One way to truly assess the cost of vacation rentals here in the Los Cabos - La Paz area would be to go on the Internet and search for vacation rental by owner and look at the prices. There are a lot of major hotels here for which you might spend from US $100 to $200 a night. If you’re a local, you can find these little places that we like to stay in when we go to Cabo, where we might pay $60 a night. You can do the same kind of thing in La Paz. Certainly there are enough individual ownership properties in all of these places that you don’t have to stay in major hotels and there are not very many major hotels in La Paz at all. You’re either going to be staying at a small hotel or a vacation rental from someone that owns a condo or a home there.
Here in La Ventana (on the beach, about 40 minutes from La Paz and two hours from the Cabo San Lucas area), we have one condo development where all the units are individually owned. The rest of the inventory to rent is all just local homes that we rent out, which are owned by local people – foreigners and Mexicans alike. You can get a really cheap accommodation for around $30 a night and you can also get a luxurious accommodation that costs $700 per night. I am sure you could also do the same in Cabo.
I’ve talked to people who have made deals for a vacation rental in Cabo who managed to pay around $1,500 to $2,000 per month. I also know a lot of realtors who say that people are looking for a place to stay who are willing to pay $4,000 a month. Some people are looking for a luxury home near the water and some are looking for a simple condo somewhere in the neighborhood behind the big box stores. That is the kind of thing they might find down in Cabo.
In La Paz, where we don’t have those big box stores. Most of the nice accommodations are somewhere along the waterfront and a lot of the homes are dispersed all throughout the city. You might find something cheaper than $1,000 a month. If you look for a Mexican property and you really want to live on the cheap, I am sure you can find something even cheaper. It is just like anywhere; we have a huge variety of rentals here.
In La Ventana, most of the vacation rentals are probably a little more expensive because we are set up as vacations rentals. It costs anywhere from $1,800 to $2,000 a week for most places, down to $500 a week for some. We don’t have any bad neighborhoods here and we don’t have any horrid places. Some places are just in the Mexican community where it could be a bit noisier at night and they might have dogs, roosters, and parties going on. Most of the differences between the properties here in La Ventana are if they are way uphill, away from the ocean, or being right on the ocean. Most places have great views. Accommodations are not as big as 1,800 square feet here because there is so much outdoor living and not a lot of indoor living. What is really important in a nice vacation rental is a nice, big patio where you can have barbecues. Pools are nice, too. We are beginning to have homes that have pools.
A example rental in La Ventana that has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, around 1,300 square feet, is 5 years old, in a nice neighborhood, with the property close to a quarter of an acre, and with a roof deck would go for around $1,200 a week during off season. The same type of rental up the hill with a private pool would cost about $2,800 a month. If you get something smaller like an accommodation with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, with no pool, then you might pay around $2,000 a month. These are all air-conditioned places, too.
(Casa Ramadita, a rental home on the beach with a view of La Cerralvo Island, La Ventana Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico, pictured.)
It is important to note that the Portuguese are extremely helpful and respectful towards foreigners. Obviously, if an American or English person or other foreigner spoke to them badly or rudely a Portuguese person would reply in kind. But in many cases the Portuguese are far nicer to foreigners and more helpful to them than they are to many of their own people. 
