by John Gallik

How do those people who own those beautiful homes in Cozumel and the Riviera Maya do it?

Well, if you’re like me, you may have assumed that only doctors or lawyers were able to own a home in the Caribbean. Well, I’m here to tell you anyone can do it!

My name is John Gallik and I am real estate agent here on Cozumel. I am originally from New Jersey and recently moved here permanently after I fell in love with paradise. Now, I own a beautiful home here - just an average guy from New Jersey. So how did that happen? Can you do it?

Back in Jersey, I was a maintenance supervisor and property manager. My wife and I were on one of our many trips to the Island of Cozumel and just for fun stopped by Cozumel Living and spoke with Nancy Edwards, the owner.

Nancy spent time with us, driving around the island, showing us property as well as homes. By the end of our week we bought a piece of property.

Suffice to say, our friends and family thought we were crazy! We now owned property in the Caribbean. Now what?

The next step was to find a reputable builder and after speaking with Nancy, we found someone with whom we felt comfortable. We designed our home and how we wanted it laid out via the internet with emails and using Fed/ex to send drawings back and forth. We gave final approval of plans before any construction got under way.

The next step was to phase our payments to the builder in such a way that would be in his best interest to complete the project. We accomplished this by withholding the final 20% of his fee until we did a final walk-thru and all issues were addressed and completed to our satisfaction. At that time, we released final payment.

Our entire process took less than 6 months. We received weekly updates from our builder via email including pictures so we could see the progress ourselves. My wife and I came down twice to select tile and light fixtures for the house, other than those trips everything was done by email.

We now own a beautiful home called Casa Mama.

We’ve turned it into a great vacation home for ourselves and family. In addition, when we are not using it, it has turned into a great rental property for us.

Were there problems during construction? Certainly!

But let me tell you the pros outweighed the cons and we would build again in a heartbeat. In fact, we are considering starting all over again with another piece of property we just purchased.

We seriously fell in love with the island and our new home. I became convinced that the real estate opportunities are so good I left my job and now work for the same Cozumel Living as a realtor.

Life in Paradise! It’s is alive and well.

John Gallick is a Real Estate Agent at Cozumel Living and can be reached by email at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . Or call him by phone at +52 (987) 869-2345

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