I can't help but take my work with me on vacation...

I didn't want to, but there I was sitting in a time share presentation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My traveling companion had somehow gone beyond his desire NOT to go to one of these to suddenly we were spending our first day on vacation at one of these events. Now, before I say it was awful and like the stereotyped time waster that I've always heard about, I will say that when I changed my attitude from, "oh please" to "let's consider this as something where I can have professional curiosity" it made things much easier for me. So, I put on my real estate broker's hat (figuratively) and went to work. I learned a lot about how some real estate is sold in Mexico, I also made a point of telling the salesman (all of them because there were many) that I was in the business of real estate (they usually backed off some then), I also got a chance to network a bit by handing out my card and also learning about other RE/MAX agents who were members at this particular property. My curiosity of materials and design crept in too and I asked many questions about the materials used in the condo units and learned much about the stonework of Mexico which was interesting. And, I was impressed by the novel use of plastics to mimic other materials such as stone for massive Mayan statues and also plastic made to look like natural weaving/wrapping on huge posts throughout the lobby areas. Other things I noticed just in driving around the city is that water does some serious damage to their buildings over time. Even in properties that aren't that old, you can see that water damage to walls and ceilings is very common no matter how nice the property location and type. It made me wonder how agents go about doing inspections in this area. Another odd feature was to see what looked like large rain barrels (water containers) on top of the roofs of local homes. I am assuming there is a gravity element to the plumbing and it's less about water pressure being available, but I don't know for sure as I didn't have anyone to ask. The timeshare folks also were able to give me a rundown of the new projects and other developments going on around PV so at least now when I get spam emails from agents in Mexico, I'll be a little more aware of what is affecting pricing and I can also let my clients know what kinds of opportunities there may be. You can take the real estate broker out of the country on vacation, but you can't take the real estate broker out of me. :)