Finding somewhere to live in Monterrey

The fiador and the póliza jurídica

The traditional guarantee is a fiador, sometimes called an aval: a local property owner who stands behind the lease and produces the deeds as security. Newcomers rarely have one, so the substitute is a póliza jurídica, a legal-insurance policy the tenant buys, which vets the applicant and covers the landlord if the tenancy goes wrong. Decide which of the two you are offering before you start viewing, because the vetting takes days and a good flat will not wait for it. Ask the issuer what the premium is, what it actually covers and which documents it wants, since the price and the document list both vary by company.

• Fiador or aval: a property owner in Nuevo León, presenting escrituras as security.
• Póliza jurídica: bought by the tenant from a specialist company, and the route most arrivals take.
• Ask how long the underwriting takes before you make an offer on a flat.
• Get the quote and the requirements in writing rather than over the phone.

You will probably live in a different municipality from the one you work in

The metropolitan area is eighteen municipalities and held 5,341,171 people at the 2020 census, second only to Mexico City. San Pedro Garza García, Guadalupe, San Nicolás de los Garza, Apodaca, Santa Catarina and General Escobedo are separate town halls, not districts of Monterrey. That decides which local office handles a municipal formality and which town hall your address belongs to. Work out which municipality an address sits in before you sign, because the listing will rarely make it obvious.

Water, and the cistern question

Supply comes partly from well fields, which cover roughly forty per cent of demand, and mostly from surface reservoirs — El Cuchillo, Cerro Prieto and La Boca — which is why a dry year shows up in the taps and why a building's own storage is worth asking about. Ask whether there is a cistern and a working pump, how much the cistern holds, and what happened to the building in 2022 when parts of the metropolitan area went onto scheduled supply. Water and drainage come from Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey, whose service line runs on 073 around the clock. Put the question to a neighbour or the building administrator rather than to the agent showing you round.

Heat, cooling and the July bill

The city sits at about 540 metres in a valley ringed by mountains, with Cerro de la Silla at 1,820 metres. Average highs run from about 33°C in May to 36°C in August, and the record is 48°C, set in April, so the cooling arrangement is part of what the flat costs rather than part of its decoration. Central air, a split unit in each room and one unit for the whole flat are three different propositions from May to September. Ask for the previous tenant's July electricity bill and look at the figure itself, because an average across the year tells you nothing about a Monterrey summer.

• Ask which rooms are actually cooled, and when the units were last serviced.
• Ask whether the windows and the roof have any insulation at all.
• Ask for a real July or August bill, not a monthly average.

In order

1. 1Decide whether you are offering a fiador or a póliza jurídica, and get a written quote for the policy.
2. 2Ask the issuer which documents it wants and how many days the underwriting takes.
3. 3Work out which municipality each shortlisted address belongs to.
4. 4View in person, in the afternoon if it is summer, and see how the cooling copes.
5. 5Ask about the cistern, the pump and what happened to the building's supply in 2022.
6. 6Ask for the previous tenant's July electricity bill.
7. 7Ask what term the contract runs for, how it renews and what any increase is tied to.
8. 8Check whether the water account is being transferred to you or opened fresh, because the two are different procedures.
9. 9Record meter readings in the inventory at handover, and get one bill into your own name.