The Baja Plunge
Five visions of beach house bliss for every budget. Still looking for yours? Read on.
Special Report By Barbara Thornburg | Photographs By João Canziani
October 14, 2007
Sandra and Mel Peters once owned a vacation home in Little Whale Cove on the Oregon coast. Both loved the ocean and missed it long after they moved to Beverly Hills to raise their children. Years later, as empty nesters, they began to look for a second home on the California coast, "but there was nothing . . . to rent that was nice, and lots to buy were ridiculously high-$6, $7, $8 million," says Sandra, now a striking grandmother of six.
Then one day, she says, the proverbial light bulb switched on: "Why not try Mexico?"
She and her husband had traveled there over the years-Guadalajara, Zihuatanejo, Oaxaca, Cabo San Lucas-and loved the land, its people "and the food-don't forget the food," she says. They could drive to their vacation home instead of having to fly, she thought, and the children and grandchildren could come for visits. In April 2006, they decided to take a weekend trip to Punta Piedra, 40 miles south of the Tijuana border, and explore.
They fell in love with what they saw.
A week later they returned and met with Punta Piedra developer Roberto Curiel. "He showed us some plans," says Mel, the semi-retired chief executive of an industrial auctioneering company. "I told him the square footage and other things we wanted; we made a few adjustments. Then he took out a pad and wrote down the amount: 'I'll do it for this much,' he said. I reached over and we shook hands. We never had a formal contract. This would be totally unheard of in the U.S."
Mel hired a Mexican attorney who arranged for the title and the 50+50 bank trust, which he says allows him to "sell, lease, transfer, build on or give away" the home. They paid a visit to the notario in Ensenada three weeks later and closed on the property. Seven months later they moved into their two-story, 5,500-square-foot vacation home. "It all happened so fast," Sandra says.
The couple contacted Los Angeles designer Larry Rizkowsky of L Riz Design to help organize the handsome stucco and stone interior, which includes six bedrooms, 7† baths, open living, kitchen and dining areas and a maid's room. Together, they created a sleek, modern Mexican hacienda.
Mel and Sandra had seen Raul Gonzales Rosas' work at the Toke showroom in Tijuana and commissioned him to turn Rizkowsky's sketches into furnishings. One day, the designer and the Peters decided to visit the craftsman's shop in nearby Rosarito to check on his progress with the furniture. "The workroom was so tiny, most of the furniture was sitting outside in the field covered in dust," Rizkowsky says. "We were shocked at first, but it all turned out beautifully."
Kitchen appliances, barbecue equipment, plumbing fixtures, television sets, bedding, upholstery and other home amenities were sent to an On-Time Logistics warehouse in San Diego, where they were stored until the house was ready. "We had items shipped from at least 20 different sources," Mel says, "and they delivered every item on time with nothing damaged."
Sand-colored plaster walls act as a foil for the dark beams and sophisticated Mexican furnishings that sit atop blue-green slate floors and sisal carpets. Mexican art and accessories-carved wood pears, amber glass gazing balls and lamps with delicate paper shades that Sandra discovered in Rosarito shops and galleries-give the modern home real Mexican warmth. A long walkway leads to the couple's favorite backyard spot-a fire pit of volcanic stones overlooking the shore. Waves break hard on the black rocks below, spraying water high into the air. Overhead, brown pelicans fly in precise V formations. The Peters' daily ritual, Sandra says, is to sit at the point at the end of each day and watch the sun slip into the ocean: "We often say buying this home in Mexico is one of the best decisions we ever made."
---------
THE COMPS
LOCATION: Punta Piedra
SIZE: 5,500 square feet
COST: The Peters won't say, but nearby oceanfront lots start at $1 million-plus and 2,000-square-foot homes sell for about $200,000.
EQUIVALENT MALIBU COST: $15 million to $20 million.
BUYING ARRANGEMENT: A 50+50 bank trust, which means the buyers have a 50-year trust on the land that's renewable for another 50 years.
ADVICE: "Buy a place in Mexico; it can make a huge change in your life. It has definitely enhanced ours."
-Sandra Peters
House of the Sun
A dream vacation turns into a dream home in Puerto Nuevo
By Barbara Thornburg
October 14, 2007
Sharon Storey needed a vacation, "somewhere close enough to drive, but far enough away so we felt like we were really on a holiday," she recalls of that moment four years ago. A friend in the travel business found an oceanfront rental home in Puerto Nuevo near Rosarito, a 2†-hour drive from her Laguna Beach condominium.
She spent the next two weeks taking long walks at the seashore, visiting tide pools with her children and grandchild, and watching whales blow and breach as they swam past on their way to breeding grounds near Baja's tip. A local woman who helped clean the house by day came at night to cook. "She made us homemade tortillas and tamales," says Storey. "I thought I had died and gone to heaven."
The day before the holiday ended, and with her husband back at work in Orange County, the next-door neighbor put up a for-sale sign. She says she agreed to buy the house the same day, and told her husband that evening that they had just bought a house in Mexico. His reply: "When do I get to see it?"
Bob Storey, then a Laguna Niguel real estate agent, saw the house for the first time a month later. He was familiar with the Baja peninsula. His family had owned various trailers at the La Jolla Beach Camp, south of Ensenada, in the late '60s and later built a home on the beach at now infamous Punta Banda, where in 2000 many Americans were ejected from homes they had leased on long-disputed land. (He says his father negotiated a deal with the owners and still has a home there.) They both loved the idea of having a Mexican place-so much so that four months later they placed their one-bedroom condo on the market and headed south for good.
It wasn't easy. The house resembled a tract home and needed new plumbing, electrical work and a roof. The couple spent 14 months taking it apart and putting it back together, living in different sections depending on the construction. They removed the ceiling to install vintage beams, added five more fireplaces and refashioned every rectangular door and aluminum-framed window with rounded corners in the Mexican hacienda style they desired. For nine months they had no kitchen. "We ate out every night and watched a lot of movies on our DVD," Bob recalls.
They extended the back, enlarging the house from 3,800 to 5,800 square feet, and added an entry wall at the street to create an enclosed courtyard. They painted walls, then ragged them in sunset hues of gold and tangerine to make them look weathered. Outside, they added fountains, a cabana overlooking the ocean, spa, waterfall and colorful plantings of bougainvillea, birds of paradise, statice and geraniums.
Sharon, a former wholesale grocer who has since started a career as an interior designer, decorated the home with custom Mexican furnishings: massive four-poster beds, dark wood buffets and tables, hand-painted tiles and sinks, and traditional palm and leather equipale tables and chairs.
Local stores were wonderful to work with, she says. One in particular, Pancho's Curios in Rosarito, was especially helpful. "I wanted different stains on our guest bedroom furniture, so the owner sent one of his guys to the house to make sure he got it exactly right. That could never happen in the U.S." Another time, an artist came to hang his painting in their foyer. No charge. She brought the tile makers a picture that they re-created as a mural above her stove. "People here take huge pride in their work," she says. "They really go out of their way to make sure you are pleased."
That's not to say that everything was perfect. "We joke about it now," says Sharon. "When someone tells us a time when the bedspreads will be ready, for instance, we ask if it's American time or Mexican time. Mañana could be three weeks from now. But when you get it, it's beautiful."
The Storeys' renovation cost more than $500,000. The house they paid $400,000 for four years ago now is worth about $1.8 million, says Bob, who transplanted his real estate career to Baja. "The equivalent home with all the furnishings would have cost a fortune in Laguna Beach," he says. "It would have been way beyond our pocketbook."
-------
THE COMPS
LOCATION: Puerto Nuevo
SIZE: 5,800 square feet
MEXICAN COST: $400,000.Oceanfront homes in the area cost from $1.1 million to $1.8 million," Bob Storey says.
LAGUNA BEACH COST: $15 million.
BUYING ARRANGEMENT: Took over neighbor's 50+50 bank trust (with 47 years left) in 2004.
ADVICE: "If a deal seems too good to be true, it is."
-Bob Storey
The Retreat
A couple's stress-free sanctuary in Playa La Mision
By Barbara Thornburg
October 14, 2007
Austrian-born Michael Kienzl and his French wife Amelia are gypsy spirits who like nothing better than to pick up and go-Cappadocia, Macao, Jerusalem, Sharm al-Sheikh, St. Lucia. When friends invited them to their weekend Mexican home six years ago, they were delighted to explore south of the border.
They stayed in their friends' home at Playa La Mision, a community of mostly expat Americans who have been renting and living in colorful Mexican bungalows along the coast since the '60s. (The area's name derives from an old Spanish mission now in ruins about 10 minutes down the old road toward Ensenada.) They were enchanted by the area's history and its seaside charm.
"Each time we crossed the border," recalls Moroccan-born Amelia, now a U.S. citizen, "I felt so much freedom. Not that there is not freedom in the U.S., I don't mean that . . . but there are less rules and obligations. If I don't want to put on my seat belt I don't have to . . . we can do what we like. It's such a stress-free life in Mexico."
Every three months for the next 21/2 years they headed south from their Spanish duplex in the Carthay Circle neighborhood of L.A. to stay at a rental property next door to their friends' home. One day they asked the owners if they would consider selling it, and a deal was struck.
The couple bought the fixer-upper in 2004 as a second home, paying $145,000, then putting $200,000 into renovation. Kienzl was the general contractor. Rising at 4 a.m. once a week, he drove to meet the workers by 7:30 a.m., then often went to work in L.A. the same day. "We gutted it completely," he says. "The only thing left standing were the stone walls."
They hired local architect and engineer Hugo Ramirez to execute the plans for a comfortable 2,500-square-foot trilevel home drawn up by Kienzl's Argentinean architect friend, Martin Casteran. The entrance, off an enclosed courtyard, leads to the first floor with its three bedrooms and two baths. A circular concrete and stone staircase takes you to a second-floor Moroccan-style studio. A nearby pantry leads to the three-car garage. The top floor, an open-plan layout with a kitchen, dining and living room, features a terrace that wraps around the front of the house and offers spectacular views of the Pacific. Most evenings, it's where you'll find the Kienzls, French doors thrown wide. "We often sit and read, have a drink or simply watch for dolphins," says Amelia. They often see horseback riders galloping through the surf on the beach below.
Although Michael Kienzl, president of Bradco Kitchens & Baths in L.A., now adores his weekend home, he was sometimes frustrated during the renovation process-"a difficult period to weather no matter what country you're in," he says. The place often was a mess, with $400 Italian faucets out of their boxes, parts scattered and covered with dust, paint cans and brushes atop new tiles. "The Austrian in me wanted to impose some order. I used to tell them: 'This familia of faucets goes here, that familia of paints and brushes goes over there.' But it never really worked," he says, laughing at the memory.
He sometimes returned after a week to find custom doors installed incorrectly or stairs set at different heights. Then there was the shower floor that sloped away from the drain. They found the error only after they tried to bathe. "The water ran out the door," he recalls. "Then . . . one construction worker connected the clothes dryer exhaust to the vent in the bathroom and forgot to vent both to the outside. It turned into a steam shower."
Yet when it came to tile and brick work, the Mexican craftsmen proved to be masters. For example, the couple decided to install a lofty brick cupola instead of the skylight called for in the original plans. They brought in a crane to lift the heavy steel needed to hold the weight of the bricks, and Kienzl was pleased when the workers finished that very complicated job in less than three weeks. And he loves his tiles. Terracotta pavers and stone floors are used throughout the house. One downstairs floor resembles a basket weave with bluish-green glass tile inserts, and in the living room, limestone tiles of varying sizes are set in a repeating pattern. "The tile work is super," says Kienzl. "You just want to make sure the floor slopes toward the drain in the bathrooms."
--------
THE COMPS
LOCATION: Playa La Mision
SIZE: 2,500 square feet
MEXICAN COST: $145,000, plus $200,000 in improvements. (Fixer-uppers on the same beach sell for $450,000 to $900,000.)
REDONDO BEACH COST: $1.6 million to $3 million
BUYING ARRANGEMENT: The deed is held in trust by Banco Santander Serafin, with the buyers given a 50-year lease that's renewable for another 50 years.
ADVICE: "My Mexican building motto-also the same as for my kitchen showroom-keep it simple, stupid."
-Michael Kienzl
|
