in an obviously Mexican community.
I had to kind of think that this market, I love Italian, I'm a lot of Italian language.
I used to speak a little more Italian, but I don't really have a very big language chip up here to bring.
So I had to kind of forget my Italian so I could learn my Spanish.
And so the Mexicans are very friendly.
They don't like these ideas, you know, a little bit of the sounds like this, you know, the Mexicans will say, you know, what is the S?
You know, one journal, what is the S?
You know, all the client. It's a very fun community.
So we really love that about moving this community that's such a warm and welcoming community.
Both from the American standpoint and the Mexican standpoint.
Interesting.
How much has it changed?
Like, first, like I think I read, you moved there since you were there since 2009?
So that's quite a lot of years.
Exactly.
How much does this town change?
Because it's getting to 20 years of living in a place.
So I suppose you've seen also a lot of change, both from the expert perspective and from the local communities reacting to their town also switching in time.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, I bought my first piece of land to build that first home 19 years ago and when I bought that, even the anniversary story, I mean, it was a little, it's too cold.
It's the end of the world shop and it was in central that was the size of the center.
And that was it.
Yeah, it wasn't only the grocery store side by side.
I bought it in 30 minutes to do the closest grocery store here next town.
By the time I moved here 17 years ago, we had made a super store already built.
I mean, one of the super stores you needed, you know, it's like, I'm trying to think of, you know, like the client or something like that.
And we got one of these markets, we needed roller stakes to put all in a box, you could buy a loaf of bread, 100 inch TV, a refrigerator, and that's even two things, you know, and one sheet all in the same store.
So we have one of those open and we now have a great wide grocery stores and one of it was like the whole foods on steroids.
It's like that ordinary market.
Like in my mind, we would have never dreamed of that 72 years ago.
So the town really has changed.
Now I moved there, we probably had about 12,000 inch cats.
Now we have about 30,000.
We've been named, as I said, we would earn the U.S.
registered designation 2008 best before I moved there, but of course that makes a big difference.
Once we get that official U.S. registered designation, we rely on the rest of the properties to add.
And that's about when we started beaming the number one city in the world.
So as you see, we've had that happen seven times in the last 15 or so years.
And that gives us a wide international question every time that happens.
You go, I'm definitely going to go visit this town.
It's the number one city in the world, you know, and they count me go, wow, we go over all year.
So that has really spurred on more fear of moving here and calling it a home.
And did it.
And probably 70% of them, it's the second or third or fourth home, but about 30% of them are like me.
I've been here for a full time.
It's my only home.
I don't really stay in the United States anymore.
So this is, it's just, you know, why they're carrying me out in urban in 30 or more years.
I go, I love this place.
Never leave.
Did you love it from the first moment also, like it was arriving and saying, oh, I could live here forever.
It really was Mark.
And the funny thing I did, I'm an architect and this is a 500 year old city.
So like a lot of the religious, so one of my favorite appearances Mark is cheating
at any other issue down here.
Oh, yeah.
So you get in there.
He got out.
I know, I know.
He did.
I've been beautiful.
And part of the reason he's here was because it was a ghost town for 200 years.
You know, the bridge got destroyed.
So it was a ghost town.
So it didn't get rebuilt.
And so it looks just like a bit 300 years ago.
Our town is much better also.
So if you lie as an architect, first time you get off the bus or the plane, are they
walking the time?
You go, wow, this place is gorgeous because it's got so much preserved architecture.
We were in ghost town for about 80 years, not quite as long as Chibi-Bai.
So we've retained a lot of that old historic architecture and that's what makes
anybody that's visually into design and architecture, that sort of thing.
You fall in love with this town for hours for sure.
And then you spend a little time here and you realize things like, well, we have a lot of
distinguished language, cultural and social infrastructure anywhere in Mexico.
So if you're the kind of person who likes to go out and you get lost, and you get a
non-aggressive effect you can find several different music things to go to.
You know, there's a lot of old Yandahlar or Tena.
I mean, it's just phenomenal.
So that's it.
So if you do some learning out there, just to please you, in fact, when you first
arrive in this town, you just know it's phenomenal.
Nice.
Sounds lovely.
I need to go back to Mexico at some point.
I would love to visit again.
I haven't been to something else.
So it's just like, I did only the Yandahlar and Yucatan.
So I need to go back for sure.
You need to visit.
And I like what I like to do there.
It's in Italy, Chibi Pagadena area, which is much smaller, by the way, Chibi Pagadena,
that's 12 people on one here.
You know, but another one of my favorites is San Miguel town, it reminds me, I don't
think San Miguel is much larger, but Montecito community.
And then also the one that's above the valley, the Mist, you know, beautiful village,
reminds me very much of San Miguel for the architecture of a small town.
Nice.
How much of being an architect influences the properties that you select and that you
deal with?
Not like as a real estate agent, I suppose you are always biased for those properties
that are a little bit more in a type of architecture or that they need to be preserved?
I love the Spanish colonial style that many of my clients also agree to.
You know, we're all green gutters, we have an outback in the United States, we don't have
much Italian architecture.
You know, so we love that Spanish colonial, my clients do too.
That's the big thing about it.
Yeah.
So most of my clients have walked that Spanish colonial route.
The thing about me being an architect, they love working with me as a realtor because,
you know, I can help them in the nation market to give them the home.
Most realtor's say, hey, can I open that wall?
You know, a lot of my clients love that.
But it means I'm always fantasizing, it's kind of like under the touch of your son, you
know, she grins at home, you know, they have to tell her what to do, I'm always having
fun doing that.
Oh, we can do this, we can do that.
Changing a little bit already the structure for the needs of the client.
That's, I mean, it sounds interesting for sure.
You helped, I suppose, or you had a lot of clients, as you said, Americans, quite a lot
of experts probably who buy property there.
What would you say is like the two or three things that foreigners underestimate the most
when they move or they plan to go to Mexico?
I think a lot of Americans, or foreigners in general, because you know, about five percent
of them study European, they're also, but I think it would have less of this because
all Europeans speak three or four languages anyway, so they're multicultural, multilingual.
Americans, maybe it's not so much.
And I think a lot of them, maybe over us in a difficulty in integrating them, they think
they're like us if I don't speak Spanish, I thought for a second.
And that's not true.
I mean, the one thing that we do like about our city here is that, you know, unlike very
beachy, popular communities like Cancun and the Palisade, you know, the William Watson,
the time was the only William, what do you want?
He walks up and says that in Spanish here in San Miguel first, but if you don't understand
it, you know, he thinks that the Spanish is really bad and you can't figure out what I'm
saying, then let's look to English.
So it's really not a difficult assimilation here, as many people say, but it's a very
bilingual community here.
But the wonderful thing is that you really do feel like you're in Mexico, you know, either
you're from the United States, you feel like Mexico, you really do feel like Mexico.
And the reason I Spanish, they do really feel like you're in the world, you know, the parts
of the old world, you know, much like the Spanish.
But if you're not completely fluent, really, even after 17 years, my Spanish is still not
that good. But, you know, it is still assimilated very quickly.
So I think that's one of the things that the clients sort of tend to overestimate is it's
difficult to assimilate.
You know, it's literally not.
We have lots of great Facebook groups like Internet's back, Yesterday Show, where people,
you know, post go.
Where are you going to find the last of this?
Who knows you got electrician and I even do made, you know, so things like that that really
help you integrate into the areas.
It's much easier to get around.
I mean, Lord, I moved here 17 years ago.
You need to have Google Maps on cell phone.
That's hard to remember.
Right back in those old days, I had a stack of masses this thing trying to get around.
And so it's such a challenge.
And my status was non existent then.
You know, now it's very easy to get around.
You've got Google Maps, you've got Uber, you've got a bilingual Uber.
So it's much easier to assimilate to Senate, Delaware, Yennybath, it could be a lot.
Interesting.
What it's a day of your work look like?
No, because you touch a lot of things and you're like a broker, but at the same time
you do, as you said, a lot of marketing.
And I saw that I saw a couple of your videos.
How does a normal working day works for you or looks like?
It's fine.
I think for any viewers that are going to see this on my YouTube channel or going to
see on your channel too, there will be a copy of my YouTube channel.
I got a video that I just posted in the life of the world to the Senate, Delaware, Yennybath.
So it's a really fun thing you saw.
I don't know, but it's a really fun video.
Cause I want people to what it's like to live here.
And all the time, what it's like to be a realtor.
What it's like to be able to run a business because I've shown you a couple of the markets
where you're shopping, show you the public, get a lunch box with a very traditional
community, which is a very traditional Mexican meal, you know, all the way up to a very
fancy fun steakhouse.
So it's a really fun, diverse set of things are actually showing in one day, you know,
happy out on a date with a broken in the back.
And the broke is our church.
That's a little bit like, you know, the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
It's our Eiffel Tower icon.
So everybody likes to see me approach you.
So yeah, this is me having an after all spirits upon that roof terrace with a broken
in the bathroom at nine.
I do lots of keynote.
So you can see a lot of how you just mentioned, you know, how I said, so it's a really cool
video team.
If you haven't chance here, we'll finish watching our interview here, look up the day in the
life of a realtor in San Miguel on my YouTube channel and a video, a little bit visual,
it's like an analog video.
And it will give you a really good visual of what it's like to run a business, you know,
walking there, walking there, or a walk all too near, that's really a cool insight into
what it's like to run there for.
I will definitely put it in the in linked here so you can jump to it at the end of the
interview and get to know Greg a little bit more on the life there.
I would suggest we jump to the fast reply questions because we're already talking about
Mexico.
We are already talking about San Miguel de Allende.
So that will only bring a little bit more perspective on your life there.
The first question that I ask always here, it's the cultural adjustment.
That thing that took you a while to adapt to when you arrive to San Miguel.
First part of the culture is that many of us Americans are used to being weighed on quickly.
We each do.
Someone says I'll be there tomorrow.
That don't mean that I'll be there tomorrow.
They say I'll be there tomorrow at 10 o'clock, I need to go there tomorrow.
We have what we call the manana attitude in Mexico.
It's a much more, you can get back a little bit of that in Italy too.
So you know that I'm going to be there tomorrow, right?
It's much more prevalent here, I think, even more so than here.
But you'll have the farmer might come show up.
And you think the United States farmers are going to come and bring two lots of the farmers up.
Oh, I didn't bring my monthly range.
I'll be back manana to finish fixing your sink.
And that doesn't mean tomorrow.
That doesn't seem to be not that good today.
And that's a bit of a cultural application.
What I'm saying is that's a good there.
I'm very German.
I'm very cool.
Somebody says, if you get to the hotel, I want to be at 10.
So that takes a little bit of an academic process.
Now, most of my clients that are down here are retired.
So a little bit of a demand for them.
But as a working man, you know, I really need somebody to be,
you know, timely and responsive at the time.
So, you know, 70, 80 years later, I'm still sort of half of the age of that.
That's the manana attitude is all those things.
But it's, you know, on the lifestyle side, that's a wonderful thing,
because it's a slow pace of life.
It's a more relaxed pace of life.
I joke with my clients and we have what we call the random Aztec parade factor.
Well, you go, I'd be driving down the street, you know, I turn the corner
down the one way street and Aztec indigenous Aztec Indian,
if I was got to do a tendon parade and they're dancing in the street
and doing a dance and the whole thing, you're just stuck.
You're just turning off a little bit of watch it.
That's the life in Mexico, right?
So that's sort of the definition.
Take it easy.
We got some small kids, right?
Much like we do. The second one that I ask is social life.
You touch upon it a little bit, but what is the best or what has been the best
way for you to making friends and meeting people?
Yeah, I mentioned that we have the largest English language social and
cultural infrastructure in New York and Mexico and that's in all aspects
of the lifestyle here and that would be art gallery openings, art gallery that
has an opening, you know, a show literally every night.
They're very artistic community, by the way, but there's a lot of big events
that it's very easy for you to go in and meet people.
That work award is a big art gallery that has four or three art galleries
and a big store every month, the first Saturday, every month, they have the art walk.
And so it's like a big block party.
There's about 3000 of those million people going in here.
You have white shoes on out of the avenue.
You know, it's a really fun social event.
You have that invitation that's open to everybody.
That's a great way to get people in.
That's every month.
And then every Saturday, we have a organic market.
You have a thousand sites and has vendors that cook breakfast and dinner.
And they set up false out, hey, also, you get to be sitting with people who don't know.
And you're always in need of people, right?
What if they're saying that, you know, things like that belong all the time.
So it's super easy to meet people.
As an example, the little piano that you'll see in the video, the video,
I like to go to pop in to it only suits about 25 people.
And the funny thing is, you know, I took my Yogi there, a lot of good songs,
she was in Miami where we could go here at the end of something in Miami, you know,
as soon as the dance gone, everybody leaves.
It's not, that's it.
Oh, yeah.
Here everybody got up from the ship and said, hi, honey, good to meet you.
You know, listen to spray.
I love it.
We've known each other for 10 years.
How long have you guys looked here?
You know, I mean, in a little venue that seats 45 people, you're going to meet half
the people only one.
Nice.
You touched also upon the next one, which language you said that you have been
learning, what would be the biggest recommendation that you would give for
someone who needs to learn Spanish in Mexico?
Some classes early on and try to take, you know, so, I mean, there's people that
don't want to be fully bilingual.
I'm like, I don't care.
I don't want to be able to do something bilingual.
I'm just not that good.
I don't have that language yet.
But you know, something I want to be fully bilingual.
So to take the side of course, if it lasts for three years, I would encourage people
to take the course that teaches you how to kind of cheat a little bit.
So you say I'm going to do this.
I'm going to be that.
You don't have to conjugate the expert.
Boy, you know, boy, it's a leader boy, a busy card, you know, it's a great way to,
to, to, uh, I'll talk to you in this Spanish lessons.
So I would highly encourage people when they first move here, take a course that
teaches you how to truncate your Spanish so it's a little easier for you to communicate
with people.
It really is good to know a bit of Spanish because it's a good way to integrate with
the community and that's considered saying hi, you can say please, thank you, but you
know, be courteous, you know, that sort of thing.
It also, if you speak a little bit of Spanish, bridge down that barrier between you
and people that work with you, that service you, that help you, your maid, your gardener,
your service staff, those Spanish people, generally not like anyone else.
So if you can speak a little Spanish with them, that helps.
Now.
Thank God these days you have Google translate on the phone.
They don't really has a translate app on their phone.
So that needs a bunch of use it.
Oh, I first looked here 17 years ago, I mean, I was having a challenge talking about my
meeting here.
So it helps if you, if you just become a little bit of status by FCM.
Well, you're not seeing any data on the community, but it's not critical.
Again, it's 17 years later, it's still not completely formed.
Nice.
Next one that I have is the cost of living for an American and going down to Mexico, is
it really that different cost wise?
It is.
It's substantially more formal down in other real estate, the cost of real estate.
You know, our median home price is still about $3.50, our average unit, right?
And this way about a lot of the US so our whole price is very similar to the West
development of the United States, the United States, however, due to real estate prices
along the coast, we can one one third of one ninth, the cost of real estate along the coast.
I have a flight to go on a seat in California.
You buy a home down at $2 million.
All you have to do is one night.
The cost was worth it.
So homes can be about, you know, much like what some people in the United States are
accustomed to, it's still super low on the coast.
But what's newly affordable is the cost of living.
So carrying the home, the electricity, the internet, you know, water bills, what these
you get, you're listening to your viewers, something you know, water will run $20 to $30.
I price it in the US dollars, my North Korea.
Water can run $20 to $30 a month.
Electricity is a one day basically, unless you have solar, I have solar, I don't pay you
anything for that good seat.
And that's about the quarter day, my cell phone service, you know, unlimited data and
growing it in the US, Canada, the Mexican sub.
It's like 35 bucks for the month.
Property taxes, you wanted $250 per hundred thousandth of value.
The deal of having a half million dollar home is $1200 a month a year, so the property tax is
oh my God, is that per week or per month?
I'm like, no, that's really for the whole year, one hundred dollars for a half million dollar home, you know, for property taxes.
So if carrying costs for a home down here are very cheap and then, you know, staff, for instance,
you've obviously mentioned the gardener.
I have a knee just listen to this game.
I have a knee that I pay about six dollars an hour.
She buys my groceries, coaxed for me.
I have a wine angle recipe book, and I can say, hey, let's make recipe number eight on Wednesday,
or I say, we got it down on Saturday.
She coaxed, buys those groceries, buys my flowers.
There's my flower, there's my laundry, there's my ironings, there's all of that.
Water is my plants for six dollars an hour.
Now, I mean, it's all sort of, in the United States, you can't find anybody for that kind of money.
So cost of living in a superaffordable way.
Makes sense.
Cool.
Thanks for the examples actually.
That's a great summary.
That's nice.
People can really compare.
Next one is really your turf.
So finding a home.
What is the best approach on finding property in San Miguel de Allende?
Yeah.
You know, the interesting thing is, we don't have a real MLB system that a lot of people are cussing to in the United States.
So it's really important to do a lot of homework in advance.
And I have a very educated website.
You get a post, I think, and I'll just mess with it.
Maybe it's my website too.
It's called dreamprohomesluxury.com.
And because I am working with Americans and Canadians that don't live here, I'm very
educational on my website.
So you will learn about it, because that's the neighborhoods, you have video reviews and things like that.
So while I was telling my clients, you do a lot.
I'm starting to reach my clients several months before the exit comes down.
I want them to know me.
I want them to know my city.
I want to teach them everything they can about my city and how easy it is to come down and visit and to ask me to do a lot of research and look for websites that are like mine and are very, very informative.
They're not just talking about Little City.
Of course, I have some of my home centers in the state, but I have leads to events, news, resources, things that are going on in town.
I have a lot of those kind of links so you can find out what to do.
It's Tuesday night, what you'll do.
Let's go on Greg's website and find out who that helps.
Yeah.
So that's what I tell my clients.
Do a lot of research in advance of coming down.
So you're fully prepared to be having the building, you know, kind of help them look at, you know, I don't have already put up a list of
homes to get, I think I have people that have beachside.
I'm really more prepared to show them that I'm more blessed than I was.
I'm more than that.
I'm more than that.
Next one.
It's the thing that you do to live like a local, that thing that that makes you like nearly being a local in Mexico.
You know, the fun thing about living in San Miguel Bay is you can live just like you would in anywhere in Europe.
If I want to, if I had the time, I'm still working 55 hours a week, you know, so I don't quite have the time, but there are time things that go down here.
What to shop like they're in Florence or Paris, you know, they go to fromagerie, the finisher, you know, the patisserie, the patagoria, you know, the bread place, the cheese place, the pastry shop.
The fruit and vegetable, you know, they can go to all these different vendors with the little sections, they can go by hand and shop that way.
The thing like it's the freshest, most local foods that you can get.
So that's the wonderful thing about live like a local, you know, patisserie, because those vendors are not going to see very much.
It's now a Tuesday market.
It's like one of those big meetings of the air also, they come into you and you have a list for the day.
And they sell the freshest fruits and vegetables, but they also have to eat some birds and, you know, chickens, seafood, and you know, whatever that thing.
That's really fun to shop like a local, because 98% of the market is going to be, you know, Mexican shopping.
We'll see other doing those that are shopping as well.
But yeah, that's a little bit funny local experience to do.
And then, you know, a lot of us, there's 120 NGOs, 120 non-profits in San Miguel and about 118 of them are funded and run and organized by Americans, but it's support the local community.
Of course, we get the local community of office as well.
So it's good to be involved with a nonprofit that helps support the local community.
One of our nonprofits, there were a big support, it was called the Ciba Landa, and it's like kind of a path for humanity.
We literally go out and help build the home for the Mexican family.
And it's so fun, because they'll help, you know, they kind of get to help build their home and they know you personally.
So those are really good ways to integrate with the local community.
Wonderful.
You touch also on the 55 hours per week working, how is work life in Mexico?
Like, how would you describe the working culture?
Joke.
And I'm one of only six bring-goers that work still in San Miguel and that's kind of a joke.
I mean, that was very true when I first moved here.
Now we have a lot more 30, 40, 50-year-olds that move down in the community more frequently, and we work a lot with each other.
There's a lot more people that do work down in the house.
It sort of depends, I mean, you know, I'm the top, one of the top, three realtors in the entire city.
I sell 30 homes a year, you know, I sell several millions of dollars of some 350 homes in this town.
That's why I still work in 55 hours a week, most people do not.
So I'm a little bit of a rarity, but lifestyle here is much more chill out, much more relaxed.
You know, I feel like I'm still building my business a little bit.
I'm about to reach that 5,000 point or maybe the producing day, the take-off or the day at 5 o'clock and have my outlaws for this, but I'm not quite there yet.
So that's why I still work.
But it's relatively easy to, you know, enter into the community here.
My working perspective depicts, you know, you, it's difficult to not work from now.
Say that, so you need to be an entrepreneur.
If you didn't come down to work, you need to be an entrepreneur.
It starts from the top of the outside.
You know, so I used to be a military, an entrepreneur.
I was almost a developer. You know, I helped support, I employed, not support, but I'll find Mexicans.
So, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you've started business with going to employee people, that's very welcomed by the next government to get.
But you know, a lot of people come down, they just need a size, they need to be doing art classes, things like that.
It's kind of off the books.
Nice.
What about getting around?
Do you need a car?
Is it the way, is it easy to move around?
It's very easy to move around. So we're, we're a little town.
Like I said, we're like a European village.
It's very dense.
So it's very easy to walk all the way across town.
You can walk from one end of town to the other end, kind of about 25 minutes.
I mean, you know, that's not the ultimate, ultimate, maybe it might be 35 minutes, but basically most of us live within about a 15 minute walk in maybe two to three seconds.
I hope that's what we have here.
We have 650 registrars in this little town.
That's how walking is. Just to give our American listeners a comparison.
My car is now four years old.
And I only have 12,000 miles on it.
I only put 3000 miles a year on my car.
The United States, we go drive 28, 25, 30,000 miles a year.
I only use it when I'm driving.
Otherwise we walk to dinner, we walk to the opera, we walk to the theater, we walk to the music.
I walk in my business meetings, I walk to my photo scenes, I walk in my office.
It's a very, very walkable community.
That's what you really see all about.
It's like living in, well, even like Florence or any of the other towns, you can walk everywhere.
You need your car.
I have clients that have lived there for 40 years and they don't have cars.
And it's much easier now.
It is even. Uber's been in here for seven or eight years now.
So, it's always been, not like Manhattan.
We've always had two motor taxis that used to go to town, but Uber's here now as well as the other drivers.
So, it's very easy to come around that car.
But what things are nice?
Sounds cool.
Next one, it's healthcare.
How is it, the system there?
Like how do you access healthcare in general?
We have excellent healthcare in San Miguel de Allende.
There are four hospitals here, three of them are private hospitals.
Two of them are very well known.
There are lots of big chains there throughout all of Mexico.
The land healthcare here in San Miguel is very good and excellent.
Any kind of specialty you might need, however, these 45 minutes or in that kind of time,
you have to go, which is the fourth largest city in Mexico and the fastest growing city in Latin America.
Any kind of specials, any kind of cancer you might have, or some sort of specialty you might need,
they'll be in San Miguel for 45 minutes or so.
So, that's the wonderful thing for instance, some of my physicians, they're practicing in San Miguel,
but they come to San Miguel twice a week to see those of us in San Miguel.
So, for instance, my ophthalmologist, she's here on two days on Fridays every week.
So, I'll just go see her for a checkup.
If I ever get ready to go for an arrest surgery, I'll need to go to the hospital.
That's only 45 minutes away.
So, when I have doctors who do that, I just hire a liberty guy.
The liberty guy takes me, waits for me in a car, drives me back home, and it's cheaper.
The healthcare is excellent, because the buying lines are up there.
Many of us are in Medicare, so we have to go back out to the United States.
I'm 60, etc. so I have to go back out to Medicare.
But most of us will pay out of pocket for our basic health care, and so forth.
My most expensive doctor, I think, it's, gosh, I pay $65 an hour for my most expensive doctor.
And the money that I pay, for a whole hour, that's not like $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, etc.
Most of those will pay for all of our basic health care out of pocket, and so forth.
Excellent quality.
The doctors will talk to you. They'll actually give you their cell phone number.
It's a very excellent healthcare system, a very caring healthcare system.
The last one I'm always afraid of asking.
Of this section, I have three more.
The first one is the bureaucracy and the paperwork.
How it is to get through business paperwork, you that you have a business, I suppose you
also dealt with professional business paperwork.
I'd say it's as bad or maybe even worse.
I know that it can be challenging also.
When I first moved here, the World Bank, or to my first leader in about 2009, the World
Bank, but I've worked in Mexico, which is the most tedious country in the world to do work,
to do business because of the implicit paperwork.
And it's gotten a little bit better.
It has gotten a little, since I first moved here, we needed to go to the pharmacy.
You go to the pharmacy to one person to ask for what you want.
You go to the other person to pick it up.
Then you go to a third person to pay for it.
This is the simple example of the bureaucracy here, but it's the same kind of thing with
a lot of the talent.
I mean, Mexican paperwork and you have to go here to check in, you go over here to get
it fixed, you go over here to get it stamped, you go over here to have it double-checked,
you go over here to pay for it.
Or they'll say, "Okay, come back again tomorrow.
We have to have it stamped."
So what a lot of us do, especially someone like me, is we'll have an expedited.
So all of us bring those that move here, we'll work with an expedited, I mean, anybody that's
like, "Oh, I can't get this, I need an expedited."
So an expedited, to get your residency visa, you visit the person.
You're supposed to either pay for work at all requirements and change this or change that.
You don't know the expedited notes.
So now you've got to bring your hormones of eight seconds instead of just three months,
you know, things like that.
So it's always good to work with an expedited.
I have a message with me about means I've got referrals to all kinds of people that can help
you pay your bills, help you get your residency visa, help you get your driver's license.
You know, I'm always working in with my clients, get a property manager and they'll check it,
well, halfway through.
So you don't talk about the bureaucracy that they've worked in changing utilities to new
owners' name, you don't ever want to do that yourself because you'll be in line for three
hours and you've got to speak full Spanish and it's just, you know, put your bop in there
and those things.
That's the key.
There's a lot of people that are here to help.
We call a lot of expediters or social innovators or, you know, legal piece of experts and they're
here to help with that.
That's the best way, you know, they're very affordable and that's the best way to overcome
that, make it work.
So let somebody else do it.
Yeah, sounds like the easiest path.
I have two more.
The first one, it's the best and the worst of living in San Miguel de Allende.
The best is the lifestyle for sure, the pace of life, the weather.
So we talk about the four C's, cost, culture, climate, and community.
Those are the four things that we call it about the deal.
That's the best of all four of those.
Very affordable, great community, great culture, you know, it's just a phenomenal place.
The worst, I guess, is that, you know, for instance, especially as men goes, we used
to be able to order something on Amazon that ain't in its date.
My nanny lives in Miami and she says, "Oh, we need something.
We'll leave it on a trip in two days and I'll just order it on Amazon."
I'm like, "Oh my God, we'll get that at court the same day."
Here, a lot of us, you know, Amazon is in Mexico.
They only carry about 20% of what they do in the United States.
So many of us that live here full time will have a nailing address, a consensus, usually
it's a consensus, and we'll have online packages and our magazines nailed there.
But it'll take three to four weeks before it reaches us flying down here.
So you know, the amount of work on things that you need to require to do a plan-ish,
I kind of, on the health side, I take a ton of money.
And so I have to buy the quality in the United States.
I have to anticipate it's going to be a month before I get there.
So I have to, of course, when I need my, to resupply my vitamin supply, I got to order
a month in advance and it's going to take that long so it can get down there for me.
So that's kind of one of the bigger challenges is access to things that you're used to that
you only have to get in the United States, it's just going to take longer to get down.
You know, sometimes you just change brand, you change, you know, you're buying more local
down here so you don't have to do that, you know, but just certain things.
It's not as healthy in the community.
So for instance, you can just find basic vitamins down here in GMC you can't find.
Of my 28 vitamins a day, 26 are done entering very much into pro-forensics.
So even things like that, you know, it's going to be a few weeks before I get them.
Nice.
The last one that I have, it's the top tip.
If someone is planning to move there in the next months, what would be the biggest one-line
recommendation that you would give them?
Well, you know, again, do your homework.
Not like I was talking about earlier, do your homework.
And you know, you really need to analyze, even the United States neighborhoods are pretty
much all the same.
They're all, you know, the different finding is, are they closest to the elements?
Are they close to all or are they close to an ice store?
We need to pick one that's close to an ice store.
That's not really the consideration, it's more your, you know, your comfortable, your
ability to be comfortable in a gentrifying neighborhood.
In other words, an old 200 year old neighborhood that is slowly gentrifying.
I always kinda like to meet that condition for as a man, you know, nobody needs to go
down there much less you live there, and it is slowly gentrifying into the upper area.
And neighborhoods in San Miguel that are still gentrifying, well you need to, you need to
do research to see what's your comfort level there.
It means that a lot of the homes in those neighborhoods are sort of long length, robust, and I have
to release them.
They don't look like they're so under construction.
What's your comfort level of that?
Do you wanna be walking distance?
Are you walking uphill?
Do you need more yards kids?
Do that kind of research.
You know, as the United States, everybody has a yard, everybody has a fence, everybody
has a yard, everybody has a fence, everybody has a fence, everybody has a fence.
You know, it's kind of all the same here, you know, the neighborhoods and neighborhoods,
you know, regions can vary a fair amount.
Sometimes you move from one to one.
So you know, if like the family sensitive, you need to share that with me.
I'm gonna need a relative of you to come down here and I'm gonna have that sort of extensive
conversation with you so that I know exactly which neighborhood to put you in, you know,
where to put the neighborhoods.
But you need to do a little bit of that research in advance though so that you know what questions
to ask.
You know, hey, is this type of thing gonna be okay to walk home, you know, well-deployed,
but man, I want to walk out for the night?
You know, hey, is this one gonna be a good time to find my colleagues to do those types
of questions?
And I'll have feedback on all of that, but you know, find a good website and you'll work
on sure, you know, but just a little bit of home in advance.
That would be the speed.
Perfect.
Thanks a lot for all these responses and for digging a little bit deeper into your life,
even in some (inaudible) just before we wrap up the episode, how, where can people find
you?
First of all, you already said the website, but there is any other social media YouTube.
You talk also about the YouTube channel.
Of course, the links will be in the description, but is there any way people who it's really
seriously considering or exploring going there can get in contact with you and how can you
help them?
Sure.
But you know, I love how people like my class, though we're not ready to buy yet.
She'd be calling him like, yeah, sure.
I get it.
You don't want us to help you learn about town because I'm a little stinking.
I mean, this is a long term decision for a lot of people.
You know, people don't typically have to have a head or a roof over their head.
So it's a long from I want to play seven years from last before they buy a home.
So I'm happy to chat with you about, you know, at coming into town, coming down, helping you
find a visit.
We've been reaching in my news break.
Got to all over the Internet.
So if you like a great guy to send me the India, I'm not everywhere.
But my email address is great at gory.dutter.com g o t b r gory.dutter.com on together.
You can't hear from the United States or Canada.
You can call me toll free at eight seven seven eight seven eight forty one forty one.
And I mean, that three gets it that what's up about three pro homes to luxury.com a team.
I have like three hundred videos on YouTube on a big YouTube guy in town.
You can find videos of how to fly into San Miguel, the best restaurants, how to make
the lifestyle, the day in the life of you.
I talked about that one a lot of non-lovestate videos on my YouTube site.
So look for Drake for home luxury on YouTube and you'll find my YouTube channels.
And I think the ton of videos would be very helpful to you to help you ask for David what
you want about channel.
Right.
It's a perfect as I said all the links will be in the episode description if for whatever
reason you are not finding because as Greg is saying he is very findable in the Internet.
So it shouldn't be a problem.
Greg amazing.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for today and for joining me and sharing a little bit of your life and
experience abroad.
It has been a great, great conversation.
I really enjoy it.
It's fun to do this, especially on within an Italian market because I love Italy.
Italy is one I wouldn't have moved but I thought I was still going to be running my own business
and I needed to be close to the United States.
So I could fly back and eat with clients of Unisem and Panzone.
But Italy, I joke that my clients are like me and many of my clients are like me.
They love Italy also and I say if you look up the millsike you can pretend like you're
in Tuscany or Umbria somewhere.
We have lots of Moldavia and we have Cyprus trees and we have the same colors and the same
architecture.
So it's a lot like Italy.
It's fun to chat with a host that lives in Italy also.
Wonderful.
Thanks again for all the listeners if you enjoyed this episode.
And maybe if you know someone who is really planning and thinking of Mexico as their destination,
don't forget to subscribe to our channel but also check our website and YouTube channel
and give some love.
So yeah, share it to the friends.
Who is considering Mexico?
Until next time keep exploring, stay curious and see you in the next episode of Almost Local.
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