Pedro Miguel

About Pedro Miguel:

Pedro Miguel sits off Avenida Omar Torrijos Herrera, the old Gaillard Highway, on the stretch that follows the Canal north from Clayton toward Paraíso and Gamboa. The locks it shares its name with are a few hundred metres away, and the lookout over them is about 600 metres from the nearest streets. Miraflores Lake opens out to the south, while to the north the houses run straight into Paraíso, its neighbour and near twin in history. Where one ends and the other begins is a matter of local habit rather than a line on the ground. The Panama Canal Railway runs alongside, and fire station No. 9, Luis E. Castillo, stands on the avenue across from the tracks.

Life here is built around the car. Albrook, with its mall and the national bus terminal, is a seven-to-ten-minute drive when the avenue is moving, and Ciudad del Saber in Clayton is under three kilometres away. The road to the Centennial Bridge also passes this sector, so Arraiján and the rest of Panamá Oeste are reachable without crossing the city. MiBus services stop on the avenue by the fire station. Inside the barrio there are parks, tennis courts, a basketball gym, a synthetic football pitch opened by the Municipio and a MEDUCA early-childhood centre, the COIF de Pedro Miguel.

The place began as a camp of the French canal effort and became a railway and construction base for the American project that followed. By 1955 the Canal administration had closed the commissary and theatre and moved its US employees elsewhere, and families from La Boca were rehoused here in their place. The houses you see today come from those Canal Zone years: masonry two-family buildings numbered in the 9000 series, which is why addresses read 9222-A or 9237-A. Since the area reverted to Panama, owners have remodelled, extended and fenced them, so two halves of the same building can now look quite different.

Around 400 people live here. The appeal is the setting: forest on the hillsides, the lake below, and inner streets with almost no through traffic, several of them cul-de-sacs. Buyers are mostly families who want a house with a yard close to Albrook and Clayton, and the location suits tenants who work in Ciudad del Saber, Albrook or the Canal area. Prices sit toward the lower end of Ancón’s house market, which is led by the larger homes of Albrook and Clayton.

Houses for sale in Pedro Miguel:

The stock is remarkably uniform. Nearly all the houses for sale in Pedro Miguel are single-storey homes with three bedrooms on lots of roughly 350 to 360 m², with anywhere from 95 to 170 m² under roof depending on how far they have been extended. Because most are one half of a two-family building, you share a wall, and often a roofline, with the neighbour. Find out if your half is registered as its own finca or as a unit inside a propiedad horizontal covering the whole building, since that decides who pays for shared repairs and whether any monthly cuota applies. Check that extensions, carports and enclosed laundries appear on approved plans, and have someone look over the original masonry before you sign.

Houses for rent in Pedro Miguel:

Rentals are the same three-bedroom houses, usually let unfurnished with one or two parking spaces and a yard, and some landlords accept pets; now and then a furnished four-bedroom home comes up. Expect the usual Panama City terms: a 12-month contract, with the first month and a security deposit paid up front. Some houses come without appliances and with air conditioning in a single room, so ask what stays before you agree a price. By Ancón standards, houses for rent in Pedro Miguel are modestly priced for a full house with outdoor space.

Frequently asked questions:

• Where exactly is Pedro Miguel, and where does it stop?

  There is no signed boundary. Pedro Miguel is the urbanización of about 140 homes off Avenida Omar Torrijos Herrera, between Miraflores Lake and Paraíso, close to the Pedro Miguel Locks; Calle Cocolí and Calle Trinidad are two of its streets. Agents sometimes label Paraíso houses as Pedro Miguel and the reverse, so go by the urbanización and lot number on the title, not the advert.

• Does Pedro Miguel flood, and what about landslides?

  The houses stand above the lake, and flooding is not the issue people raise here. Slopes are: in September 2018 a landslide hit the road toward the Centennial Bridge in this sector, and storms bring trees down on the access roads. If a house backs onto a hillside, look at the drainage and retaining walls behind it. The active Pedro Miguel fault is named after this stretch of the Canal, one more reason to have the structure of an older masonry building checked.

• What should I check on the title of a reverted-area house?

  Every title here traces back to the sale of former Canal Zone property by the State, so ask your lawyer to follow the chain from that first sale to the current owner and to search the finca in the Registro Público for liens. If the seller is the State itself, the sale goes through the MEF’s Unidad Administrativa de Bienes Revertidos. Confirm the lot’s land-use code with the Municipio de Panamá as well: changes of use in Pedro Miguel go to public consultation, as one did in 2018 for a building on Calle Trinidad.

• Is there a monthly maintenance fee?

  Not for the barrio. The parks, courts and pitch are public, and the Junta Comunal de Ancón handles clean-ups and grass cutting. The only shared cost you might meet is within your own two-family building if it is held under propiedad horizontal, so ask the seller whether such a regime exists and what it covers.

• Can a foreigner buy a house in Pedro Miguel?

  Yes. Foreign buyers have the same ownership rights as Panamanians in the city, including the former Canal Zone, and the title is registered in the Registro Público in your own name or a company’s. Use a local lawyer, and get the electricity, water and municipal tax accounts confirmed as paid up before closing.