What's the cost of living in Yucatan: Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Merida, etc?
John Venator - Casa de los Venados
The cost of living in Yucatan depends on your lifestyle. We have a very good friend here who is a retired schoolteacher. With limited means, she put up US $35,000 into buying a piece of property, renovated it, and put two small studios on the property. She can live on her Social Security plus the income she gets from renting out her little studios periodically to expat guests. She has a car. She has air-conditioning, although she doesn't use it all the time because electricity...The cost of living in Yucatan depends on your lifestyle. We have a very good friend here who is a retired schoolteacher. With limited means, she put up US $35,000 into buying a piece of property, renovated it, and put two small studios on the property. She can live on her Social Security plus the income she gets from renting out her little studios periodically to expat guests. She has a car. She has air-conditioning, although she doesn't use it all the time because electricity is expensive here. She has a part- time gardener. She has a nice life. She said to me “I sure could not live this way in Florida." You could emphatically live on $2,000 per month here in this part of Yucatan. In Cancun, it would be more challenging, but here inland, you absolutely, unequivocally can. We know another gentleman who is also retired. He lives in one of the villages, not even here in Valladolid, which has 80,000 people. He was concerned because he lost his residente permanente card. When he came back in, he had to start the process over again. His big problem was that his type of visa requires a certain minimum income, which I believe is around $1,000 per month, and he does not make that much so he thought he would not be able to get his residente permanente card and that he would have to come in and out every 6 months. Well, fortunately, with the assistance of an immigration official who was sympathetic toward him, they did not make him start the process all over. They actually re-issued him his old card under the old income requirement. He has a car, a very modest house, but he does not have air-conditioning. He has ceiling fans instead. He goes out to eat sometimes, and participates in some social events here in the town. God knows, if he was in the US, he would maybe on food stamps.
With a budget of $2,000 a month, a couple can live comfortably here in Yucatan assuming that for whatever reason they chose not to buy a house, because that is not necessary. There are a few rental houses here, too. We know a Canadian couple here that rents a house. They pay $350 a month for it, which is considered expensive. It is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath colonial house. It has a small swimming pool. It has a mini split air conditioner and a ceiling fan. It has a small kitchen with a stove and refrigerator. It doesn't have a dishwasher. We have a dishwasher and our staff never uses it because the maid will wash the dishes. Their part time maid, who comes 5 days a week, does the laundry as well. She also cooks their lunch for them. It is a pretty nice lifestyle. They pay their maid in cash, but they pay her the same amount that I pay, which is 200 pesos or $12.50 a day. Their maid comes in at about 7:30 in the morning and she stays until about 5:00 to 5:30 at night.
Gasoline is more expensive than in the US and electricity is more expensive but still even if you have an electricity bill that's running $80 or $100 a month, that is primarily because of air-conditioning and that would only be during four or five months a year.
We had owned a house in Cancun. The irony is we just finally decided to sell it because our original plan was to move back and forth between them. It is a town house about 3,000 square feet. It is for sale for $250,000. There are three other units in the complex for the same price. For electricity, we were spending more because it is three stories and we have central air-conditioning there. The electricity was probably $300 to $400 a month, so it’s expensive. However, the condo fee that we are paying is $150 a month for common maintenance, the maintenance of the pool, the gardening, all of that. That is less than about a third of the price of parking space in Chicago. I always put it back in perspective.
The taxes that we pay on the house were about $300 a year. That was the regular tax and because we are right on the ocean, we have to pay another tax also for oceanfront that is around another $100 a year. One of our biggest expenses was hurricane Insurance and I am sure people will relate to that. That is fairly expensive, at about $120 a month. Some people choose not pay hurricane Insurance. However, we survived Hurricane Wilma and we got a check for over $22,000 from the insurance company when we settled. I guess you can be self-insured and say have a hurricane once every 20 years. You may or may not have major damage, because the one before it was Hurricane Gilberto and the complex where we owned a house on the ocean did have damage. We know some friends who live right on the same complex and they do not have hurricane insurance. It’s a roll the dice for them, I guess.
Compared to other places in Yucatan, Cancun is generally more expensive. Eating out is more expensive. I would say the cost of your help depends on whether the help can speak English, which is something that expats have a tendency to target; they are always looking for help who speak English. I have three people who do speak English and four people who do not. I speak Spanish to all of them most of the time as far as what I want. An English-speaking maid in Cancun is probably going to cost you $20 a day.
(Plaza in Cancun, Mexico with a Starbucks and a Rainforest Cafe, pictured.)
Posted September 12, 2015
Jason Waller - Playa del Carmen Real Estate
Compared to Winnipeg and Canada, the cost of living in Yucatan can be much lower.Especially in Playa Del Carmen you can live as cheaply as you want or as expensively as you want. There’s a street called 5th avenue that goes for miles where people go for fancier dinners and shopping and so if you go there every day it’s going to be expensive. But if you just go to the local grocery store, fruits and vegetables are extremely cheap here. You can get bag and bag of...
Compared to Winnipeg and Canada, the cost of living in Yucatan can be much lower.Especially in Playa Del Carmen you can live as cheaply as you want or as expensively as you want. There’s a street called 5th avenue that goes for miles where people go for fancier dinners and shopping and so if you go there every day it’s going to be expensive. But if you just go to the local grocery store, fruits and vegetables are extremely cheap here. You can get bag and bag of produce for close to nothing, so you can live really cheaply here. You can find a nice place to rent or buy a place to live and after that, all your other expenses area pretty low.
To cost to rent a place in Playa Del Carmen depends on what you’re looking for. You can have a basic one-bedroom in a more local area you’ll pay a couple hundred dollars a month. If you want to be more in the tourist zone, a 2-bedroom could rent from US $1,000 to $1,200 a month. That will get you a nice 2-bedroom, walking distance to the beach and to 5th Avenue, walking to shopping and everything. If you want to get a house in a gated community, it would be about $2,000 per month or more, depending on the size of the house. For $2,000 you’re going to get 3 or 4 bedroom, nice house with a pool, granite countertops, nice finishes, and everything, from 2,500 to 3,500 square feet, without utilities. It does include the HOA fees, which are the fees that you pay for the area that you’re living in—for security, maintenance, and whatnot—but you pay for all your own utilities.
Typically, the rentals are furnished. Some of them are unfurnished but there are a lot of furnished properties available.
There is no need for heat here, so you don’t have to pay for that. Electricity is the most expensive utility, and how much you spend depends on how much you use your air conditioner. In the summer you’re obviously probably going to use your AC a lot more. For example, if you have a 2-bedroom condo, your cost could be around $100 to $150 a month if you use your AC a lot. A house with a pool and lots of rooms and lots of space could cost a couple hundred dollars a month. The cost for water here for a condo is about $15 to $20 a month. For a house, the cost for water would be $30 to $40 a month.
Relative to the cost of fruits and vegetables, we went to the store a little while ago and bought a huge bag of limes that probably had 30 limes for around a dollar. The difference in price here compared to Canada for food would be fruits and vegetables and meat. If you go back home and you buy yourself a nice fillet, it’s going to cost a lot. Here it’s, I can say it’s a third the price. Fruit and vegetables, we get all fresh, coming from Mexico pretty much. It’s not often that we get imported fruits and vegetables, so the produce here is a lot cheaper than it is back home. For our family of four, our food budget is about half of what we paid in Canada.
Pretty much everything is cheaper here in Playa del Carmen except for electronics.
(Dream home in Playa del Carmen, Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted November 6, 2015
Doug Willey - Doug Willey, Independent Real Estate Consultant
As far as the state of Yucatan, which is where I am, just outside of Merida, it’s very easy for a couple to live here for US $2,000 a month, and have a really good life. This would include paying your utilities, food, and going out to dinner a couple of nights a week. It’s about double that cost to live in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, or Tulum, which...
As far as the state of Yucatan, which is where I am, just outside of Merida, it’s very easy for a couple to live here for US $2,000 a month, and have a really good life. This would include paying your utilities, food, and going out to dinner a couple of nights a week. It’s about double that cost to live in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, or Tulum, which are on the Maya Riviera, in the state of Quintana Roo, and which are the much better known tourist and expat areas.
(Doug and Theresa Willey, Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted December 12, 2015
Mikki James
The cost of living in the Yucatan Peninsula is on a sliding scale. Of course, as in anywhere you can obviously live above your means but it’s easy not to down here. The exchange rate is about 16.5 pesos to the dollar right now, as I write this, in early December. To give you an example of what that would buy, I live in Progresso, a small fishing village in the state of Yucatan about 45 minutes from Merida. I rent a 2,800 square foot house on 3 lots with a large in-ground...The cost of living in the Yucatan Peninsula is on a sliding scale. Of course, as in anywhere you can obviously live above your means but it’s easy not to down here. The exchange rate is about 16.5 pesos to the dollar right now, as I write this, in early December. To give you an example of what that would buy, I live in Progresso, a small fishing village in the state of Yucatan about 45 minutes from Merida. I rent a 2,800 square foot house on 3 lots with a large in-ground pool, huge frontyard, and a backyard big enough for me to stable to horses—and I pay US $280 a month per month. The house has a little bit of a quirky floor plan and it does have a leaky roof, but they’ve allowed me to put my own touches on it, including the paint I like. You can come down here and live on a budget of $1,000 a month. You can rent a very nice home, you can furnish it, and still have plenty of food in the refrigerator and cupboards, travel, do the things that you want to do in life, relax, enjoy yourself and still have money in the bank for emergencies and your nest egg.
Progresso is small. It would take maybe 3 hours at a leisurely stroll to walk from where I live over to Chicxulub, which is the next little town down the beach to the east. Because this is a small fishing village area, a small beach town if you will, the cost of living here is a lot less expensive than in other areas of the Yucatan. If you live in the Centro, historical area of Merida your cost of living will go up. Your cost for rent could be anywhere from 10,000 pesos (US $288) a month to 30,000 pesos (US $1,765) a month.
I live under a half a block from the ocean in a colony called Nuevo Yucalpeten, which is not one of the wealthier areas; it’s all interspersed together and well diversified. For example, across from me lives a government employee, Senior Martinez, who has a big beautiful spread, but on the right side of him is a shack.
I’m a computer tech, so I have all kinds of gizmos, gadgets, computers and Wi-Fi plugged in all the time and my bill for electricity for two months is about $30. It’s very economical to live here.
In the more famous expat areas such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen or Tulum (all in the state of Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula), you would have to pay close to US dollar prices, but I wouldn’t do it. If I were going to live in Cancun I would live in the barrio, in a Hispanic community. I wouldn’t live in an expat community. Expat communities over in Quintana Roo are very expensive, compared to the prices in Progresso.
As a point of reference, in Galveston Texas, where I’m from, the cost to rent a home of the size with the surrounding land I’m living in in Progresso, would be probably $2,500 to $3,000 a month. In Southern California, of course, it would cost you much more.
(Mikki Jones's home in Progresso, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted January 17, 2016
Andy James
The cost of living in Yucatan depends on the lifestyle. For example, if you own your home outright, and you want to have 1 car and a reasonable lifestyle- maybe eating out once or twice a week, you can live in Yucatan for US $2,000 a month. You can also live less expensively in Yucatan, and a lot of people do. I know people in Yucatan who live on $1,000 a month, but the things that they do are affected. They will eat very inexpensive food, not have a...
The cost of living in Yucatan depends on the lifestyle. For example, if you own your home outright, and you want to have 1 car and a reasonable lifestyle- maybe eating out once or twice a week, you can live in Yucatan for US $2,000 a month. You can also live less expensively in Yucatan, and a lot of people do. I know people in Yucatan who live on $1,000 a month, but the things that they do are affected. They will eat very inexpensive food, not have a car, their home would probably be smaller, and they won’t be able to travel, or see as much. They may be perfectly happy walking along the beach with their dog, which doesn’t cost anything.
My electricity bill here in Yucatan is $350 a month. I know people with significantly higher electricity bills. If you use air conditioning, electricity can cost more. There are people here in Yucatan with $500- $600 electricity bills, who live in regular houses, and not necessarily in a mansion. That’s a very high cost of living.
The things that you buy here in Yucatan as an expat are the same things you would buy at home, so if you shop at Wal-Mart, you’re going to spend the same amount of money on your groceries and cleaning supplies that you do in the US because it’s the same product.
If you spend $150 a week at home in buying your food, your cleaning supplies and whatnot, then you’re going to spend that here in Yucatan. If you want to shop very locally and live on far more local food such as tortillas, beans, pork, etc., you can definitely spend a lot less.
For the majority of people getting a car is not cheap. You’re basically driving using gas with the same price as in the US. Lastly, there are items that we shop for here in Yucatan that cost the same as in the US, which means a lot of the things here in Yucatan don’t necessarily cost less. It just depends on how you want to live. For example, if you want to eat at the $10-restaurant, that’s great. On the other hand, if you want to eat at the $50-restaurant, that’s also okay. It all goes to the same thing.
Here in Yucatan, we have quite a few pets. Having a pet is not inexpensive, and vet bills are nothing like the US but they can add up. If you’re on health insurance here, you’re going to spend about $1,000 per person a year. Car insurance costs $600-$700 per year. There are also house expenses such as constant repairs, such as when air conditioner breaks, which would cost about $400. All of these things add up. However, there aren’t not many places in the US where you can live on $2,000 a month.
Healthcare in Yucatan will cost about 20% of what it would cost in the US, depending on where you go. Food can cost less if you buy it at a local store and not at a US store. Restaurants can cost way less. Having said that, I can get a $2.99 breakfast in the US, whereas I don’t see that around here. You’ve got to look at apples and apples. I can get fed in the US for $2.50 just as I can get fed here for $2.50.
(Pictured: Hennessey's Irish Pub, in downtown Merida, a popular expat hangout.)
Posted January 27, 2017