Los Cabo’s Luxury Real Estate Market Is Reaching New Heightshttps://www.harthowerton.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/chileno_Courtesy-Sargent20Photography-1024x682.jpg1024682Madison SilversMadison Silvershttps://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1ad2efe6a2ca30ba97aa9923389e70dd?s=96&d=mm&r=g
In Mexico’s famed beachy paradise destination, these seven upscale communities boast everything from lush gardens to scuba diving
The real estate market in Cabo San Lucas is booming like never before, and there’s no sign of a slowdown anytime soon.
Located on Mexico’s west coast in the state of Baja California Sur, Cabo, as it’s known, has had a glut of real estate development for the last several decades. The destination is a mainstay vacation home spot for buyers from California and Texas, and while sales have generally been strong over the years, they’ve exploded since the onset of the pandemic.
Saddia Rahaman, a real estate adviser with Engel & Volkers, who resides in Los Cabos, said that the company has seen $213.7 million in accepted offers so far in 2021, the second-best year in its history. In March of this year alone, Engel & Volkers had 1.22 sales per day, with the average price being $1.41 million.
“The market keeps getting stronger and stronger, and bidding wars are common,” says Rahaman. “Although there are many luxury real estate communities in Cabo, there isn’t as much inventory as you would think because we have had so much demand.”
Sales in specific communities also point to the growth: Villas Del Mar, the most upscale part of the master planned development of Palmilla, is on track to exceed $200 million in sales in 2021, more than a 100% increase from last year, according to director of sales Michael Baldwin.
Our roundup of seven high-end residential communities in Cabo includes one with unlimited Casamigos and a killer sports park, and others with an array of attractive amenities from beach clubs to spas that will have you wanting to buy a home and move in forever.
For Many, the Pandemic Has Led to the ‘Discovery’ of Golfhttps://www.harthowerton.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/merlin_184802595_9717230b-19a5-4858-9a67-88e6624ead29-superJumbo-1024x683.jpg1024683Madison SilversMadison Silvershttps://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1ad2efe6a2ca30ba97aa9923389e70dd?s=96&d=mm&r=g
And homes on courses are the place to be now, not something you save for vacation or retirement.
For the first 15 years of his career developing real estate focused around golf courses, Mike Meldman had never really played. “I didn’t golf at all. The golf was an amenity to sell the real estate,” he confided, noting that his naïveté was fundamental to an approach that has distinguished his dozens of projects from the standard template.
“If I’d grown up like a golf snob, none of the fun I’m trying to create at our places would ever have happened.”
Now chairman and chief executive of Discovery Land Company, Mr. Meldman has more than 25 years of experience developing residential golf communities across North America, in the Caribbean and soon in Europe. He shared some thoughts about how the pandemic has reshaped their use, and what it presages for golf communities in the future. This interview has been edited and condensed.
How has your business changed over the last three decades?
When I first started with Estancia [a golf club in Scottsdale, Ariz.], people were buying empty lots, figuring they’d move in during their retirement. Now a lot of people aren’t buying for retirement, but the lifestyle today — our buyer has gotten younger, and there are a lot of 30- or 40-year-olds with their families. So now we’re more of a home builder, because people want to use these places immediately. It’s very positive for these communities. There used to be more speculators who bought a lot to flip it for two or three times their money.
The pandemic has reshaped so much. How has it affected Discovery’s communities?
We’re more full today than we ever have been, because everyone has escaped. We have fairly stringent Covid policies, and we encourage people not to really leave the property; they don’t want to anyway. We thought Silo Ridge, just outside New York, would be a weekend home for people in the city, but it’s become their primary house now for many. It’s taught us that low-density projects that are secure and protected from the outside have real value. People just feel more secure there right now.
Your company is focused on creating a social community, as much as a physical one. How did that evolve?
Thirty percent or higher of our members have multiple properties. Once people have these places, they tend to use them a lot more than they first say they will. It’s the biggest question people ask me: Will we use it enough? In the early clubs we did, we had to increase the size of the kitchen and dining rooms because people were there every night.
In your communities, which is more important — the houses or the golf courses?
We purposely design it so the homes don’t impact the golf experience — we’re fairly low density compared to most golf communities, with 200 or 300 homes rather than 800. We have wide fairways and big setbacks, and the houses are designed to see the golf course, but not be a part of it. Balls aren’t hit into your patio or your pool all the time. At Chileno Bay Golf and Beach Club, in Los Cabos, Mexico, there aren’t even homes on the course.