puerto rico QUESTIONS (sales, real estate, cheap house)

[sop28]

hey i wanna either move to hawaii oahu or to puerto rico i know a lot about hawaii but not so much about puerto rico! at first sorry for wrong english its my second language. My first question is : how bad is it over there with spiders, bugs , snakes etc .. im horrified of spiders and would like to know if there are areas with less spiders or areas with more ..or what kind of spiders ..are they in the house do you see them every day?

i would like to live there and meet alot of nice ppl i am very tall blonde white woman married to a short black guy .. would that be a problem or would everybody accept me and be nice? how are the people over there friendly , angry , relaxed ?

wich is the nicest area to live. and with nicest area i dont neccesary mean gated communities .. i mean a nice area were i can see how the natives live and have my own house i let them live and they let me live ..or is there no such a thing ? are there areas just white ppl or just natives?

comparing to hawaii i think puerto rico is pretty cheap even tho i heard a lot ppl say its expensive .. i was looking at real estate listings and i saw nice big and cheap houses ..something what you will never see in oahu .. nice yea but not cheap . and i heard there are high taxes ..how high are they ?
thanks in advance for all the answers

[Sandhillian]

If you don't like insects you might have a hard adjustment living here. It certainly was for me. There are wolf spiders and tarantulas. I have only found them outside the house not inside and mostly in the fall but they are huge and scary. I have found about six each fall I have lived here. Inside we have more common varieties of spiders. I have also found four snakes in our house since I moved here almost two years ago. Three were quite small but one was about 18 inches long and one inch wide. I do not think there are any poisonous species around though. We have also had to deal with lots of cockroaches (giant ones), fire ants, termites, no see ums and mosquitos. Geckos are quite common and impossible to keep out of the house. I know Hawaii has a lot of geckos but am not sure how it compares insect wise. As far as the expense - groceries are quite high here as are utilities. Housing is cheaper than in most states - similar to Texas property values.

[sop28]

thanks for the answer .. yea they have alot geckos in hawaii but no snakes and never seen a big spider over there... thanks for the information the only real problem to me are spiders ..i dont care about roaches or geckos...do you know if there are areas where are most likeley more spiders like close to the beach or up in the hills? thanks

[Sandhillian]

Originally Posted by sop28

thanks for the answer .. yea they have alot geckos in hawaii but no snakes and never seen a big spider over there... thanks for the information the only real problem to me are spiders ..i dont care about roaches or geckos...do you know if there are areas where are most likeley more spiders like close to the beach or up in the hills? thanks

Sorry, but I don't know the answer to that. I do not live close to the beach though. When you are looking for a place check for round holes in the ground - if you see them you will know you can expect large spiders! Hopefully, others with more knowledge will join in and answer you.

[sop28]

Originally Posted by Sandhillian

Sorry, but I don't know the answer to that. I do not live close to the beach though. When you are looking for a place check for round holes in the ground - if you see them you will know you can expect large spiders! Hopefully, others with more knowledge will join in and answer you.

thank you!

[ladygrace]

You can live at Isla Verde or Condado. Very touristy, sort of americanized. Pretty cool.

[ladygrace]

No geckos in PR just your ordinary lizard, which by the way eats the cockroaches.....food chain

[sop28]

Originally Posted by ladygrace

You can live at Isla Verde or Condado. Very touristy, sort of americanized. Pretty cool.

thanks for the answer but i dont wanna live somewhere americanized ... i like to live in a friendly neighhbourhood with locals and friendly , loose people !

[sop28]

well i guess i wouldnt mind .. living somewhere americanized ..as long as the people are nice and open minded

[efrenb5]

For starters, you might want to start to learn Spanish. Very few PRs actually speak fluent English and the rest might not speak it at all.

Bug? Well, let me separate this in two categories. If you live in a metro area or close to the beach, you're gonna have your share of mosquitoes and cockroackes (the big flying brown ones). Most spiders you will see are the little ones, those who tend to live inside the house. Be prepared to live with at least one lizard inside the house, those things are just impossible to eradicate. They eat the mosquitoes and roaches though. No snakes whatsoever. If you have lawn, you'll probably have problems with ants as well.

Now, if you don't live in the metro area, you'll probably be living close to the mountains or so, so you might have a bad experience with mosquitoes, roaches, and ants. You'll live with 2-3 lizards. You might see snakes, but PR snakes are non-poisonous and won't hurt you. There is some kind of hairy spider native to PR, as far as I know they are harmless.

You interracial marriage will not be a problem at all here in PR. We see whites marrying blacks all the time. PRs tend to be very mixed race-wise.

People at Metro Area tend to be more angrier because how hectic live if in the Metro Area. People tend to relax farther from Metro Area.

I don't recall a place with race segregation or anything close to that. People in the suburbs and gated communities tend to mind their business, although you will probably have 1 or 2 nosy neighbors.

PR might be cheaper than Hawaii, don't have the facts to back that up though. Word of advice, those "big and cheap" houses are probably far from the Metro Area. Houses in Metro Area are usually not very cheap. Of course, I don't know Hawaii real state market, so they might be cheap when compared to Hawaii. Maybe you could give us an example of one of those houses?

We got a sales tax of about 7%. Only gas is not taxable I think. Other members might say differently.