Early in January 2020, we returned home to Vancouver after having the most amazing three-week vacation in our new vacation home in Cabo. We spent a lot of the time shopping for things we needed, getting things set up, and taking time to simply enjoy the patio with the amazing view. We even welcomed our first guests, when Lorne’s brother David and his wife Birgit arrived after Christmas to spend ten fun-filled days with us. In addition to all the fun touristy things, we had an amazing time celebrating New Year’s Eve at Solomon’s Landing (seven course dinner with wine pairing!).
NYE at Solomon’s Landing
After they left, we prepared to close-up the condo as we would not be retuning for a while, and then packed for our trip home. After all we had been through to get here, it was really difficult to leave.
Once home, we started to plan when we could return to Cabo again, and ran into the problem of wanting to go, but not necessarily having enough vacation time from work now to do so. Lorne used much of his 2020 vacation allotment already for the trip in December, so it only left us with about ten days to work with. Our immediate thought was to go for two-weeks in May, but then we remembered 2020 would be a year of big celebrations for our family and we would need to save some vacation time for these events. One in particular was that I would be turning 60 in August and we had always planned to do a big family vacation to celebrate. Also, Lorne and I would be celebrating our 20th anniversary in December and we certainly wanted some time available to celebrate that. So, we put our plans for returning to Cabo on hold, for a bit.
Lorne loved working at his new job and loved it even more that he was able to work from home. One day, in one of his meetings, someone said to him:
“If you are already working from home, then why aren’t you working from your home in Cabo?”
That certainly got us thinking. Why couldn’t Lorne work from there? There was no reason at all! And me? Well, my job was not something I could easily do from home, but then again, what if I was able to retire early? We knew that keeping our condo in Richmond and our vacation home in Cabo meant we both had to work full time. However, if we sold one of them, then I would be able to retire early, especially if the one we kept was the one in Mexico, where the cost of living is much lower than in Canada. It made perfect sense!
The real estate market in Vancouver had reached crazy proportions over the past few years and we knew at some point the bubble was going to burst. And the first sign came for us when we received our Property Assessment in the mail early in January 2020. Every year, the value of our condo had gone up, but this year, the value had dropped almost $60,000 from the year before! That was a bit of a shock! So, between the equity of our condo disappearing, and me getting to the point where I was perhaps ready to leave my job of 20 years, and that we really wanted to be in Cabo, we thought, hey – maybe it’s time that we do this!
We started to do more research regarding immigrating to Mexico and exactly what we would have to do to move there. After getting that ball rolling, around mid-February we reached out to a local realtor (Tita Cool), who had sold our neighbour’s condo, to see what the market was like. She assured us the market was great, we should be able to sell quickly and should be able to get a rather nice price. We told her we were interested but had to put some things into place first, so most likely would be ready to proceed late spring.
We took the opportunity to start going through all the stuff in our condo. Things we didn’t need any more we gave to the kids or donated to other places, and things we wanted to keep, but didn’t need right now, went into storage. Our plan was to get everything organized, knowing less is best when showing a home for sale, and then once we had all our ducks in a row, we would be ready to proceed with the sale.
Clearing Out 
Packing Up
After a few weeks, everything inside the condo had been sorted through and the place seemed quite empty. The one last thing we had to do was clear out the excess stuff on the patio, but we needed a weekend of nice weather to tackle that job. However, that nice weather weekend never seemed to come. Weekdays were always nice and sunny but week after week, Friday night the rain always started. It was like something was telling us “not now”!
By now, it was mid-March and talk of the Coronavirus was starting to be everywhere. Everyone was advised to wash their hands thoroughly and stay home. Places were closing and businesses were shutting down. More people were having to work from home to allow for social distancing in the workplace. People began buying massive amounts of toilet paper and stocking up on pantry staples, so much so that store shelves were mostly empty. Like everyone, we didn’t know one day to the next how long this would last or what the outcome would be.
And then, the very last hope we had of making this move sooner rather than later, was shattered into a million pieces. The airlines cancelled all their flights and the Canada-USA-Mexico borders closed!
Our move to Cabo was on hold indefinitely!
Up Next: The Window