El Dorado

About El Dorado:

In conversation, El Dorado covers a lot of ground: the mall, the shops along Avenida Miguel A. Brostella, the towers of Las Mercedes and the whole junction where Brostella runs into Vía Ricardo J. Alfaro, the avenue everyone calls Tumba Muerto. The barrio of that name is narrower. It is the block on the east side of the avenue, opposite the mall, with Calle 74 Oeste and the Parroquia Santísima Trinidad on its northern edge and Villa de las Fuentes beyond. To the east and south, the family houses give way to the warehouses and workshops of the Urbanización Industrial, and nothing marks the change. Inside, the grid runs from Calle 71 B to Calle 74 Oeste, crossed by Avenida 14 B Norte, with a few lettered streets such as Calle B behind the Don Lee restaurant, and the streets around Calle 72 B Oeste go by the name Altos del Dorado.

The mall is what most people remember first. It went up in the 1970s with just over 7,700 m² of floor space and an enclosed layout no one in Panama had built before, and it has since grown to three levels, about 250 shops and more than 1,600 parking spaces. Middle-income and upper-middle-income families filled the residential streets around it. Then came the restaurants: Chinese families leaving the old Chinatown settled in El Dorado before anywhere else, and dim sum halls such as Sunly, open on Brostella since 1996, along with the Asian groceries, earned the district its nickname of second Chinatown. For someone living in the barrio, that puts supermarkets, banks and a PriceSmart warehouse club within a few blocks.

The avenue frontage is commercial from end to end. Plaza Mirage, a two-level strip of shops facing the McDonald’s across Tumba Muerto, anchors the southern stretch, and farther north Dorado City Center, an office and retail building certified LEED Gold, stands at the entrance to Villa de las Fuentes. Buses stop in front of both on their run along Tumba Muerto. The same avenue leads north to the Corredor Norte, while Metro Line 1 runs along the Transístmica to the east, a bus or taxi ride away. Tumba Muerto carries heavy traffic at rush hour, and stretches of it near El Dorado have flooded during hard downpours, so check how the street you are looking at drains and how long it takes to reach the avenue at seven in the morning.

Most buyers here are after land in the middle of the city. A house in El Dorado often sits on a bigger lot than the houses across the avenue in Las Mercedes, and that extra room is what lets owners build an annex to rent or turn a front room into an office. Families buy for the yard and the walk to the mall, while small investors look for houses that already carry one or more independent annexes. Some sellers pitch their houses for home or office use, so the zoning of the lot matters as much as the floor plan. Altos del Dorado sits at the top of the barrio’s price range.

Apartments for sale in El Dorado:

Towers are scarce on the barrio’s own streets, so most apartments for sale in El Dorado are in buildings at its edges that agents list under the same name. Royal Hill, in neighbouring Villa de las Fuentes, dates from 2006 and stands on a quiet dead-end street a minute from the mall; its two-bedroom units of about 87 m² open onto balconies over the city, and the complex has a pool, a children’s play area, a party room, two fast lifts and two reserve water tanks. Across Tumba Muerto, Golden Boulevard and the two Torre 88 towers in Las Mercedes offer three-bedroom flats with a maid’s room and two parking spaces. In any of them you buy under propiedad horizontal: the deed covers the flat as a separate finca plus a percentage of everything shared, a cuota de mantenimiento is due every month, and the PH reglamento sets the rules on letting, pets and short stays. Parking is part of the price too, so find out whether your spaces and any depósito are titled as separate fincas you could sell on their own, or simply assigned by the building.

Apartments for rent in El Dorado:

On the barrio’s interior streets the usual rental is an annex: a compact, self-contained unit built beside or above a family house, with its own entrance, one or two bedrooms and often furniture. Some owners have gone further and split a three-storey house into three independent flats. These apartments for rent in El Dorado cost well below a unit in the nearby towers, which suits single professionals, couples and people working in the shops, offices and restaurants around the junction, while tower flats with a pool and parking draw families. Before you sign for an annex, ask whether it has its own electricity and water meters, where your car goes, and whether the landlord will put the lease in writing.

Houses in El Dorado:

Houses are the core of the barrio. Behind the Don Lee restaurant on Calle B, a three-bedroom house of 285 m² stands on a lot of 570 m² zoned R2-A, and elsewhere a 405 m² residence fills most of a 450 m² lot. Up in Altos del Dorado the houses for sale in El Dorado get larger again: family homes with 215 to 225 m² of living space, one with eight bedrooms, side gardens and rear terraces, and at the top of the market houses with open terraces and wide views over the city. Many have been extended over the decades, and those extensions often include the annex that brings in rent. A freestanding house pays no monthly fee to anyone, which also means the guard, the water tank and the next roof repair are your bill.

Frequently asked questions:

• Where does El Dorado begin and end?

  There is no signed boundary. The barrio is the block on the east side of Vía Ricardo J. Alfaro opposite the mall, from the Plaza Mirage stretch in the south to Calle 74 Oeste and the Santísima Trinidad parish in the north, with the Urbanización Industrial behind it to the east. Agents use the name far more loosely, for Las Mercedes, Altos del Chase, Villa de las Fuentes and even Dos Mares, so trust the urbanización named on the title rather than the headline of the listing.

• The house comes with a rented annex. What should I check?

  Plenty of houses here earn rent from an annex or an added floor, and that is exactly where the paperwork tends to lag behind the building. Put the built area shown at the Registro Público side by side with a measurement of what is actually there, ask the seller for the construction permit and occupancy approval of every extension, and confirm with the Municipio de Panamá that the zoning allows a second dwelling on the lot. Find out whether the annex has its own meters, and get copies of any current leases before you sign.

• Does El Dorado flood?

  The avenue is the weak point. Stretches of Ricardo J. Alfaro near El Dorado have flooded during heavy downpours, slowing traffic to a crawl. Visit the street you are considering after a storm, look at whether the garage or ground floor sits below street level, and ask the neighbours how the drains cope.

• What does maintenance cost in the towers sold as El Dorado?

  It depends on the building and on the size of the unit. A two-bedroom of about 87 m² in Royal Hill has paid around US$130 a month, covering gas, administration, the concierge and 24-hour security, and a three-bedroom of 128 m² in Torre 88 around US$200. Before you make an offer, get the building’s most recent accounts, which will show whether a cuota extraordinaria is on the way.

• Can a foreigner buy property in El Dorado?

  Yes. Panama gives foreign buyers the same ownership rights as its own citizens, and you can hold the property in your own name or through a company, with the title recorded at the Registro Público. Have a lawyer search the finca for mortgages, liens and marginal notes before any money changes hands.