Market Update

San Miguel de Allende becomes the place to escape (part 2)

I first wrote in September of 2022 that ¨San Miguel de Allende becomes the place to escape¨ and today this trend has only magnified.  As the political situation in the US and Canada become more polarized and uncertain, and the beginnings of a banking crisis bring concerns of solvency and liquidity, the list of real or potential undesirable situations to avoid and which attract people to San Miguel has only grown.

The good news is that you have not missed your opportunity in San Miguel.

Although I had mentioned several times in the last couple of years that I was observing the smart money moving into fixed assets (like property), the recent bank failures have only poured gas on that fire.  It is now being reported that somewhere between one-half-trillion to one-trillion dollars have been pulled out of the banking system – including some of my dollars.

In March I purchased a property that a year ago was not even in my top ten list.  I may be able to make a little return on my investment, but that was not my motive.  To me it is a hedge, believing that even if there is a banking collapse I will lose less value in the property than I stand to lose counting on the FDIC having enough funds to replace the money if it stays in the bank.

Why You Have Not Missed Your Opportunity in San Miguel

Although prices in San Miguel increased in the last year, they are not out of range with the increases in property prices in the US.  However, to make my “opportunity” point, allow me to jump out of my lane and talk about what appears to be coming down the road.

• Some argue that between 40% to 80% of all dollars in existence were printed since 2020.  Using a lower 25%, simple math says that we should only be able to purchase 75% of what we could pre-2020 with the same dollar. Or that it takes 33% more dollars today to purchase the same thing.
• Others argue that the dollar has defied the math above because it is the favorite of all the world’s fiat currencies. 
• It appears that the new debt ceiling will be raised by $4T dollars (from $27T to $31T).  This should dilute our dollars´ buying power by around another 15% over the next couple of years.
• The FED has announced that in 2024 they will begin a different type of QE and will be buying government bonds. This means printing more money.
• The number of countries aligning themselves with the BRICS nations and who are beginning to settle trade deals in other currencies than the USD is growing by the week.
• The list goes on.

My point is that waiting for property prices to fall in San Miguel before buying a home probably won´t prove to be a good plan.  Unless some drastic world event(s) happen, my bet is that the dollar will continue to devalue for the next year or so, meaning that each month it will take more dollars to buy the same thing.

We’re not talking appreciation of home values, it’s the depreciation of the buying power of your currency.

San Miguel

San Miguel is a wonderful city with a pleasant year-round climate and an abundance of award-winning culinary and cultural diversity.  For the third year in a row, in October of 2022, San Miguel won Conde Nast´s Readers' Choice Award as the Best Small City in the World.

San Miguel is easy to get to flying and increasingly more people are driving here again, particularly from the south.  Just this week, the federal government indicated that San Miguel is one of three cities in Mexico where they are considering building new international airports with money they already have set aside. This will be a game-changer for San Miguel de Allende.

Whether you are moving here full-time, just wanting a place to escape, or looking for a pleasant destination to park some of your money, San Miguel de Allende is a wonderful place and we would be grateful for the opportunity to work with you.

MARKET ACTIVITY (Resales only)

COMMENTS

• New listings double the number of Properties Sold. This won’t take long for the inventory to build back up if this continues.

• New listing prices are increasing every month. Obviously, this works for some but the fact that there are so many Price Reductions indicates that many are put on the market over-priced and are forced back down.

• The Average Sold price indicates that prices jumped sharply this year. However, while most of the US saw a 49% increase since the beginning of the pandemic, San Miguel prices didn’t really start to move substantially until 2022.  So the SMA market is really just catching up to the US market.

• Not shown in the table above is even though the Average Sold price jumped to $616,523, the average New Listing price is down to only $560,435. In 2022, the average listing price was normally 20% more than the Average Sold price, so this indicates that there are more “affordable” homes being offered than there were a year ago.

What to Watch

• Inventory levels – If inventory levels start to increase this will be pressure to hold prices at the current level. If inventory levels start to fall there will be more buyers competing for the same home and this could force prices up.
• US and Canadian real estate trends – Since many of the resale buyers come from the US and Canada, what happens in the markets there normally spills over to San Miguel. 
• Global Events – From the war with Russia, the banking crisis, moves away from the US dollar as the global reserve currency, there are many things to follow that could create some black swan event.   

Lilia Aguilar, one of our sales and rental agents who tracks all of the sales data and helps me compile this update, has a new Centro listing that I wanted to allow you to preview.  It’s on Sollano just three blocks from the Jardin Principal and is priced really well at $710,000.  In fact, the sellers asked us to list it for around $40,000 less than our brokers’ appraisals were coming in.  You can see it here.