Scouting Coastal Real Estate An Hour From San Diego

December 12, 2025

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to your notes from the field. This is where I bring you my latest boots on the ground research. Research we can profit from. And this dispatch is going to be a set of musings from my visit to the Tijuana, Playa's Tijuana, Rosarito, Ensenada, and ultimately to the Valle de Guadalupe. So this is a trip I took. Valle de Guadalupe was an add-on because I was able to create space, find space in my schedule for this trip for reasons that will become clear soon. But the primary goal of this scouting trip was to run the rule over opportunities that are within a 40 to 90 minute drive of San Diego. So the thesis is or was that you can buy a oceanfront or beachfront or ocean view condo that's within an hour's drive of downtown San Diego for in the case of waterfront $400,000. In the case of Ocean View, say $300,000. And the thesis I was there to assess is A, is that really the case? What can we buy for that price? Is it of quality? And then secondly, is is this a good idea? And then if it is a good idea, thirdly, how do we advance conversations in terms of identifying the best pieces of land and the the best areas, etc. Um first of all, by by way of context, um every place should always be assessed on its own merits. And as your scout, I endeavor to do this at all times um to bring um to to limit my personal baggage and to limit my personal biases and assess a location on its own merits in terms of potential for capital appreciation and rental income, and then to add the subjective assessment of potential lifestyle benefits that could either come as cream or be a primary driver. So I I really struggled on this scouting trip and on heart to assess this area on its own merits. Um I guess essentially because it was very, very difficult not to compare to Cabo. So essentially the piece of land I was looking at is at the very top end of the Baja California Peninsula and Cabo, and our opportunities there are right down at the bottom, most southerly tip. Um so again to that's something that that posed a challenge for me, but having reflected on this trip, and you know, I'll I'll address this in the the conclusions, you know, it's kind of largely, largely moot. Um so it interesting, I flew from Guadalajara, landed in Tijuana Airport, you land in this kind of shiny modern modern airport. It's kind of cool and kind of quirky in that you know the the the flight path was over from Guadalajara was over the northern sea of Cortez, it was dramatic, it's beautiful, and then our approach path was along the border. So again, it's kind of interesting that my cell phone was jumping between US and Mexico signals as we arrived, and as you arrive, you could just see the huge amounts of industry on either side of the border. So um these border areas are um very, very industrial, and there's a huge amount of manufacturing and stuff that goes on on the Mexican end for export, and then there's also a huge amount of more sophisticated processes and manufacturing, stuff like pharma, um, some automotive that move seamlessly back and forth between the borders. So this is a very industrial area. And um I exited on the Mexican end again. It's kind of a cool quirk that you land in an airport in a country and you could exit in San Diego or you could exit in in Mexico, and I jumped in a cab for a for my base for the the first night, which was a hotel in in a community that's just south of Rosarita. So just to kind of orient the geography, you have Tijuana. Um Tijuana is right along the border, you know, for for me never having been at the land border between the US and Mexico. Um, you know, it was it's it's interesting. It's interesting to see the border wall. It's interesting and also material for our conversation here. It's interesting to consider the volume of trade legitimate and illegitimate that's carried on um across under and um above above that border. And you know, certainly it's something in terms of preparation for this trip and in terms of assessing this opportunity that you know does does give me pause that in an area where there is so much trade, a portion of which is is illegal, brings all sorts of complications with it. But um jumped in my taxi. Um taxi was very reasonable, got a taxi from the main taxi stand in the airport. It was the equivalent of about 50 bucks to bring me 50 minutes south. And um the drive was heavy going, the drive was like not pretty, big four-lane highways. It was kind of weird to me because you have a lot of American brands and big box shops, but it's a bit of a kind of a post-apocalyptic vibe to it, so it's incredibly busy, but with a bit of a post-apocalyptic vibe to it, and then also with heavy fogs rolling in, and at times it was difficult to decipher what's pollution and dust and and and what was fog. And um followed the followed the the highway. We didn't go the the immediate coast road, came on a highway a bit inland, and again, not pretty, nothing pretty about this so far, and arrived at um the hotel and community where where I was staying. Um I'm I'm not gonna name it because it's not really material, but um again, this place was weird. Um the the real estate in there was weird. It was a total hodgepodge, total hodgepodge of mega mansions and cluttery homes. Um there's a massive new high-rise condo community um going up in the front. It's from big developer and a big brand, but again, it looked just weird to me, the edge of the the highway, sure it had ocean views, but again, those those ocean views are regularly interrupted by the by the heavy fogs that that roll in. I'm trying to get a handle on how year-round the fog works, but um certainly as I arrived at my my hotel around 5 p.m. it was pretty much just pitch dark with you know closing in day and heavy fog and maybe dust from all the the pollution and the the roads too. Um you know, and I'm not gonna name the the community because to a certain extent it's kind of representative of what I found around that area. You know, the a colleague joined me, we we looked for places to eat, we found uh a fabulous Argentine restaurant, which was which was great, but in general, you know, moving around there is tricky because you've got these kind of really arcane set of highways just patched together. So the infrastructure has just been patched together over over decades, and it makes it kind of cumbersome to be to be moving around, to be crossing from changing directions, moving from one side of the highway to the other. There just wasn't, I just wasn't seeing any of this kind of dynamism we find in in our places, you know, the type of place that's attracting the you know the the the Italian chefs or the Peruvian chefs or the Mexico the Mexico City chefs. And by and large, it is a coastline that you know is very heavily scarred, that's got a huge amount of junk. Um, like I would say, let's call it gringo junk built maybe in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, low quality housing built for Americans, or are Americans built, and then you have local middle class housing, and then you have local wealthy housing. You know, you just have these kind of sprawling mansions, and uh it was kind of funny, you know. I I got a lot of tours of a bunch of communities, and there are these like, I mean, I'm talking homes, they must be 50, 60, 70,000 square feet. They they look like what I might think of as a narcos um compound from the movies, but um, I kept getting told that that's the home of a prominent plastic surgeon, and that's the home of someone who's got a huge dental practice. So um I take those answers at at face value. And of course it could be true because there's just huge money in um medical procedures, huge money in dentistry, all those things in the in in the border in the border land. Um and so the whole uh Rosarito area just left me um just cold. Um just like to my point of it being wrong to um to compare places, or you know, that everywhere needs to be um looked at on its own face value. Um I mean I was standing on these pieces of land, and again, the hillsides are scarred with failed construction projects from various busts, you know, from busts in the 70s, the Great Recession, you know, there's a huge amount of scarring, and um it was cold and it was dreary, and I'm just thinking, what the hell am I doing standing on this hill and not not being in Cabo? It was just very, very difficult for me not to make the direct comparison to to to to to to Cabo all the time. And you know, moving south of Rosarito, moving between Rosarito and and Ensenada, um the you know there were a few pockets along the coast there where you have oceanfront land, um oceanfront are kind of beachfront. Again, this is a kind of California coastline in this area. There there are some beaches north, um just very close to the border in the Playa Tijuana, and there's beaches further south, but in this area between Rosarita and Ensenada, um you know, there there's not a lot of beach, or there's seasonal beach, and there's rocky coves, but you know, that there are a few areas where there's nice condo buildings being built oceanfront. And this is a moderately interesting proposition, or it could be an interesting proposition for you if you want a beach or ocean condo in driving the easy driving distance to California or you know, other parts of the of the Southwest. And these are nice condo projects if they were close to if they were close to are on the edge of a pretty town, um it could be it could be appealing. But the the issue in terms of desirability and rentability and all of that is that there isn't really, well there isn't, period, a nice town near these places. You're jumping out the back of your condo building onto a big grinding highway. Um the towns, you know, even though there's some small towns that are you know very famous for for their seafood restaurants, there's great lobsters, there's great abonnells, there are big clams. Um but there isn't that type of that type of zest, that type of vibrancy, that type of of X factor that we find in the places that we want to put ourselves and that that that we want to to to invest. So the overriding emotion was get me the flock out of here and to cabo. Now um again, I'm you know, I'm bringing you under the bonnet of the emotional journey of uh of a trip like this, and this is kind of part of my process of decoupling the the the the emotion from the the kind of the hard facts of of the scouting and the data and the research. Um but that's the context. Now from there things started to look up somewhat. Um we continued south, south to to Ensenada, and um, you know, quite frankly, I knew very little about this part of the world and this part of Mexico, but Ensenada is a big industrial city too. I guess it's a it's a port city, it's got government, it's got universities. And um we stayed in a hotel, which is I think it's a city. So I'll I'll drop the name of the hotel in the alert that goes with this City Express or one of these kind of new three-star hotels. It's kind of interesting because it was in a half-built high-rise tower, and you enter the tower on the ground floor, and floors I think one through seven are yet to be completed, and the hotel started on the seventh floor, and um yeah, it's one of these really, really comfortable three-star hotels, actually, a category of hotels I like to stay in because you know, you you you know they'll do a basic breakfast okay, you know the shower will work, you know, the bed will be okay, and you know the the the Wi-Fi will be okay. But one of the most interesting things, because as I checked in, you know, I had been asking what time they served breakfast from. And one of my gripes about the previous hotel was that they had no breakfast, no coffee, nada until 8 a.m. This place only did the breakfast window between 6 a.m. and and 9 a.m. And it was right on the ocean, right on the ocean with the the lobby and the restaurant being on the seventh floor, shiny new building with a gym area in a kind of mezzanine level above this, all with great ocean views, and you're in a building that's like that's a shell for the first seven floors. Up here, it's all finished, and I'm just looking down at the beach and the beach front, and it's all just scarred and a mess of you know, abandoned projects, abandoned beach clubs, and uh just a total hodgepodge. And um, but the interesting observation about this hotel, kind of an aside, was that for breakfast in the morning from six o'clock, it was full of people in some kind of uniforms. It reminded me of times in Fortaleza, in northeast Brazil, being in a hotel where a lot of oil workers stayed. So I'm guessing these are some kind of engineers or something associated with the port. They move in and and and and and move out. But, you know, kind of my point is that a beachfront lot was being used for a three-star hotel that cost us like $120 per night, and was primarily one of these kind of three-star hotels used by port workers or similar workers. And that evening we we drove into town. That hotel was on the northern edge of Ensenada. Again, it was like post-apocalyptic, or again, you know, I I don't want to get too kind of hyperbolic. Again, context I did have a cold, I was coming off a run of travel, I was tired, and I've actually given myself a bit of time to reflect on this trip and reflect on whether I would use words like this. But the reality is, even stripping out my tiredness and the fact that I had a cold, you know, it was just grim. And um, of course, this happens, you know, in these heavy traffic and bad weather places, you know, like happens in Mexico, like the the more dangerous the driving conditions become, you can see a tendency for drivers to be drive more aggressively because they get frustrated. Then there's this series of crashes, uh the the whole thing just becomes a a bottleneck. And um again, you know, my colleague who was traveling with me, he had done a pre-scouting trip. Um he had identified a few streets within Ensenada that have a bit of charm. Um we didn't go there in the end because we just parked and ate literally where where we parked, because Traffic was too bad, we're getting too tired, it just was was was was not worth exploring. And ultimately I concluded it was just immaterial, no matter how nice those couple of streets are. And you know, I've done a bunch of video research since and that, and they're not particularly nice, it just wouldn't be enough to to to to make a difference. So Edsenada town, again, our city, again, you know, not a place I want to go again or our are be again. Um but the next morning things things got a bit interesting and potentially maybe very interesting. So we continued south of of of of of Ensenada. Um again, just right on the southern end of town. There's some really nice beachfront communities. There, the beachfront is you know, it can be really quite beautiful in places because you've got those kind of suckling plants um that we have in the Silver Coast in Portugal, they're along the California coastline, so you have these dunes and plants, really quite, quite pretty, and big, wide, long stretches of Pacific, Pacific beach. And just south of Ensenada, it gets interesting because you have some bays, you have some points, you have some protected lagoon areas, and you have mountains. So, you know, I I visited one resort, which is again a hotel community built, I mean, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 years ago. But they built a really, really nice Malachon. You were looking, you know, as you as you looked out with your back to the hotel, the ocean and beaches were on the right, panning to the left. You have a protected lagoon area, you're looking across to another point, you have mountains in the distance, you know, really, really very pretty. You know, take out the the scarring, um, which wasn't at all visible from here, and it's really, really pretty. Um we continued south and we kind of wound our way around that lagoon or quasi-protected area, and came to land at the the other end of the point. And again, here we have beautiful long um Pacific beaches backed by mountains. Um fog was rolling in and rolling out, but it was just more reminiscent of what I see in in Portugal, in the Silver Coast in Portugal. I mean, I personally I like active weather and I love to see fog and even drizzle coming off the the ocean once it's active and it clears, once it's just not that post-apocalyptic feeling I was getting in the the highways where it's just thick with fog and pollution and visibility is is terrible. But here, here it was different. And um, you know, again, the you know, with all of these weather references, I need to be very careful, and we all need to be very careful to um you know to to to understand how much of the year is is is like this, but but certainly I I have the impression that that these fogs can be uh be a very material thing for significant portions of the year. And again, that that makes sense. We we see this in those places in the other California, north of the north of the border. But here, charm to me. Um south of Ensenada, along these big huge, long curves of Pacific Beach with um dramatic mountains in the backdrop with that cool wall cool air coming off the Pacific, but but bright sunshine, these beautiful dunes, and colorful plants really, really did um get my get my attention. The thing is to drive to these nice areas, so within these nice areas, nice aspects, you can be feel totally detached from the clutter. Um, you know, the the the the clutter could be a mile away inland, and you're all ways going to be oriented to the ocean and couldn't see it anyway. But getting to the second point, you know, the the drive was through clutter again, a mix of of gringo clutter and local clutter. Again, there's the the remnants of um you know people who came down with RVs and built a house, I'd say, with their own hands 50, 60, 70 years ago, and then they died and no one knows who they are. It's just just abandoned. Um but move beyond that, and it really, really is quite beautiful. And for the right project there, it could be could be very, very interesting. But the right project there would need scale because it would need scale to have all the amenities we look for within the project. So, you know, for example, you you go and buy in Cabo or Lagos or Playa del Carmen, and the restaurants and all the amenities are everywhere. So obviously, we buy in communities with best in class amenities within the community, but you go outside your door, you also have your choice of restaurants and all that type of stuff. That would all need to be created as part of the community, and also the developer tendency is to go high because unfortunately, a lot of developers will base the height of buildings they want to do on what they're allowed to do. And in this area, you can go pretty much go as as high as you want to. So, I mean, I met with landowners and developers, some of whom had land that for the right project could really, really make sense, and they're talking about going, you know, 20 stories up. And for me, that just doesn't cuddle. It's just gonna be uh uh uh an eyesore on the beach, just the the developers need to come up with uh with an integrated plan that kind of creates community and pulls people out onto those beaches and into community areas. So I would say south of Ensenada, watch the space, a very special project could could could could get our attention. But again, the the overriding thing that I kept coming back to unless someone does a really, really special project where you can be on the beach, is that I mean Cabo is just a no-brainer all day long compared to compared to the Saharia. I mean, the no comparison with the with the weather. You know, sure there's Pat the Progress events happening in Cabo at the moment that are causing traffic issues, but nothing like the traffic and the the clutter we have in in this part. Um, you know, Cabo, just everything about Cabo. It's amazing beaches, amazing food scene, amazing amenities. There's the boating, there's the golf. There's just literally you name it, almost none of that is available, and where it is, it's in a kind of a hodgepodge ad hoc way. Um and also the the accessibility, you know. I mean, there's at Rita we find places that are places where you should just go and buy. If you have an interest in our beat of international real estate, you should just buy place deal-wise. Like, for example, our Capo Hills opportunity, but I'd say the the same of Playdel Cartman or Guanacaste. And here, you know, the accessibility is is going to be tricky and not nice unless you're within driving distance and Rita isn't a publication for people living in the greater San Diego area. Um and even then, even then, you know, the the driving across the border, although, you know, I do understand with these fast passes, which um folks can get if they're regularly transiting, it can be very efficient. Also, there's new border roads on the Mexican end opening up that means some of the condo communities, potential future condo communities I looked at are will be as close as 25 minutes to to to to to downtown San Diego. Um but it's not that nice. I mean, you know, it's not that nice compared to all the incredibly beautiful places, both in the Baja Um Baja California sewer, right across Mexico and and and and right across the globe. So big takeaway, south of Ensenada, potential for for the the right project. Also as a you know a peek at how the the other half lives, I went to to to visit a super exclusive, wildly beautiful new golf community that's um that's under construction. It's slated to be opened. Um it's slated to be opened in March or April of this year. There's only gonna be 20 or 30 homes. Um I am I'm the I'm not quite sure what I can say. I was I was shown it it's with a with a group that that that that I know well. It's actually been created by a group who's brought us Rita deals in in other parts of Mexico, but this is very much top secret total lives of the rich and and famous. I mean, homes for tens of millions of dollars, membership price going to be limited to 30 homes, 300 members. It's on a point that's just otherworldly out of this world, beautiful golf course weaving its away along a rocky coastline. All you can hear is the birds and the sounds of the the seals blapping, just the place just absolutely blew me away. And um just before we publish this, I'll I'll check with the owner just to see what I can share. I I was asked not to put put any photos on on social media, but if he's comfortable with us linking to something or sharing, you know, I'll I'll include them in the the note that goes with this. But again, it was just interesting that in this area there is coastline that's so friggin' beautiful, it can attract the the top percent of a percent of a percent who can go anywhere in their private jets and spend millions and millions and millions on very private and special experiences. So the final end of the trip was the Valle de Guadalupe. That wasn't originally on my itinerary, usually with my itineraries, I build in end of the trip capacity to revisit places now, given how underwhelmed I was with, say, from central ensenada north to the border, um, that extra time to revisit, to maybe sit down, look a developer in the eye, and see if we can we can make a deal with them. That wasn't needed. So with my colleague, we headed inland to Valle de Guadalupe. And wow, this was we stayed in a boutique hotel, um a truly, truly special place. So if you don't know the Valle de Guadalupe, it is Baja California's wine country, wine tourism, you know, kind of Mexico's answer to Napa, Napa Valley, they say. But um we stayed in a boot boutique hotel. I'll drop the link for it in with this alert. Um, just a really, really beautiful place, like kind of the rooms were like kind of glass street glass walled structures, um, looking out onto vineyards and pool areas and hot tub. Food was amazing. Um, it was one of the best value boutique hotels I've I've stayed in in a very, very long time. We paid $140 per night, and it was a comparable hotel to what you'd pay like $800 per night in the Todo Santos area, um, which is which is near Cabo, let's say a boutique hotel in a garden setting in the Los Cabos area is gotta be $800 per night and up, up, up, up, up from there. So it's a really kind of cool hack, very special place. Um, for sure, I want to go back for some R. Um, you know, I mean, I'm I'm not a wine drinker, but the the aesthetic of the vineyards and the the architecture, everything there is really, really neat and tidy, nice, good roads, easy to drive, comfortable, just beautiful, beautiful weather, although I'm sure in summertime it does get baking hot in there. But a very special place. A place I'll be scratching around to see if there's any real estate opportunities, but irrespective, there, you know, I'm I'm not sure whether we'll find a Rita deal there. I suspect probably unlikely it's a place that's really, really boutique, small vineyards, small communities. Um I suspect our type of deal wouldn't fit there. A and B might not have the the tr the traffic and the footfall yet in terms of visitors to to make for a rental yield. But um, you know, if you're looking for for a new travel experience and wine country or kind of farm to table restaurants, that type of vibe appeals to you, just please do check out the Valle de Guadalupe. And um, and as I say, I'll include the the link to the the the the hotel. Just beautiful evenings in front of fire pits, nice hot tub, lovely, lovely vineyard, country, cool nights. Yeah, it very much reminded me too of my my time in La Estancia de Cafeate and Salta up in up in northern Argentina. So there you go. Then from there we took the the drive back to um the drive back to Tijuana Airport. Again, this is all a very compact area. I'm talking about the drive from Tijuana Airport to to Ensenada, which is the whole way down as far south as I went. Maybe that's an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes. From there to get to the Valle de Guadalupe, maybe it was probably from Rosarito. Inland it was only about 30-40 minutes, and you're in the other world. This was the incredible thing for me about Valle de Guadalupe. It's only about 30-40 minutes from the coastal clutter, and it was like a parallel universe, neat and tidy and clean, and like really good roads, um, you know, driving that felt comfortable. And then from there back to Tijuana Airport was about an hour and 20 minutes, and we headed north to Tecate, and then left pretty much following the border. And again, the the the border that that's the US and Mexico border, yeah, you know, for yeah, but for for me it was an interesting experience, just it's caught in along the side of the side of the the mountain. You know, it's it's it's it's surreal. I I found it to be surreal. And I also found it to be surreal to be on the border, right at the beach border, you know, standing on a beach in Mexico, looking between a kind of a metal wall. So the the wall is just there there's gaps between the thing and looking across to looking across to US police cars. Our car on the beach, and to my right is was a whole truckload of Mexican Marines, which are the the federal military, taking selfies of each other, heavily armed, armed to the teeth, taking selfies, and in front of us is what I think was a giant, um, giant bull ring. So very interesting travel experience. But yeah, from Valle de Guadalupe, an hour and 20 minutes, back to back to the airport, and um in the airport before leaving, I had my first ever Shake Shack burger, and I was astonished in Tijuana Airport. I was astonished at the price. So it cost $26 for a double cheeseburger, a small portion of fries and Topo Chico. So I don't know whether that's California prices, Shake Shack prices, or Tijuana Airport, or all of the above. So um on that note, I leave it. Big takeaway visit by the Guadalupe, just go, very special place. Um we'll watch this space south of south of of of Ensenada could be interesting and could be a runner for the right project. There you go. I'm competing with the passing train now, so I'll I'll leave it there. And um looking forward to checking in from the next place.