Tela Real Estate

More about Tela Real Estate

Tela is a good place to buy a property, whether you want to live by the sea, retire, have a house for the family or invest in something small. It is a real Honduran town, about an hour and a half by road from the international airport of San Pedro Sula.

Where it all started: Tela Bay

Tela Bay was love at first sight for me. I was charmed on my very first visit, and within a few days I had fallen for the place and its potential, especially for tourism and real estate. The warmth of the people did the rest: in 1993 I made the biggest decision of my life, left my homeland and stayed here for good.

I always say tourism and real estate are twins. In a place this beautiful (and in Honduras only the Bay Islands have more potential than Tela), tourism makes property values take off. In a few decades I watched hotels of every size go up, and behind them homes, supermarkets and services. It all comes from the same things that still hold up the Tela real estate market: 27 km of beach, the national parks and protected areas, and the Garífuna villages with their food, their dances and their warm way of welcoming you. And there is still room: Tela will keep growing, property values still have a way to go, and for small and large investors these are still years of opportunity.

One of the first real estate websites in Honduras

For years I brought sellers and buyers together the old way. Then the internet arrived, a newborn back then, when modems made more noise than they moved bytes. I started studying, and in 1998 I registered hondurasrealestate.com, one of the very first real estate websites in the whole country. It began with properties in Tela only.

Almost at the same time came Tela News, a newspaper that wanted to tell the good stories, tourism and investment, because politics and the crime pages were already more than covered by the usual press. The bay, however large and beautiful, soon became too small for it, and Tela News turned into Honduras News. Every month I spent a few days in Roatán, Utila, La Ceiba, Copán… In those same years I also founded Garífuna Tours, a travel and tour agency specialized in Tela, but with tours all over Honduras and even around Central America. It took me to meet hotel owners across the country and to conventions and congresses full of Honduran and foreign business people. One of them I remember with special affection: the office of then-President Ricardo Maduro invited us, as press, to cover the first national tourism congress of Honduras. For a small paper like ours it was a great honor. We met so many influential people there, and it was lovely to feel their admiration for our work: they knew how hard the mission was. They invited us to visit their towns, their hotels, or simply their homes. There were so many invitations that we could never take them all, and amazingly, after so many years, some of them still stand.

On those trips I met real estate agents who still knew nothing about the internet and only advertised in the local paper, and lawyers and notaries across the country who taught me how buying and selling really works in Honduras. By the early 2000s I had a network of agents all over the country sending me their properties to publish. It was a wonderful time: I feel we helped start a small revolution in the way properties were promoted in Honduras, and I will always be proud to have seen it coming. Many of them became clients (I helped them sell or buy) and, after so many years, close friends.

Buying in Tela today

You can still find good opportunities in Tela, with a few precautions that we explain on this page, in our Tela buyer’s guide and on the Tela blog. Follow it: some situations are worth watching to buy safely, and we will keep you posted.

Buy in Tela with confidence, but with care, especially if you do things on your own. Whether you work with us, another agency, a lawyer or a notary, the municipal cadastre or the Property Institute: check every piece of information two or three times and always keep everything in writing. Do that, and it will go well. And if you need help, after all these years we are still here.

Here you can find houses in town, residential lots, beach land and commercial properties for different budgets, many of them offered directly by their owners.

Tela is also where we have the most people working alongside us: local agents, and lawyers and notaries who help us see each sale through to a signed, registered deed. We also have easy access to the municipal and government offices for the paperwork and taxes of the property.

Want to get to know Tela first?
Read Living in Tela and Buying a house in Tela from the U.S. on our blog… The town also has its page on Wikipedia: Tela.

And for your days off: Lancetilla, Punta Sal and Punta Izopo: Tela’s nature next door

Coming to see properties and need a place to stay? Here is a guide to hotels in Tela:

• Hotel Tela