San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Everything You Need to Know About the World's Number One Small City
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Everything You Need to Know About the World's Number One Small City
This post accompanies Episode 24 of Marrying Your Passions, "Why San Miguel de Allende is the Ultimate DINK Destination with Dream Pro Homes." Listen to the full conversation for the stories, the laughs, and everything we could not fit into this post.
We were sitting in our office in the mid eighties Florida heat, almost eight o'clock at night and still sweating, when Greg Gunter told us it was cool enough on his end that he had long sleeves on and his doors open. No air conditioning needed. That single detail sold us before we had even finished the interview.
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| Overlooking San Miguel de Allende |
If you have been listening to Marrying Your Passions for a while, you know we talk a lot about DINK life, about not someday, today, and about finding places that let you build a lifestyle around what you love rather than what is convenient. Episode 24 might be the clearest example of that we have ever recorded. Greg has been selling real estate since he was fifteen years old, and in 2009, after the Great Recession wiped out his retail development company, he leaped into a home he had already built in central Mexico. He had no clients there, no friends, no plan beyond "leap and the net will appear." Seventeen years later he is the founder of Mexico's first Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchise and one of the most recognized real estate names in one of the most celebrated small cities in the world.
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| Greg Gunter |
What Makes San Miguel de Allende So Special
San Miguel de Allende is a colonial city in central Mexico, about six thousand four hundred feet in altitude, often described as the Denver of Mexico for its climate rather than its coastline. It has just been named the number one small city in the world for the seventh time by Travel and Leisure, voted on by readers, not editors.
The city was founded in 1542, which means it carries nearly five hundred years of history, and for several decades in the twentieth century it sat mostly empty. That quiet stretch turned out to be a gift. Instead of tearing down old buildings for new development, the city preserved its colonial architecture almost by accident, and by the time people started moving back in the 1930s and 40s, they renovated rather than replaced. Today it holds the richest architectural heritage of any city in Mexico, cobblestone streets included, even on the newer edges of town, and it earned its UNESCO World Heritage designation in 2008.
The Weather Alone Might Convince You
For a DINK couple who has spent five years in Denver and years now in Florida, the climate conversation hit close to home. San Miguel de Allende sits high enough to avoid humidity almost entirely, and warm enough that it rarely dips below freezing. Greg described it simply: springtime, all year round. May is the only slower, warmer month, and even then it rarely holds above ninety degrees with single digit humidity. The rainy season, mid June through mid September, brings a predictable hour of rain most afternoons and then clears up by dinner.
A Real Place to Live, Not Just Visit
What stood out most in this conversation was how walkable and community driven daily life is there. Greg lives twelve minutes from the town square on foot, and he jokes that he has to add five or six minutes to any walk because he will run into someone he knows along the way. With roughly thirty thousand Americans living in the city full time, alongside a Saturday organic market that functions as a weekly block party, it is easy to see how someone builds a full life there rather than just a vacation home.
The city also holds a staggering seventy five official festivals a year, plus another seventy five smaller neighborhood celebrations. Dia de los Locos, a foot parade with the spirit of Mardi Gras, and the Katrina Parade tied to Dia de los Muertos season, are both worth planning a trip around if the timing works.
For Anyone Thinking About a Second Home
This is the part of the conversation that felt most relevant to our audience. Greg pointed to what he calls the four Cs that draw people to buy a home in San Miguel de Allende: culture, climate, community, and cost of living. Mexico's residency visa program makes it simple to spend extended time there without giving up US citizenship, and unlike coastal properties held through a bank trust, homes in San Miguel de Allende are owned fee simple, with a deed, the same way you would own property in the United States.
Several of his clients are buying now, in their forties and fifties, well before they plan to retire, banking on appreciation and short term rental income in the meantime. Post pandemic appreciation in desirable neighborhoods has run twenty to thirty percent a year in some cases. Buy now, rent it out, enjoy a few weeks a year yourself, and have a home waiting when the time actually comes to slow down.
Addressing the Misconceptions
We asked Greg directly about the fears that stop people from considering a home outside the United States, and he did not dodge any of it. Safety, drinkable water, the language barrier, all of it came up. His answer, in short: San Miguel de Allende draws heavy international press attention specifically because of its safety and desirability, most restaurant staff are bilingual even though they will greet you in Spanish first, and every home has water filtration, so the days of worrying about brushing your teeth are long behind most visitors.
Not Someday. Today.
Greg's own words summed up the entire spirit of this episode better than we could: people do not retire to San Miguel de Allende to spend their remaining years quietly, they retire there to live. We only scratched the surface here. In the full episode Greg walks us through his own leap in far more detail, the misconceptions he hears most often from Americans considering the move, and the one story about a random Aztec street parade that will make you rethink what "running late" even means.
If a second home somewhere slower, warmer, and more culturally rich has ever crossed your mind, this episode is worth the full listen.
Marrying Your Passions is hosted by Nathan and Alicia Adams, a married DINK couple (Dual Income, No Kids) who travel, run marathons, scuba dive, and eat their way through life together. Whether you're a DINK couple, empty nester, or anyone ready to adventure NOW, this podcast is for you. New episodes every other week. Subscribe, leave us a review, and keep adventuring!
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| Nathan, Peppermint Patty, and Alicia |
Connect with us at marryingyourpassions.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok at @MarryingYourPassions
Coming up next: we're talking timeshares, why we love them, what to avoid, and how to actually get the most out of them.
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