Our Honduras Story - the Next Step

After returning home and after a little discussion we decided to place an offer on a beach property we had looked at during our visit to La Ceiba. It was a nice villa on the beach with 3 bedroom and 3 ½ baths. It was designed for renting out two of the bedrooms and baths as they were on ground level with their own separate entrances with the main entrance to the villa being on a second story. It was quite attractive with a nice front balcony area with a great beach view. It was on a nice size lot, large enough to add a nice pool and outdoor kitchen area. It was also reasonably priced, so we wrote Kent to tell him we were interested in making an offer.

We were thinking we would possibly soon be property owners of a second home in Honduras with rental space. We had only been home a few days and the villa had been on the market for awhile. So it was somewhat of a surprise when we received an email back that the villa had been leased with an option to buy since we arrived home. As I said we were only somewhat surprised even as we were deciding to make an offer somehow it felt like it may not work out. No reason just a feeling.

Now I don't know if this is true of everyone who seeks to fulfill a vision in a foreign land, but for us and others we have spoken to there definitely seems to be a sense that you are being led or directed in someway. We felt the sense of being drawn to La Ceiba when our first intentions had been to purchase a beach property on an island.

We had seen one other property while we were there that we liked, but it had some drawbacks in location and to get what we wanted was going to be quite a larger investment. After more internet searches in different areas of La Ceiba and island properties of the Caribbean we decided once again that we wanted to try to do something in La Ceiba. Our searches had not returned anything of interest in La Ceiba that was new. After a little number crunching and letting the idea percolate for a few days we decided to make low offer on this other property. It was a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath villa with a nice private pool and a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo with a beautiful public pool and outdoor champa area to use as a rental property. Both properties were part of a very private and secluded area with a very nice beach, but it was also quite a long and complicated drive. This concerned us some in regards to the rental, but felt we could work with it for a somewhat lower price. So we presented our offer to the agent who presented it to the owner. After a few days of thinking, "well we will see what happens." We thought the owner might make a counter offer, but he just turned down the offer completely and we were not prepared to pay the full asking price.

So we were sort of thinking we were back to square one. We liked La Ceiba, but there didn't seem to be anything there for us for the time being. We thought that we would give it some time and keep looking into things via the Internet as new possibilities came along. I was also trying to continue to do searches in other countries, but the more we did the more we were sort of stuck on La Ceiba. With our interests in other areas waning we wrote Kent and asked him to please keep us informed of anything that crossed his radar that would fit our needs.

Being the very good salesman that he is, even if very low key, he had shown us around some at Mango Tree, the gated community he was developing while we were in Honduras even though he knew we were not looking to buy land. We did not want to build we were only interested in purchasing a property that was ready to move into.

We loved the area of Mango Tree, but there was only one lot that was for sell on Mango Playa (the beach) and although beautiful was quite large and more than we were to prepared to spend. Although their were other lots available in Mango Tree my husband was set on a beach property so we settled into wait and see what the market developed. Either something would show up in La Ceiba or we would find a new direction if this was not meant to be.

A few weeks later we received an email from Kent with a offer for a lot on Mango Playa. The offer was for 83ft. of beach front on one acre of land right next to the larger parcel we had seen. The large parcel was in the process of being purchased and he had decided to sell another portion of this beautiful beach area. Wow, this was tempting even though we were still pretty sure we didn't want to try to build a home in a foreign country, especially while still living here in Colorado. It sounded overwhelming and I'll just say it, "more than a little scary". ...but an acre of beautiful beach property and we could start by building our guest villa, which wouldn't be as big of an undertaking as the main home.

So there it is, the nucleus of the idea, build the guest villa now and then eventually live in it while we build the main villa. That doesn't sound so foreboding, at least not if you don't think of all the legal and practical processes we still have to get through.

Suddenly with the help and direction of Kent who has been living and building in Honduras for over 30 years our vision is taking form in a bit of an unexpected way. The desire to create something all our own and a acre of beautiful land on which to do it seemed quite right and so we decided to take the first steps to make this our own.

Watch for my next article in the series on "Our Honduras Story."