Las Garzas

About Las Garzas:

Las Garzas fills the south-eastern corner of the Panamá district. Pacora lies to the west, San Martín to the north and the Chepo district to the east, and to the south the corregimiento runs down to the Pacific where the Río Chico and the Río Pacora reach the sea. The Panamericana is the way in: Metro Line 2 ends at Nuevo Tocumen, and from there buses and cars carry on east through Pacora to the Las Garzas turn-off. This is also where the rebuilding of the Panamericana Este begins, a 246-kilometre job running from Las Garzas to Yaviza in Darién, with the first stretch reaching Cañita. Away from the highway, bus service thins out, so work out how you would reach a particular street before you count on it.

Two villages were here long before the city arrived: San Diego and Paso Blanco. The rest grew out of the 2001 settlement, which spread over about 307 hectares and was organised into communities such as Hugo Spadafora, now the corregimiento seat, La Mireya, Arnulfo Escalona, La Hica, La Balbina, Los Lagos, San Francisco and Río Chico. In 2013 the housing ministry, the national lands authority and the Banco Hipotecario Nacional delivered several hundred titles in sectors such as Arnulfo Escalona, Brisas del Río and 8 de Diciembre, while La Mireya, Paso Blanco and Brisas de Israel were still waiting for their survey plans to be approved. A public consultation on separating from Pacora was held at the Centro Educativo República de China in September 2016, and Law 40 of 31 May 2017 created the corregimiento.

With close to 57,000 residents, Las Garzas now ranks among the larger corregimientos of the capital district, and its people are overwhelmingly young. Daily life runs on corner shops, local schools and the bus out to the Panamericana, and most working residents head west towards Tocumen and the city each morning. Water is the complaint you hear most: in Paso Blanco, getting enough of it has been a daily struggle for many households, and when the system fails the cuts reach several communities on this side of Pacora. Housing programmes are still active, and the housing ministry has gone door to door here looking for families who own a lot but live in a makeshift house, in order to build them a proper one.

This is low, mostly flat country stretching towards the coast, and the corregimiento covers about 175 square kilometres, far more than its built-up communities. Rivers decide where it is sensible to build. The Residencial Las Garzas project of the mid-2000s went up on 15 hectares specifically to move families off the flood-prone banks of the Río Pacora, and heavy rain has since pushed water into dozens of homes in San Diego. Buyers are mostly Panamanian families looking for a first house they can afford, many of them using the state housing bonus or the preferential mortgage rate, while tenants tend to be young households who would rather have a house with a yard than a room in the city.

Houses in Las Garzas:

Two kinds of house make up the market. In the original communities, homes stand on lots that families have held since the early 2000s, many of them large by city standards: the Residencial Las Garzas houses, for instance, were built as 42 square metres of living space on 450-square-metre lots, which leaves plenty of room to build on. The newer stock is rows of terraced houses on lots of 120 to 200 square metres, sold finished with two or three bedrooms. If you are looking at an older house for sale in Las Garzas, compare what is standing with the registered plan, because extensions added over the years do not always appear on it.

New Developments in Las Garzas:

Most of the current building is in Río Chico. Valles del Este, by Grupo Urbis, sells reinforced-concrete houses on lots from 200 square metres, about five minutes off the Panamericana, with first handovers planned for 2025. Provivir’s Ciudad del Este, also in Río Chico, offers three-bedroom models with shared green space and play areas, aimed at first-time buyers on modest salaries. At the Las Garzas entrance, Pacora Gardens put up more than 500 terraced houses on lots from 120 square metres. These projects are usually advertised as Pacora, so confirm which corregimiento the finca is actually registered in.

Rentals in Las Garzas:

Renting here means renting a house. Three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in Pacora Gardens and the newer Río Chico subdivisions come up for long-term rent, often fully enclosed with security railings and a small yard, for well below what the same space costs closer to the city. Tenants are mostly young families and workers who accept the commute in exchange for room. Before you sign, ask how reliable the water is on that street and how long the trip to Nuevo Tocumen takes at rush hour.

FAQ:

• Is Las Garzas part of Pacora?

  Not since 2017. Law 40 of that year made it a separate corregimiento with its own junta comunal, seated in Hugo Spadafora, but many people and many adverts still say “Las Garzas de Pacora”. Projects in Río Chico, San Diego and Paso Blanco are often sold simply as Pacora. The finca record at the Registro Público shows which corregimiento actually applies.

• What should I check on the title of a lot in the older communities?

  Many lots here were titled through government programmes after the 2001 settlement, and some sectors received title years later than others. Make sure the seller holds a title inscribed in the Registro Público, not just an allocation or a survey plan still in process, and that the boundaries on the plan match the fences. Ask whether the title carries any condition from the programme that issued it before you agree a price. Foreigners can buy on the same terms as Panamanians.

• Does Las Garzas flood?

  Some low-lying parts do. Families were moved off the Río Pacora banks in the 2000s for exactly that reason, and heavy rain has flooded homes in San Diego since then. Look at whether the house sits below street level, ask neighbours where the water reached, and be wary of lots that back onto a creek.

• How reliable is the water supply?

  It depends on the community. Paso Blanco in particular has gone through long stretches of irregular supply. Ask the owner or the neighbours how many hours a day the water runs, and check whether the house has its own storage tank and pump.

• How far is the metro?

  Line 2 ends at Nuevo Tocumen, in the 24 de Diciembre corregimiento. Developers in Río Chico put their projects about 20 minutes’ drive from the station, and from the older communities you first have to get out to the Panamericana. Do the trip yourself on a weekday at six in the morning before you commit.