Negotiating a real estate minefield

She was ready to rent out her three-bedroom house in an affluent section of Mexico City's Polanco neighborhood. But she wasn't about to hand it over to a tenant bankrolled by illicit means.

I'm not a narco, I assured everyone concerned.

And I passed on the house. (Mostly because it was kind of ugly and boxy, but her attitude didn't help.)

Renting property in Mexico City exposes a prospective tenant to a lot more than credit checks. God forbid you should be narco adjacent.

Fear, and a desire for security -- those are twin urges that govern much of Mexican life these days, as drug wars rage and common crime soars. The neighborhoods around my office are armed camps. Watchmen stand at almost every door; even the dry cleaners might have an armed guard.

And so do many homes. A small apartment building, neat but not luxurious, the kind you might easily find in Silver Lake or Mar Vista, is likely to have a 24-hour armed guard service loath to admit anyone without prior announcement. This takes some adjustment for those of us accustomed to coming and going freely.

The other obsession in Mexico City life is traffic.

Because this is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, sprawling haphazardly and aggressively in every direction, the distance from home to work has to be a chief consideration.

The Mexican equivalent of a Thomas Guide covers so much territory that the thick map book comes with a magnifying glass. A few fractions of an inch on the map can represent an hour stuck in traffic.

But try getting an honest assessment on traffic time from real estate agents and property owners. "Ten minutes," they invariably tell you, whatever the route or distance might be.

Mexico does not have a multiple-listings system, so you have to hook up with several real estate agents in the hopes of seeing a good portion of what's available. Last count, I have nine, I think.

And real estate agents, here and everywhere, are ultimately salespeople; their creativity, and ability to make promises, knows no bounds. Heating? Here in Mexico, the agent says, we don't need heating -- as I shiver in my sweater on what felt like Day 52 of cold rain and crisp wind.

Use your imagination, the real estate agents tell you. Don't worry there's no floor yet. A second bathroom? No problem, we can just move this wall . . .