The Expat Files

Listener email questions about real estate and water: - Crazy wording and unknown terms and conditions in those funky Latin real estate ads. - Why when buying or building a house you also need to purchase the phantom rights to a monthly volume of wter, at a price which doesn’t actually include the water itself, just the right to use it... then you get charged for it again! Confused yet? - Why your condo or house should always be connected to a private water well in your subdivision, in other words, avoid a municipal water hookup at all costs. - Don’t drink the tap water or the bottled water either, since its often tampered with, unregulated (and the locals don’t care).... but there are some excellent very inexpensive alternatives I highly recommend(even more than cheap beer and tequila). - Solar hot water, just what the doctor ordered, and the systems here are simple and dirt cheap. And even better(since it never freezes in most of LA) these units are zero maintenance, and that’s great news because down here the word maintenance doesn’t really exist.