U.S. Realtors recommend Mérida for expats

Realtor.com’s map of top expat destinations.

Mérida is among 10 international expat hubs recommended by the U.S. National Association of Realtors.

They make one mistake — illustrating the article with a stock photo of hilly Mérida, Venezuela instead of flat Mérida, Yucatan — but otherwise present a strong case for investing in the Mérida that doesn’t have hills. 

“A rich history has left Merida with beautiful Spanish and French Colonial mansions, some of which have been converted into hotels. Others are up for grabs,” writes Realtor.com. (Whole story here; scroll down to No. 5 for Mérida’s writeup.)

Mérida, Yucatán. Photo: Lonely Planet via Getty Images

Mérida’s median home price is $125,000 and there are already 876,528 American expats throughout Mexico.

“The ideal city, in my view, is a place where you can afford a city apartment or nearby house, from which you can jump on a bike, bus, or streetcar to get to cultural and sports events,” Patricia Linderman tells Realtor.com. Linderman, editor of expat magazine Tales From a Small Planet, adds that buyers should also seek out places “where you meet a mix of people from around the world and locals.”

Realtor.com ranked 231 global hubs and compared them for housing affordability, cost of living, quality of life, the homicide rate and number of expats already there. They chose just one city per country to spread out the results. 

The other expat hubs are: Stuttgart, Germany; Glasgow, Scotland; Montreal, Canada; Wellington, New Zealand; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Canberra, Australia; Lyon, France; Dublin, Ireland; and Durban, South Africa.

Leaving the U.S. to become an expat could be a romantic impulse or a “byproduct of these politically turbulent times. It’s a collective American fantasy of the disenfranchised or disgusted: making good on your threat to just pick up and move to … well, fill in the blank,” writes Realtor.com.

The U.S. State Department estimates there are close to 9 million U.S. citizens residing overseas as of last June. That’s up from 6.3 million in 2011.

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