One of the people we met at the real estate seminar in Puerto Peñasco was Bruce Greenberg. Besides being a congenial and outgoing person, Bruce is interesting because he is an appraiser. In the United States this would not be unusual, but he has been appraising properties in Mexico, something we hadn't heard of until recently. Bruce started by working for the bankruptcy court in Tucson. His job was to appraise Mexican real estate that belongs to Americans in cases of bankruptcy; he now does it for divorce cases as well. Obviously in these legal procedures, dollar values on property are a necessity.
Bruce has been an appraiser for 27 years. His office is in Tucson. He had never visited Puerto Peñasco until two years ago when he came down for Memorial Day weekend. He hadn't really wanted to but was persuaded against his better judgment and immediately fell in love with the place. He bought a time share within 48 hours and has been back many times since.
Bruce describes himself as one of those "typical Americans who bought unwisely and then got educated." Now he says his job is to work with real estate brokers, title companies, and mortgage companies to make sure that Americans
1) buy property in a designated trust area (he won't appraise any properties outside these areas)
2) get value for their money
As a neutral, unbiased third party he is in a good position to make a fair assessment.
He began doing appraisals in Mexico after he met Lisa Larkin, Mitch Creekmore, and Boris Kozolcyk at a seminar in Tucson. Larkin is a Tucson real estate agent and attorney who does a lot of business in Mexico; Creekmore is a representative of Stewart Title, which has recently begun offering title insurance on Mexican properties owned by Americans. Kozolchik is the Executive Director of the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade in Tucson. Then Bruce began working with Inland Mortgage and was appointed their official appraiser for the state of Sonora. He also works in Cancún, Mazatlan, Los Cabos, Guadalajara, and Puerto Vallarta. He spends about 40 days a year in Mexico doing this work, but the job is growing, and he is training other appraisers in his office to assist him.
Bruce recently spent a day in Hermosillo with the evaluation department there. He learned that in Mexico appraisals are typically done on a cost basis; whereas in the U.S. they are based on sales of comparable properties. He is now trying to gather information to build a data base so that he can use the comparable sales approach with the American properties in Mexico he is asked to appraise. To this end he is meeting with Mexican real estate brokers in Puerto Peñasco and trying to set up uniform procedures. This is a challenging task since the brokers are not organized, and there is nothing comparable to the Multiple Listing Services that are common in the U.S.
If Bruce succeeds in establishing this data base (and we have no doubt that he will), it will benefit all Americans who own or want to buy property in Puerto Peñasco by making it easier for them to buy and sell wisely and get value for their money.
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