Amazing opportunity in Rosarito Baja California real estate:

Foreclosed oceanfront property in Rosarito Baja California, Mex.! 

Presenting the best opportunity in Baja real estate: Paradise del Baja, a Foreclosed oceanfront property in Rosarito Baja California Mex. 

It is Owner’s intention to effect the sale of the Property Paradise del Baja by sale of 100% of the shares of the company, which owns the property. Purchaser will obtain ownership of the Co. by purchase of its outstanding stock, and thereby its current ownership rights to Paradise del Baja in excess of $2 million Dlls of grading work. 

Paradise del Baja consist of 6 parcels, combined into a single larger tract, with one very large sized parcel, two intermediate sized parcels, and 3 fragment sized parcels. Paradise del Baja a 5.97-acre parcel of land is situated in a magnificent location on Rosarito Baja California, Mex. with sweeping Pacific Ocean and beach views. 

Developers with a taste for the peaceful views of El Descanso Bay in Baja, will be drawn to this beachfront property, a natural whale resting area. 

Beachfront real estate in Baja doesn’t get any better than this, with views of turquoise waters and less than a mile from the renowned Puerto Nuevo dinning. Rising on an partially land graded parcel of land between the main highway and the Pacific Ocean, Paradise del Baja, a Rosarito real estate opportunity is unparalleled in the possibilities it presents for real estate development. Zoned residential and commercial, this land is available for many types of development, like hotels, condos, homes, shopping mall, etc. The Seller has conducted a Master Plan audit to identify potential uses for this Oceanside land. 

This exceptional Rosarito Beach property can support a premier community that is zoned over 200 homes. Potential Features and Amenities: Seaside Multi-Family Residences, Seaside Single-Family Residences, Beach Club, Retail/Entertainment District, Reconstituted Beach, Community Sports Fields, Staff Housing and more. 

Paradise del Baja an undeveloped but largely improved oceanfront property in Rosarito Baja, represents a stellar opportunity for development of a project that boasts world-class recreational activities within a short drive from the US border. The 5.97 acres of land on Rosarito Baja California is situated in the Cantiles Dorados area, 28 miles south of the border. 

Contact us: 

Toll Free.- 1866 588 2252 

US (619) 270 5446 

Mex (661) 100 2076 

rosaritobeach@topproducer.com

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Prepare for Your House-Hunting Adventure in Baja!

There are many exciting real estate opportunities in Baja, Mexico. It's little wonder that so many people are flocking south of the border to check them out. If you plan to be one of them, you should do a few things to make your house-hunting excursion as productive as possible. The first step is to find a talented, experienced and knowledgeable real estate agent. You will get that and more with RE/MAX Baja Realty. You can make all of the arrangements for meeting with an agent from home too.

Buy Insurance

You probably have no intention of getting into trouble while looking for second homes or retirement homes in Baja. As long as you buy Mexican car insurance, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Driving in Baja without car insurance for Mexico is a big mistake. The police are allowed to detain drivers who get into accidents and don't have coverage. You can easily buy high-quality Mexican auto insurance online and have it ready to go when you arrive in Baja. Make sure to do so to ensure the smoothest, easiest visit possible.

Take a Look

After speaking with you about what you want in a Baja home, your agent will come up with a list of viable options. Upon arriving in Baja, you will be taken around to look at several of them. It's smart to bring along a notebook and camera to take notes and pictures along the way. Most people need time to compare and contrast their favorite options. In some cases, one property will immediately stand out and seem like the best option. Sometimes, though, the choice can be a lot more difficult. Either way, your agent will be there for you.

Buy a Great Baja House

By the time you find the house that's right for you, your agent will help you come up with a competitive offer. You may need to arrange for financing from your lender. Before you know it, closing day will be here. There is nothing quite like buying a beautiful home in Baja. You and your family will probably want to get it all set up to your liking right away. Whether it's a vacation home or a place to spend your retirement, your Baja home is sure to be perfect.

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How Mexico got back in the game

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 23, 2013

IN India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.
Impossible, you say? Well, yes, Mexico with only about 110 million people could never rival China or India in total economic clout. But here’s what I’ve learned from this visit to Mexico’s industrial/innovation center in Monterrey. Everything you’ve read about Mexico is true: drug cartels, crime syndicates, government corruption and weak rule of law hobble the nation. But that’s half the story. The reality is that Mexico today is more like a crazy blend of the movies “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network.”
Something happened here. It’s as if Mexicans subconsciously decided that their drug-related violence is a condition to be lived with and combated but not something to define them any longer. Mexico has signed 44 free trade agreements — more than any country in the world — which, according to The Financial Times, is more than twice as many as China and four times more than Brazil. Mexico has also greatly increased the number of engineers and skilled laborers graduating from its schools. Put all that together with massive cheap natural gas finds, and rising wage and transportation costs in China, and it is no surprise that Mexico now is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia and attracting more global investment than ever in autos, aerospace and household goods.
“Today, Mexico exports more manufactured products than the rest of Latin America put together,” The Financial Times reported on Sept. 19, 2012. “Chrysler, for example, is using Mexico as a base to supply some of its Fiat 500s to the Chinese market.” What struck me most here in Monterrey, though, is the number of tech start-ups that are emerging from Mexico’s young population — 50 percent of the country is under 29 — thanks to cheap, open source innovation tools and cloud computing.
“Mexico did not waste its crisis,” remarked Patrick Kane Zambrano, director of the Center for Citizen Integration, referring to the fact that when Mexican companies lost out to China in the 1990s, they had no choice but to get more productive. Zambrano’s Web site embodies the youthful zest here for using technology to both innovate and stimulate social activism. The center aggregates Twitter messages from citizens about everything from broken streetlights to “situations of risk” and plots them in real-time on a phone app map of Monterrey that warns residents what streets to avoid, alerts the police to shootings and counts in days or hours how quickly public officials fix the problems.
“It sets pressure points to force change,” the center’s president, Bernardo Bichara, told me. “Once a citizen feels he is not powerless, he can aspire for more change. ... First, the Web democratized commerce, and then it democratized media, and now it is democratizing democracy.”
If Secretary of State John Kerry is looking for a new agenda, he might want to focus on forging closer integration with Mexico rather than beating his head against the rocks of Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan or Syria. Better integration of Mexico’s manufacturing and innovation prowess into America’s is a win-win. It makes U.S. companies more profitable and competitive, so they can expand at home and abroad, and it gives Mexicans a reason to stay home and reduces violence. We do $1.5 billion a day in trade with Mexico, and have been spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan. Not smart.
We need a more nuanced view of Mexico. While touring the Center for Agrobiotechnology at Monterrey Tech, Mexico’s M.I.T., its director, Guy Cardineau, an American scientist from Arizona, remarked to me that, in 2011, “my son-in-law returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and we talked about having him come down and visit for Christmas. But he told me the U.S. military said he couldn’t come because of the [State Department] travel advisory here. I thought that was very ironic.”
Especially when U.S. companies are expanding here, which is one reason Mexico grew last year at 3.9 percent, and foreign direct investment in Monterrey hit record highs.
“Twenty years ago, most Mexican companies were not global,” explained Blanca Treviño, the president and founder of Softtek, one of Mexico’s leading I.T. service providers. They focused on the domestic market and cheap labor for the U.S. “Today, we understand that we have to compete globally” and that means “becoming efficient. We have a [software] development center in Wuxi, China. But we are more efficient now in doing the same business from our center in Aguascalientes, [Mexico], than we are from our center in Wuxi.”
Mexico still has huge governance problems to fix, but what’s interesting is that, after 15 years of political paralysis, Mexico’s three major political parties have just signed “a grand bargain,” a k a “Pact for Mexico,” under the new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to work together to fight the big energy, telecom and teacher monopolies that have held Mexico back. If they succeed, maybe Mexico will teach us something about democracy. Mexicans have started to wonder about America lately, said Bichara from the Center for Citizen Integration. “We always thought we should have our parties behave like the United States’ — no longer. We always thought we should have the government work like the United States’ — no longer.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: February 24, 2013An earlier version of this column misstated the amount the United States has been spending in Afghanistan. It is $300 million a day, not $1 billion a day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-mexico-got-back-in-the-game.html?smid=pl-share

Ensenada among the “101 Best Places to Eat in the World”

"La Guerrerense" seafood cart made it to Newsweek´s list

Sabina Bandera during her presentation at the LA Street Food Fest. Micaela Arroyo/SanDiegoRed

Ensenada’s iconic seafood stand “La Guerrerense” made it to Newsweek’s the “101 Best Places to Eat In the World”.

Inside the weekly edition from August 13 to 20, the culinary-themed article featured on the cover, lists gastronomic spots throughout the world, based on recommendations made by 53 renowned chefs including Anthony Bourdain, who early this year visited the stand, owned and managed by Mrs. Sabina Bandera.

“La Guerrerense, a humble street cart, is as simple as it gets. Doña Sabina Bandera Gonzalez serves up the most mind-blowing fresh, sophisticated, and colorful tostadas imaginable. Absolutely phenomenal. Worth drive from L.A.”, said Bourdain in Newsweek. “Incredibly phenomenal, it’s totally worth the trip from Los Angeles.”

The picture of Sabina and her ceviche tostadas leads the section dedicated to Latin America in the magazine’s countdown. The article recommends the clam, octopus and abalone tostadas.

With over 40 years of history, the emblematic stand located between First and Alvarado Streets in Ensenada, is famous for its ceviche tostadas, its salsas and its seafood cocktails.

Last July, La Guerrerense was awarded with the LA Street Food Fest’s highest prize beating over a 100 competitors from restaurants to street food stands.

Original Text: Alexandra Mendoza
Translation: Karen.balderas@sandiegored.com

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For Baja California Winemakers, It's Fiesta Time | KPBS.org

August is the time for festivals in Baja, California - from cheese and bread to salads to seafood. The grandaddy of them all is the Fiestas de la Vendimia, the harvest festivals in Ensenada's lush Guadalupe Valley wine country.

While driving to Ensenada one recent Saturday, I passed billboards advertising no fewer than five foodie festivals: The festival of cheese and bread; the festival of seafood and shellfish—even a festival devoted entirely to salads and salad dressings. But it’s a paella competition that brings me south of the border today.

Credit: Maya Kroth
Above: The pre-paella contest entry from Team Chiapas,Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, July 14, 2012
“If we win we get to go to the big contest in Valle de Guadalupe in the last weekend of August,” said Montserrat Vildósola, an architect from Mexico City and amateur paella chef. “There’s a contest where 100 paelleros go, and this is the contest you have to win in order to be able to contest there.”

Vildósola’s team is one of about a dozen competing today for a spot in the big paella contest that closes out the grandaddy of all Baja gastronomic festivals: the Fiestas de la Vendimia. That’s Spanish for harvest parties, and they’re happening now in Ensenada’s lush Guadalupe Valley wine country, a bucolic place where horses graze amid scenic vineyards surrounded by majestic purple mountains.

“Baja produces about 90 percent of the wine from Mexico,” said Joaquín Prieto, current president of Provino, the coalition of winemakers that coordinates the Vendimia. “Climate is the prime thing. We have the Pacific cold and the heat of the valley so it creates a microclimate.”

Prieto’s own winery, Tres Valles, is one of close to 70 now up and running in the region, operations that range in size from tiny mom ‘n’ pops that produce just a few hundred cases per year to huge commercial behemoths like L.A. Cetto. Over the next few weeks, most of them will be throwing parties to celebrate the grape harvest, anything from wine dinners with famous chefs to winery tours, cheese tastings, bullfights, concerts, circus performances, art exhibitions and, of course, the paella contest.

Credit: Maya Kroth
Above: Chefs Otto Spohn and Juan Carlos Coutiño Ruizof of Team Chiapas with their pre-paella contest entry, in Ensenada, Baja California, July 14, 2012
Another contest hopeful, Chef Otto Spohn, says he’s noticed a change in the clientele at his Tijuana restaurant this year, since US media like The New Yorker and Anthony Bourdain’s travel show “No Reservations” caught wind of what’s happening in Baja.

“Many people are coming from the north, crossing the border. Fortunately we have changed the image of Tijuana on the question of security,” Spohn said. “We are doing very well and people are coming.”

Organizer Prieto anticipates about 50,000 people—including Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who swung through the valley last week to kick off the festivities—will attend the Vendimia this month, a jump of more than 40% from last year. But only about 1 in 5 are expected to come from the United States, with most visitors hailing from elsewhere within the country, like Vildósola, who’s been attending since she was a girl growing up in Mexicali and still travels back every summer despite having moved to Mexico City.

“At first it was very regional,” she said. “There were a few winemakers, and now from the two or three that were here 25 years ago, there are 70. It’s a new life; it’s a new world. It’s changed for the better, but it’s different.”

“I think the big shocker for everyone about Guadalupe Valley is they would naturally be inclined to think that because its south of the border that it’s too hot to make wines that have elegance and finesse, and that’s not true at all,” said Robert Whitley, a San Diego-based wine columnist for Creators Syndicate who’s been keeping tabs on the Guadalupe Valley for almost 30 years. “It’s probably cooler than Napa in summertime. You have that diurnal effect of grapes having sunshine and warmth during the day that they need to ripen, and the cooling at night that preserves the freshness and the acidity. So it’s actually an ideal climate for grape growing.”

Credit: Maya Kroth
Above: Local Valle de Guadalupe wines being served at a Fiestas de la Vendimia pre-party in Ensenada, Baja California, July 14, 2012
The Nebbiolo grape—the same one that makes famously pricey Italian wines like Barolo and Barbaresco—grows particularly well in Baja, says Whitley. In fact, he ranks L.A. Cetto’s Nebbiolo as the best in North America, on par with those from Italy’s Piedmont region, and has even seen it listed on menus in Parisian wine bars.

But if Baja wines are so good, why don’t we see more of them on supermarket shelves in the States? Explanations range from high import tariffs to the fact that most of these wineries simply don’t produce enough to meet even domestic demand, let alone international. Thankfully, U.S. Customs allows individuals to bring in one bottle apiece duty-free, so Americans who taste something they like at the harvest festival can still savor the flavor of Baja back home.

“Everybody comes to Ensenada in the summer,” said Vildósola. “This is part of the heart of Baja California.”
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Robert Redford stars as 'perfect guest' at Rosarito Beach Hotel

The Rosarito Beach Hotel considers all visitors to be important guests, but during June and July one guest in particular stood out.

He went by the name of Mr. Miller but there was no disguising who really was staying at the Baja California resort: Robert Redford.

The legendary actor occupied a two-bedroom penthouse on the 17th floor of the Pacifico Tower, and while he undoubtedly enjoyed spectacular ocean views and famous Baja hospitality, this was a working trip.

Redford was across the border for the filming, at nearby studios, of director J.C. Chandor's "All Is Lost," about a lone man's struggles against the sea.

For the spacious seaside hotel, which is still rebounding from negative publicity generated by drug cartel-related violence in Baja California, the business was much appreciated.

Production staff, including Chandor, occupied 140 rooms. Redford, 75, chose to stay at the hotel over a nearby mansion to be closer to his colleagues.

The actor and hotel staff reportedly did a good job of maintaining secrecy. Redford relied largely on room service and attempted to hide beneath a baseball cap when he did stroll about the hotel grounds.

He was described in a news release as the perfect guest.

Jorge Morales, a waiter at the hotel's Azteca restaurant, said that only one guest that he knew of recognized the true identity of Mr. Miller during his many restaurant visits.

"I told the customer that [Redford] was making a movie and was very tired," Morales said. "Please don't disturb him."

Morales was Redford's personal waiter and often served the actor Puerto Nuevo-style lobster and Don Julio tequila.

Before checking out, the actor posed for photos with Morales and other staff members. They, in turn, were struck by how unassuming Redford turned out to be. "The guy being so famous, how could he be so humble?" Morales said.

Redford also displayed a sense of humor. When asked to identify his favorite Mexican food he responded, "My favorite food is tequila."

He's the latest of many Hollywood stars who have visited the Rosarito Beach Hotel. They include Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and John Wayne.

Of the drug violence among rival cartels, which two years ago made daily headlines and frightened many tourists into thinking all of Mexico was unsafe, Redford said this: "It's unfortunate, since there are so many areas of Mexico that are safe to visit. More people should know."

"All Is Lost" is due to be released in 2013.

-- Top image shows the Rosarito Beach Hotel. Credit: ©Pete Thomas. Second image shows Robert Redford on the pier in front of the Rosarito Beach Hotel
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Hugo Torres Recognized for his Service to Mexico and the USA

Ron Raposa Media Services, Rosarito Beach, Baja California

Several hundred people attended a July 10 ceremony in Tijuana at which former Rosarito mayor and hotel owner Hugo Torres was honored by the Sales and Marketing Executives of Tijuana as their organization's 2012 Distinguished Executive and Socially Responsible Businessman.

The award was presented to Mr. Torres for his many years of involvement in the social, political and business life of Rosarito and Baja California, including many projects to build stronger relationships between the United States and Baja California.

Mr. Torres, principal owner of the historic Rosarito Beach Hotel, has been a fixture in the Baja California and Rosarito business and political scenes for decades. He led the effort to incorporate Rosarito as a city in 1995, and twice served as city mayor.

As mayor from 2007 to 2010, he reformed the city police department, led Rosarito to its lowest crime rate in history, established a tourist police force, and worked closely with Baja California and San Diego officials on international projects.

"I am very honored to have been selected by this outstanding group, and to receive recognition for the importance of social responsibility," Mr. Torres said.

"As mayor of Rosarito from 2007 to 2010, I did things to make the city more welcoming to our visitors. We cleaned up the police department and started a special tourist police force. Those things were needed and were socially responsible things to do. They led to Rosarito in 2010 having its lowest crime rate ever.

"Aside from that, I have made it my mission in the past few years to spread the message that Baja is safe. That unrest in Ciudad Juarez doesn't mean unrest in Baja. That those who avoid criminal activity also avoid crime, be it in Rosarito or New Orleans. It's a message that needs to be told repeatedly."

"We're starting to see the results of efforts like that," he said. "At the Rosarito Beach Hotel, after several very bad years, we're having our best summer in memory."

The award presentation was preceded by a video featuring highlights of Mr. Torres' life, from childhood to today. Along with business and political leaders, Mr. Torres wife Rosa Maria and the couple's five sons and daughters attended the ceremony, as did several expatriate residents of Rosarito.

Earlier this year Mr. Torres was honored by LEAD San Diego with its Charles Nathanson Memorial Award for Cross-Border Region Building.

Mr. Torres also has been a strong supporter of the arts, education and various social programs. He is president of the Baja Image Committee, a group devoted to promoting a positive and accurate portrait of Baja California on the region and in the United States.

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