I agreed to rent a 2-bedroom house today. The couple that owns it will send me the contract later this afternoon. 6-month lease. 12,500 pesos/month, which is 610 USD at the current exchange rate. It is a detached house with a parking space behind a garage door. The parking space will serve as my patio.
The couple’s family owns the houses on both sides.
The neighborhood is close enough to my current neighborhood that my supermarket will stay the same. The house would rent for about 1500 USD/month in my current neighborhood. My future neighborhood is a little more undiscovered, I suppose, and it has some low-income dwellings, mechanic shops and junk yards mixed in. It must be the most socioeconomically heterogeneous area I’ve ever seen. It has a few tin shacks as well as houses listed for 250,000 USD.
I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days walking around in the neighborhood, and sitting on the curb near the house I’ll be renting to gauge the traffic. The street has very little through traffic.
The new place has a much better kitchen than my current apartment, and has a washer and dryer in the house. The house is fronted by a high concrete wall. So you go through a metal door — or through the garage door — to get past that wall, and then there is a short walkway leading to the front door of the house.