Texas background check from Ecuador

Dear Jobie,

Welcome to the Ecuador forum.

Changing your immigrant visa's basis from CD to property didn't used to be so complicated.  But visa rules change, so it's possible this maneuver now requires such fingerprints.

The non-attorney Expats on this forum typically do not know the latest "inside baseball" for a fancy move like this or any recent rule-changes affecting such.

You can probably get the up-to-date information from an immigration attorney or a visa facilitator without necessarily hiring them to do the full job for you....

Quito attorney... Sebastian Cordero:  scordero(at)gcabogados.com
Guayaquil facilitator... Profesora Dana Cameron:  Dana.Visas(at)gmail.com

  -- cccmedia in Quito

JobieM wrote:

I am in Ecuador, so trotting down to the fingerprint scanning place in Dallas is not really an option.

If the prints are necessary, contact the U.S. Embassy in Quito or Interpol in Quito for assistance or a referral.  Ecuador has been an Interpol member for over 30 years.

Kindly let us know what you find out.

cccmedia in Quito

Thank you so VERY much!

I know this is an old post but thought I would explain what happened to us.  We moved here officially in September 2013 along with all our possessions.  We had bought a pre-construction condo which was to be completed in December 2013, or we would have waited to move here, and I would have probably changed my mind on that.  My husband was already living here on an extended visa as I wanted him to make sure moving here was what he wanted as this is his dream and not mine, and I am young and had a great job in Florida that I hated to leave.

Since the condo was not completed we had to do investment cd's for each of us.  We are not legally married in US, only in Fiji where we were married.  To have my marriage registered here they want $3,500 & for now no benefit to warrant the funds.  To make a very long story short our condo was delayed for over 2 years in which we were having to rent 2 unfurnished condos from our gringo friend just to store our possessions.  It was a miserable time and we decided to sell our condo on the beach and possibly move to another country.  As part of our sale agreement the Ecuadoreans who bought our condo were supposed to pay us from their US bank account to ours to avoid exit tax.  However they ended up transferring the money here.  So we decided to look around here and found a new house that we were ok with.  This was 2015.  We decided to switch our investment visa as you are trying to do as we saw the country was having economic hardship and the govt bank holds the cd's, and I was afraid they would put a hold on our $50,000.  We hired our Canadian friends attorney here in Manta, who we had used here before.  He speaks little English and we speak little Spanish but it works for us.  We gave him a retainer to start although this isn't his specialty.  It drug on for months and months and finally we asked for him to get it done or refund our retainer.  He admitted that he was having trouble but had friends here in the municipality that could push it through but we would have to pay "extra fees".  We said just do it we will pay.  All we had to do was get the legal proof of our travel in and out of the country.  I forget what that's called and in two months it was done.  We gave him POA to go to GYE to get our cd's but they would only let him get my husbands and not mine.  I had to do a separate POA and the notary office here after waiting forever declined because the document had not been translated into English. So we got in a cab and went to GYE and they had it ready for release when we got there.  We never had to resubmit any updated paperwork, except for travel.  We know for a fact it's all legal and legit.  The payoffs to get it done were laughable.  Not even $150.  The biggest shock was the final bill he gave us which we asked for a breakdown to warrant the fees, which were high.  We explained we don't mind paying just want to know what all it was for.  He couldn't do it gave us a basis for some and then said just pay what you think is fair.  We negotiated down $500, and he was happy as long as we gave him Johnny walker black.  We bought a duty free liter of double black had him and his associate to our house I cooked lots of American food and they drank 2 liters of booze and we're thankful and happy.  We continue to use him for anything we need because as far as "trust" goes he is the one we trust the most.  Plus our friend uses him for lots of business projects.  He's even done some things for us for free and was instrumental in getting my husband transported from a private hospital here in manta to Quito when they were giving me problems in doing so.  It happened within hours during a holiday, and had it not he would have died.  He has a kidney transplant hat was starting to reject.  So I think it just depends on who you use and what town you live in.  This is one of the few times we haven't been ripped off and actually got something done with little hassle. 

Luckily we got the funds a month before the big earthquake here!!  We keep very little money here just in case accounts get frozen or limited.  We have also lost money to other attorneys so living here is a big adjustment to what we are used to, and as a younger female not my preference!!

Great post, Sophems.

Great because it’s a cautionary tale for new arrivals who are in a hurry to buy a home in Ecuador.  Especially a pre-construction deal, which is almost guaranteed to take extra years.

Folks new to Ecuador need to think rent-rent-rent to get started.

I arrived in Quito around the same time you got to Ecuador.  My condo had just closed following construction -- eight years after I paid for it!

cccmedia

What about people are not buying condos (eg, buying land or preexisting house)? Is the process as harrowing?

The rules are different in Ecuador.

Sometimes, rules are changed .. or existing rules are enforced after long periods of non-enforcement -- causing big troubles for buyers.

When rules are enforced to the letter, a simple land-purchase can become a nightmare of bureaucracy, delays and compliance issues.

Things get more complicated if there’s no attorney representing the buyer .. or the attorney overlooks key issue(s).

Or title issues pop up.

There was that gal from the Pacific Northwest who decided to buy a fixer-upper in San Clemente, Ecuador.  Only after she put down a deposit did she discover that the seller was actually a group of heirs of the deceased former-owner who were living in three separate countries.

She was figuratively tearing her hair out over the resulting complications in her purchase .. and then we never heard from her again.

All of the above figures into the fact that the following remains the number-one rule for new Expat arrivals in Ecuador...

Don’t buy or build on any property in Ecuador until you have lived in the target area for at least one year.

cccmedia

My house purchase was relatively easy, but we also used our attorney here who we have used for a couple of things and the seller was also the contractor/builder and we were fortunate that we bought it 3 months after he finished it and he had not sold it yet.  He built mine and the house behind us together but was finishing up the back house when we moved in.  I liked the back one a little better based on the location, but it was already sold.  I know people who have built here and it was a disaster.  They are almost double into the budget, had to go to court to fire their builder, and now the foundation beams are separating from the house.  It's now for sale for $528,000.  I have a feeling they will either walk away or be stuck here for a very long time.  Not to mention the housing development used to be a trash dump and many structures there (& not cheap ones) are having issues, and that was before the earthquake.  I would never want to build here, not to mention most builders buy and use the cheapest materials they can find, and sometimes it's hard to find good materials here.  My pool is 1 year old and we just finished redoing the entire thing.  We used the best products available here, had their people here at my house to monitor and watch the install, spent double our budget and the grout failed.  Come to find out others who used the same product had similar problems.  Thank goodness they paid to redo our entire pool, but delay in time and them not ordering things when we were told they had, ended up still costing us out of pocket and lots of aggravation.  But today my pool water feels like bath water, almost too hot and we haven't gotten the heater installed yet.

Also keep in mind most people, at least here in manta, don't even have hot water in their houses.  All the big condos do, and our house had it originally only in the showers.  Our agreement with the builder was we would buy if he could figure out how to get hot water installed into our kitchen, but we had to buy the kitchen faucet to replace what I would never have left in my kitchen anyway.  It looked like an outdoor faucet that came out of the wall and to turn it on, you had to turn a knob just like the outside.  When I first moved here and my condo wasn't completed and we had already agreed to rent a house that would hold all my belongings at a very good rate, with electricity at 50% because it was in a senior citizens name, we went in to paint and do a few minor repairs when we realized there was no hot water in the house and no way to get it installed.  That's when I was told most people here don't use hot water.  I'm sorry but I take hot showers always, even in the summer and this house even had a rare giant garden bath tub.  Who takes a cold bath?  I cried for 2 days thinking I had made the hugest mistake of my life.  It's been a long 4 years for me living here.

When I see all these posts about people wanting to move here, my first thought is why?  Stay where you are, the grass is not greener, but I have learned a lot about life and myself and I have adjusted to life here.  Good luck!!

sophems wrote:

I cried for 2 days thinking I had made the hugest mistake of my life.  It's been a long 4 years for me living here.

When I see all these posts about people wanting to move here, my first thought is why?  Stay where you are, the grass is not greener....

Sophems does a great service telling people about what goes wrong for recent arrivals whose mindset is build-me-my-dream-house.

There is a middle ground, however -- renting.

The downside is less costly, there’s a way to escape a bad situation without devoting precious years .. and the peace of mind is priceless.

cccmedia

Renting does not offer residency.

holisticdoc wrote:

Renting does not offer residency.

There is another option or investment visa which you can use for residency, and when/if you are ready to build a home you can take out that investment.

But you can't take out the investment until you get the final escritura when the house is complete and, of course the laws changed and you can't just take out the cd's and transfer your residency visa over.  It cost us an additional $2,000 in attorney fees to get our cd's once we bought our house.  If our original condo had been completed on time we could have just done the transfer but everything changes so fast here, especially the laws.  It's all about making the foreigners support their fiscal deficit, in my opinion.  But that's what we signed up for I guess.