They Spent Four Years Looking. They Chose Rocky Point.

Three neighbors on what it actually took to trade the U.S. for the Sea of Cortez.

Rob and Kristi did not land here by accident. They spent four years deciding.

“We decided we wanted to experience life outside the United States,” Rob says. The search ran through Costa Rica, Belize and Panama — “all the traditional safe havens for expats.” They built what he calls a spreadsheet of wants and desires and kept crossing names off it. Last year they drove down to Puerto Peñasco, and the list stopped moving.

Close enough to get home
The drive settled it. They have three grown sons, two in Kansas City and one in Chicago. “My oldest son was just concerned that if something happened, he wanted to be able to get to us,” Kristi says. Weather settled the rest. Sandy, who lives nearby, put it bluntly: “We lived in Florida for three years, had five major hurricanes, and said nope.”

The part nobody predicts
Ask them what surprised them, and the answer is not the beach. It is the neighbors. Rob and Kristi now spend Wednesday afternoons at a picture-trivia game in a local cantina with people from their own street. “Where we lived before, we had neighbors, but we didn’t have the bonds that we’ve established within a month,” Kristi says. A clinic saw her inside an hour, and the visit cost $25.

Why this neighborhood
Choosing the town took four years. Choosing the street took one visit. They looked at properties all over Puerto Peñasco and kept narrowing. “I didn’t know all the secret parts about a neighborhood, and we kept weeding out,” Kristi says. One brochure kept resurfacing. “I kept seeing the brochure for here, and I thought, we’re going to go look there too — and this is where we decided.”

All three landed in the same gated community: Viviente at Sandy Beach, 109 beachside homes around a clubhouse, dues $165 a month. Water was the first draw — their house sits about half a mile off the beach. Quality was the second. Kristi sold real estate before retiring and walked the model home with a professional eye. “It’s the same quality as I would see in the United States in a subdivision,” she says.

That mattered, because they bought before the house existed and went back to Texas while it was built. Updates arrived against the schedule they had been given. “We totally trusted the process,” she says, “because we weren’t down here to monitor it.” The math helped too: “This house in Texas probably is double the cost,” Rob says. And then the part none of them could have shopped for. “The community at home is amazing,” Sandy says. “That is where the core of our friends are.”

What they would tell you

Rob’s advice is the spreadsheet: know what you want before you shop. Sandy’s is shorter. “Don’t hesitate” — and don’t judge the town by the first stretch you drive through. “Center of town is where you’re going to find some of the kindest people, some of the best food.”

Kristi framed it the way a lot of people here eventually do. “We want to be happy,” she says, “and we think this would be a good place for us to finish it out and go out with a bang.”

About the Author: Joseph Sanchez is an AMPI-certified real estate agent with RE/MAX Legacy and the developer of Viviente at Sandy Beach. He serves as president of Rocky Point Home Builders and is a proud U.S. Veteran. Originally from Chicago and a Southern Illinois University at Carbondale alumnus, Joseph now resides full-time in Puerto Peñasco with his wife and three children for over 15 years. For more information, email rockypointrealestate911@gmail.com.