About Us
Objectivity and Independence
Objectivity and Independence
redguide is the only objective website we know of for real estate in Mexico.
We offer an honest perspective, like Consumer Reports®. Most real estate sites, as you probably already know, are written by sellers pitching their products. Everything's always "breathtaking" and "gorgeous." We seldom say anything is breathtaking. But when we do, it is.
We're not brokers or sellers. We’re travel writers, architects, and filmmakers. We have personally inspected, photographed, and reviewed every real estate development here. For our videos, we interview locals to get to the essence of each place -- what it's really like to live there. We take lots of photos and put our flower logo in the corner to distinguish our images from photos and computer renderings provided by sellers.
Making this site has been a labor of love for us, and we hope it saves you a lot of legwork ... what you can do in an evening on this site would take you weeks on the ground. It's free to users, thanks to developers who pay us to send out their brochures in our kits and brokers who pay us to advertise in our Broker Finder.
We will soon be adding other areas across Mexico and Latin America. We're just getting started and would appreciate your suggestions.
What This Site Offers
What This Site Offers
Honest Reviews. We provide frank, detailed reviews of real estate developments, which we always visit firsthand. We focus on new gated developments (versus stand-alone homes for sale) because developments are often ideal for foreign buyers, as they offer built-in security, concierges, rental programs, title insurance, resort-style amenities, and financing plans. That said, we don't have anything against stand-alone homes or even raw land for do-it-yourselfers who want to build their dream home (we did, and it was a great experience).
Broker Finder. Whether you're looking for a development property, land, a stand-alone home, or even a rental, you're probably going to need a local broker to guide you through the process. We can help you find one. In our Broker Finder, you can watch mini-interviews of local brokers, hear their life stories (condensed down to 60 seconds), and decide who you'd like to work with when you come down. We think this format, where you can "meet" brokers by watching their videos, is a natural way to pick someone you'll have good chemistry with. And for brokers, who pay us for placement, it's an efficient way to introduce themselves to new potential clients.
Our RG Deluxe Buyer's Kit. We offer useful information packaged into an actual box that we'll send to you in the mail. It has plenty of things you'll need to make a well-informed decision -- from destination market overviews and resident guides to a glossary of terms, legal and financing tips, risks you should be mindful of, and an award-winning DVD documentary about expat life in Mexico. It's all organized in a convenient portable filing case. We also include a sailing bag of brochures from local developments and service providers that can help you start dreaming. You can also choose our Virtual Kit, which is a free alternative to the Deluxe Buyer's Kit and includes a subset of the above in PDF form, plus the sailing bag with brochures, which we'll send you by mail for free.
A sensible idea. Developers spend a lot of money on brochures, which they routinely send out for free. That's inefficient, not to mention unecological. Rather than send brochures one at a time via DHL, we consolidate developers' brochures, ship them in bulk to the US border, and mail them out to prospective buyers. This makes it cost-effective for developers to get their expensive marketing materials into the hands of buyers who are still "up north". We will also start including a directory of relevant service providers, like mortgage companies, notarios, and real estate lawyers.
Contact Information
Contact Information
US phone: 1 (866) 903-8020
Mexico phone: (52) 55-3692-4165
jamie @ redguide.com
mariana @ redguide.com
Our offices are in beautiful Valle de Bravo, outside Mexico City.
Team
The Team
Jamie Rosen loves to travel. In college, he flew back and forth between New York and Boston on the Pan Am Shuttle nine times in one day to take advantage of a frequent flier promotion. He used the miles to go to Mongolia, where he worked on writing the country’s first travel guide in English. He has written for Travel & Leisure magazine and has written and/or edited a half dozen travel guides, including Let’s Go: Mexico. In 2005 he moved to Mexico with his wife, Mariana, and went through the process of buying property as a gringo. Over the years, Jamie has started and sold VC-backed technology companies and recently sold his personal patent portfolio to Yahoo! Jamie graduated from Harvard College.
Mariana Gomez-Pimienta is an architect trained at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In 1999 she started her own firm and designed, among other things, an international cultural festival in Tajin, Veracruz. Her architectural projects have been profiled in various publications, including Architectural Digest. She received a master’s degree in Real Estate Development from Columbia University's School of Architecture. She has many side talents, including running fast, making sushi, and Flamenco dancing. Just don't ask her to sing.
You wouldn't believe the number of people who replied to our ad seeking a Spanish-speaking internet strategy expert with experience playing pro golf in Latin America. Well, not so many, actually ... but Alex Gonzalez fit the bill. After growing up on the border in Juarez, Mexico, Alex headed to Boston to attend Harvard College. Before he graduated, he co-founded Chipshot.com, raised $50 million from Sequoia and other VCs, and turned the company into the twelfth largest ecommerce site on the web. He then left to follow his dream of playing professional golf and qualified for the PGA Tour in South America, where he played in Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. Working from Silicon Valley, he manages Redguide's online communities and strategic partnerships.
Jed Payne casually dropped into our office in Valle de Bravo (from his home in Minnesota) in lieu of a phone interview. We hired him on the spot. He started writing propaganda for the United States Navy as a Public Affairs Officer in Japan. After graduating first in his MBA class in Switzerland, he took the logical, lucrative step of becoming a travel journalist. He has since worked all over the world and has written travel books for Explorer Publishing. Jed pioneered our Mayan Riviera coverage and Costa Rica (not published yet). Have an idea for an interesting place for us to write about? Tell Jed. He may just show up on your doorstep.
The rest of the talented redguide team is spread out around the world ... in New York, Los Angeles, Chisinau (Moldova), Pune (India), Puerto Vallarta, and Mexico City.
