Where do you recommend I start?

Hi Tricia,
Welcome to the forum and Puerto Rico soon.
There are 78 towns, each with its own flavor. As this is your first trip I would recoment you try the follownig areas:
Condado (part of San Juan)
Dorado
Fajardo
Humacao (Palmas Del Mar)
Rincon (west of the Island)

In each of those you will find large concentrations of English Speakers. Not everyone in PR speaks English. Not sure if you have any knowledge of Spanish but the more fluent you are the easier it will be to comunicate

As to January and Internet service. We just went thru a devasted storm and Puerto Rico is barely recovering. At this moment about 57% of the island have electricity and it is iffy, every few days those that have it loose it. About 90% of the island has running water but it needs to be boiled for 5 minutes before it is safe to drink. There is little inspection at the moment for the safety of the beaches and they are likely to be contaminated.

I would recommend you wait until March or so to give the island a chance to be further along in its recovery.
Any questions let us know.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! I feel a little embarrassed that I was unaware that recovery efforts have been this slow on the island. Excuse me while I remove my Rose Colored Glasses. 😎
    I will plan to stay in touch here and perhaps delay my trip until at least February, if not March. I assume some areas -- perhaps that were not as hard hit -- are much further along in terms of recovery?

The areas recovering faster are those in metro areas such as San Juan, however the electric company seems to be making the repairs using chewing gum and a few days later there is a failure again.

While running water is reaching about 90% of the population it is mainly due to electric generators running the pumps since the electric service is not fully up. Many hotels are also down due to electric service, it is very expensive to use a generator for a hotel as the cost for fuel and generator maintenance is high. Also water is not yet safe to drink without boiling it first. You will find some hotels open and some airbnb places open also. Make sure they have water, electricity and internet access before you make a reservation. Even then you may loose all 3 once in a while while visiting.

The more you delay the higher the chances you will have some level of normalcy.
Good luck.

Hi Tricia,

Welcome to https://www.expat.com!

I created a new topic as from your post on the Puerto Rico forum.

Good luck,
Chrisitine

TriciaOhio wrote:

I prefer small town living with a few conveniences like reliable internet and a good fresh food market.

I don't want to burst your bubble but even under normal circumstances reliable internet and good fresh food are sort of scarce.
Now there are areas where you might have better conditions, Rey mentioned them (Condado, gated communities in Dorado, Palmas del Mar, Rincon) There you'l find more English speaking people and some specialty stores that could sell the food that you like. The down side is that these are the more expensive places.
Finding a place to live should be easy. Thousands of PuertoRicans are leaving the island every day. They are moving to the mainland in the hope to find a job over there. So many people lost their job after the hurricane.
I'd suggest to keep an eye on the recovery efforts and get an overview of the situation before you head this way.

Recently  I seen homes that used to sell for 175, now selling for 137.

You may even be able to take over the current mortgage of an owner so price will be whatever the balance is plus whatever you may want to trow his way to help him get started in the states.

It's true, it's a Byers market for sure, I live in Vega Baja and downtown there's power and water but up the hill in my Neighborhood, we have running water but it's via a generator and pumping station, everybody is using generators, hope to get power by Christmas but it doesn't look likely,  there are still powerlines snapped in half on my street that have an even been repaired yet.  The good news is the gas lines are a lot shorter, all the food markets are open, we were able to get everything we needed for an American Thanksgiving.  Things are slowly getting back to normal, except for the electricity in the  residential areas. Also, there still is debris everywhere, driving down any street there are piles of it piled up on the street I don't know why, perhaps there's no place to put it or the municipality  is overwhelmed, I don't know the answer to this.

What the members are suggesting is great to wait a little more until everything settles down. Due to the past of Hurricane Maria some Forclosed properties has gone down dramatically.

If banks were to offer REPO properties for 15-20% above the current mortgage balance, they would probably get rid of their inventory a lot quicker. But they dont and like to try to get market value or put them up for auction. The longer the property sits the more it decays and the lower the value. But banks are greedy.

Thank you!

Excellent advice, it is much appreciated!

I assumed that it would quickly become a buyer's market, thanks for confirming that!

TriciaOhio wrote:

I assumed that it would quickly become a buyer's market, thanks for confirming that!

It's been a buyer's market, and Maria will only depress prices further as people abandon homes and banks foreclose.  There are consumer advocacy groups lobbying on behalf of homeowners who have lost their jobs, and I suspect that the banks would much prefer to extend the grace period to those with the desire to remain.  But so many are simply emigrating from the island that there should be a flood of foreclosures in the next six months or so.
Real estate prices have been falling for the last ten years or so.  I have no idea how much lower they could go, but I don't think they've hit bottom quite yet.

https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/rea … uerto-rico

Gary's last comment.... in essence, look before you leap. Venturing into PR, even in the best of times, would be daunting. Now, you'd better be independently wealthy because jobs will be scarce, especially for those not speaking Spanish and health care... forget it. Again, in the best of times, you would be met with culture shock, but now, there's that plus the trickle down of exceedingly hard times. And, unfortunately, you'd have to take into consideration that PR has been very ill served by the U.S., and the population that's left won't forget it.

My position in Puerto Rico has served me well and it looks like it will continue that way.  I am not independently wealthy but I invested half of my real estate investments in Puerto Rico.  Just like my online business I do not need the majority of consumers to benefit from ny businesses.  My house in Ponce earned income from tourist before the hurricane, Now it earns income from Fema and first responders needing electric, water and internet. Last year when I was not in Ponce Banco Popular rented the front porch of my home and created a commercial with Merengue dancers and vejigante carnival masks.
Ponce had utilities within a few weeks. Ponce would have been under much worse conditions if the 100 year dam of the Portuguese river had not been completed a couple of years ago. With three rivers Ponce has a history of major flooding.  Our farm now has a lake view from the higher hills along with views  of the Southern coast of Puerto Rico. Within two years the agriculture sector should be recovering as it takes bananas two years to start producing. My goal is the get my farm fully operational with new crops along with what still is standing. I will be installing beehives to produce organic honey for the US market along with specialty crops.  I will be creating an eco/art camp ground on the farm for a select market.  Not everyone will have this opportunity but there will be enough people with land and homes that  could develope a similar model, Perhaps I can have something to offer  residents who  can relate to this sort of business model. There is hope and the future starts now.

Is great to have you all here & welcome to the group!