We built our vacation home in Tulum, Mexico, for $350,000. Investing in the market early has pros and cons.

We found a local realtor with good reviews and met up with him while still on our trip. He took us to several developments being built or selling their final units. We liked the idea of building something from scratch so we could add customizations.

The realtor also showed us a website where developers can post projects.

One developer was building four homes, and he was flexible about customizing the building, which appealed to us. We showed him to the realtor, who validated that the builder was established in Tulum and the project was legitimate.

We loved being able to customize our home

The developer had a plot of land in Region 15 — a neighborhood between downtown and the beach zone — and had already carved out what size of home would be on each plot.

There were four houses, and the house design was based on square footage. It would be a 2,600-square-foot home with three stories, three bedrooms, and two pools. He already had an initial design, and we just heavily customized the house to fit what we wanted.

I wanted an infinity-type pool because I thought it would be Instagrammable. I also wanted arches and big windows. I don’t have a design background; we did it all through Google Slides.

The downside of building a holiday home in Tulum is that there is so much construction around it because it’s a developing area.

We want to Airbnb the property when we’re not there, and we haven’t been able to rent it out to its maximum potential. Airbnb guests complained about the noise and the drilling, so we’re holding off on promoting it. Hopefully, all the building will settle down in a year.

As an investor who owns a place, I want Tulum to get more developed so we can make the money back. I think it is growing pretty quickly. But there are still issues with basic infrastructure. For example, the power keeps going out across the area. The internet is a little slow. It’s a five-minute drive from the nearest supermarket, but it’s not walkable.

With Tulum, you can keep that rustic feel in the jungle, even if it is developed. But with people coming from Canada, the UK, and the US, you need decent internet.

In Mexico because a lot of the builders also don’t speak English, you ideally want a realtor that speaks Spanish and English. I don’t think we would have done it had we not had a realtor.

My advice to people considering building a holiday home in Tulum is to find a reputable real estate agent. You have to trust that person and look at their credentials because you can easily get duped and get your money taken.

We paid mostly in cash, wiring the money over, so getting scammed was a bit of a concern. We’d chosen a reputable builder and realtor so these were really minor worries.

The realtor also sticks up for you during the building process. If I told him it was not what we wanted, he’d go out to bat for us.