Las Terrenas Beach Condo … Long term rental needed …

I think our place in Ballenas Beach may work out well for you. It's on the beach, nice pool and short walk to town. Message me if you would like some more details.

Hi Mkunz

I don’t have enough posts to be able to direct message you yet. But if I understand correctly, you can message me and I can reply to you.

I would welcome please the information of where you stay.

How many posts does one need in order to direct message ?

Thanks.

Welcome Ian!

I would plan on 15-18 months if you need to start by finding land! Then it several months of working with an architect to design your home, then permitting before you can start building!

From the time we had our plans and started interviewing builders, it’s going to be around 15 months for us. We did get a jump start by contracting with our eventual builder for the initial grading (which could be done prior to permitting) and the permitting process. They started the foundation in early March 2021, and we are hoping to be in the house by the middle of next month.

For rentals in town, you’ll want to look on eastern end of Las Ballenas and Playa Terrenas. Anything beyond that and you won’t be able to walk to get groceries. Supermercado Lindo will deliver groceries to you, and almost anywhere in town is walking distance to a colmado with basic grocery items.

If you have other questions about Las Terrenas, let us know!

Denise

I have a two-bedroom / two-baths that’s being renovated right now.  Should be done end of February-early March. If you prefer 4 bedrooms/ 4 baths (two apartments on top of each other) tha’s available too.  Location-wise:   If you know the area, it is in Caribey in central Las Terrenas, exactly across from what was known as Pueblo de los pescadores and Don Cesar.  You are virtually on the beach, surrounded by Sergio restorant, mosquito loung, Don Cesar condos, the boat hotel, etc.  from here, obviously you go right, you are at punta poppy beach.  You go left you are a Balenas.  As far as town is concerned, I walk everywhere, though i use a quad to carry food and such. But everything is reachable from here.  you have a secured parking, private security and right there is a tourism police station.  If interested, i can be reached here.  Not sure i am allowed to post my email, but here should work ok.

Inbox me your number
I have a nice house with swimming pool ; that would be less expensive that an apparmwnt

Everyone here posting what YOU have for rent please post in the classifieds!  That way everyone can see the ad and can contact you easily! 

Thanks!

Denise gave the OP great advice.  She is living the process right now and had to extend her period of renting twice and scramble in high season to get a rental!

Good luck and keep us posted!

To add on....finding land is a challenge. This took us a good amount of time and aggravation. You need to find land with a willing and reasonable seller, valid title, no obstructions, etc. This takes work and research. I can't recall how many plots of land we hiked over. I do recall the bee stings, cuts, scrapes, dehydration.  ;0)

You can reach out to myself or ddmcghee (wife) if you need some info, and we are full of opinions. LOL.

Good morning

Thanks so much for your replies. This is a great helpful community. So glad I found this forum !!!

My wife Fran and I appreciate all your guys help, opinions and insight.  This is a very exciting next stage of our life, and it’s important we get it right.

Fran and I were talking last night, how different it will be when we first arrive. Unlike when you go to a resort, there’s a resort bus waiting for you and when you arrive at the resort a welcoming is awaiting for you.

We will arrive, not speaking any Spanish, not knowing anyone and navigate ourselves over to Las Terrenas and some how make it to our rental home/condo and let our adventure begin We have visited The Dominican Republic before to resorts in Punta Cana, but never been to Las Terrenas before. There will be lots of firsts for Fran and I.

We are looking at purchasing a lot and having a home built in the gated community called Bellavista Residence. Is anyone familiar with this development ?

How many posts do I need before I can direct message others please ?

Thanks again for everyone’s help

Ian

I'm very familiar with Bella Vista! We have a couple of friends who live there, and we looked at some lots in the development before buying ours.

At the time we were looking, the lots available didn't appeal to us - not enough of a view, or too much road noise reached the site. I don't know what's available currently, but I know a lot of the properties that were initially sold are available for resale. COVID changed the plans of quite a few folks!

There is a large and very helpful expat community here in LT! We're happy to help you get settled in and find what you need!

Work on your Spanish as much as you can between now and your move! We are still novices, but people really appreciate it when you try to communicate in their language rather than always using Google Translate!

One of the things I keep saying I need to do is create a map of LT with all the landmarks people use for directions - traditional street addresses don't exist here! Many streets don't have names, and even those that do rarely have numbers assigned!.

Hi DDMcghee

We will for sure look you guys up when we arrive, thank you for your offer.

Can you suggest other communities or areas similar to Bella Vista please ? Where are you having your home built ?

Has anyone used Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish. Fran is bilingual. In addition to English, she speaks French, so she feels optimistic she will be able to learn Spanish easier. Can anyone suggest an app or program to aid in the learning of Spanish ?

Thanks

Ian

Hello and welcome to the forum.
My wife and I arrived in Las Terrenas 3 months ago and
have purchased a condo here.
We have both been using Duolingo to learn Spanish and
find it very helpful.

Arriving in town and getting acclimated can be a little overwhelming at first.
If you are working with a Real Estate company they offer concierge services
that help you get settled in with opening bank accounts, TV, internet services.

Thanks Goinforit.

Sound like you guys went for it.  Good on you guys !!!  Have you guys settled in ok ? Will you guys be living there full time, or be snowbirds ?

We welcome any and all advice and direction from everyone.  We are so excited to start this new adventure in our lives

I used Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish to start the process of being sufficiently conversant. I completed the full course in a couple of months and it gives one the basics. You also need to develop an understanding of verbs and tenses. The  real problem is that Dominicans abbreviate everything. Dominicano is a language of it's own. Reading newspapers and translating helps one build up knowledge too. It takes time when you are older too so be patient and practice when you can.

One feels so much more assured and fullfilled being able to conduct your life without resorting to English and you will understand life here more and it will be appreciated.

Good luck.

PS: LT is a great choice having lived and worked there for over 2 years.

So now you are not arriving and not knowing anyone, you know us!

Your wife speaks French and will have an easier time learning Spanish. The structure and  grammar rules are  very similar.   English is - in my opinion - ass backwards to Spanish thus its harder for us English speakers to  turn it around! 

Hi Planner.

Joining up on this board and talking with various members is very comforting indeed.

I think about how it will be living in Las Terranes all day long. Fran and I will make the most of each day. Enjoying every moment and our new surroundings. We are both approaching 60 years of age, and feel this is the perfect time in our lives to start our retirement

We will be in the exact same position many of you were, when you first arrived. I am looking at it as our next adventure in our lives.

Have some things to take care of up here first, selling our home and business. Can’t come soon enough. 

Thanks for everyone’s contributions

Also, there are many French citizens here, so your wife's French language skills will come in handy   

Hi Lennoxnev

Thanks for sharing your experience with Rosetta Stone.  We will definitely give it a try.

What an adventure that awaits Fran and I

RockyM,

She’s a little rusty as not to many opportunities for her to speak French where we presently live, so Fran will appreciate the opportunity to use her French more often once we get there.

Ian1272 wrote:

Hi DDMcghee

We will for sure look you guys up when we arrive, thank you for your offer.

Can you suggest other communities or areas similar to Bella Vista please ? Where are you having your home built ?

Ian

Ian - Besides Bella Vista, Esperanza in Barbacoa to the east of El Portillo, is the only other large gated community that has undeveloped lots. At least that I'm aware of. Los Nomados, on Playa Coson, is another nice one, but I think it's completely built out. There are a bunch of small residencias with 3-5 homes. These often have limited amenities, but they do provide some amount of security. What's interesting is that within these gated communities, almost every home is also behind a gate and its own walls.

We're not in a development at all. We bought a lot on a hill overlooking Playa Coson. Ours is the 10th house on our road, about half-way up the loma. Many of the homes have been there for 5-10 years. There are two lots for sale just below our home, and it looks like someone is developing a small residencia just off the Boulevard on the lower part of our road.

Thanks for your response ddmcghee

When we get there, we will check out all the different areas and see what’s best for us. This evening Fran said she would like to purchase a resale home.  I think she wants to start putting roots down and would prefer not to rent for 9-12 months while we wait for our home to be built.

I am not against purchasing a resale, but I kinda like the idea of building and getting our home exactly like we would like it to be.

Everything will come together for us regardless if we build or purchase a resale home

Purchasing right away is a big mistake.  You don't know what you like and dislike until you have been here for awhile! 

Once you purchase you are committed for a good long time!  It's much harder to sell if you truly want to or need to.

We initially looked at resales and a few new construction spec homes, but nothing worked for us. Our main issue was that even in homes with 4-5 bedrooms, the kitchens were tiny!!

We found that designing and building our own made the most sense for us.

And Planner is right! You want to rent for a while to make sure you like living in DR, and Las Terrenas specifically. You would very likely lose money if you end up not staying and having to sell your home.

We started coming to Las Terrenas in 2017 and bought an investment/rental condo on that visit. On our next visit, we started looking at land and bought our first lot. We eventually sold it because once it was cleared enough for us to really see what we had, the tiny sliver of ocean view wasn’t what we were expecting - lesson learned: Don’t believe anything you don’t see with your own eyes! Pictures and videos can be deceiving! In September of 2019, we found the land we are building on. It took 4 months to close the deal, then in February 2020, we walked the land with an architect and started the design process.

We moved here full time in July 2020, and I can tell you that a LOT of tweaks and changes were made based on our first hand experience living here. I can’t tell you how many hours/days/weeks we’ve spent just thinking about, researching, discussing, and sourcing floor tiles! We both took spills on wet ceramic tile in our rentals, and have had to live with ugly plastic anti-slip mats in the showers because every rental we’ve been in has large, slick ceramic tiles in the bathrooms and showers too! In the US, floors were a no-brainer! We wouldn’t consider anything other than hardwood, but wood and humidity don’t play well together! We also determined that we prefer having our house one room deep so that there is great cross ventilation in every room. There have been countless other lessons we’ve learned along the way that will make our house that much more livable and lovable over the long haul!

Don’t rush buying a house in an effort to more quickly  settle in! This is a fairly small expat community and you will start meeting people and making friends immediately! Even in the gated communities, there isn’t a lot of befriending neighbors! Everyone lives behind their own gates and walls! We rented next door to some of our best friends here in LT for 5 months but we didn’t see them any more often!

Thanks Ian1272, yes my wife and I and our small dog are getting settled in.
There is an adjustment period to be sure and certainly i would encourage you to
brush up on your Spanish.
We are snowbirds and will be staying in LT for six months and returning to Canada for
six months.
Where are you folks coming from ?

Good morning everyone.

All of you are making great sense in what you are sharing with your own experiences.  This is being very helpful. Thank you !!

We have concluded from reading what you have shared with us, that instead of renting a condo on the beach, we think we should rent something similar to what we envision we want to end up in. So we have decided we are going to rent a Villa with its own pool so we can simulate as close as we can to what see ourselves in at the end of the day.

Ddmcghee, you make some great points resale vs building, thank you. Planner, you make great sense with not buying right away, to make sure Las Terranes living is for us.

Goioit, you asked where we currently are. We live just outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Fran and I are talking in depth as to how we see retirement, if we were to continue to reside where we are now compared to how retirement living in the DR would look like.  We are both wanting and willing to embrace life in the DR.  We see many wonderful bonuses living in the warmth, close to the beach and all the different restaurants in Las Terrenas.  Fran and I are best buddies, so as long as we are together, we feel we will be good with almost anywhere we end up.

We have looked at what retirement here in Canada looks like from the middle of October to the middle of May.  During these months we are basically shut in. Our swimming pool is all closed up, we go for groceries, dine out a couple times a month and  see a live theatre performance or concert.  Life during these winter months will look so very different.  Our pool will be open everyday, so we will go swimming everyday.  We will have a couple to three days a week enjoying the beautiful beaches. Going out for lunch and dinner two to three times a week.  We will make new friends and enjoy our new friends company over for dinner once or so a week.

Fran loves her backyard chicken coop, so she will enjoy the interaction with a couple hens 12 months of the year.  We will look forward to having friends and family to come and visit. They have all expressed they will come down regularly to see us. We can fly back home when we want.


We may be wearing rose coloured glasses, but we will enter this adventure the next chapter as positively as we can. 

We are both very excited with what lays ahead for us.

Thanks for all of what you are sharing with us of your own experiences in moving and living in Las Terrenas

Ian

Great post. The key to living here: adaptability!!!!

@Miguel Robles

***

2 adults

furnished for 3-4 months

@bonnie28 Please do not include personal contact information in public posts! You can send a private message to other members and share contact info there. Also, please look at the age of the posts that you are responding to! Many members come and go and Miquel hasn't posted since that one in February 2022.

Looking for something for all of high season this late is going to be tough! I suggest checking AirBnB or googling real estate and rentals in Las Terrenas.