Sansare

About Sansare:

Sansare covers 118 square kilometres, with Sanarate to the west, Guastatoya to the north and the department of Jalapa wrapping around the south and east. The town sits at 790 metres, 70 kilometres north-east of Guatemala City. Everything comes in on the RN-19: you leave the CA-9 at Sanarate, drive about 15 kilometres to Sansare, and the same road carries on to Jalapa, so the town is a through-stop rather than a dead end. Guastatoya, the departmental capital, is 37 kilometres away. Inside the municipality, the roads to Los Cerritos, La Montañita, La Trinidad, Buena Vista and Las Cabezas are paved or in good condition.

The name comes from the sare, a small acacia, and from the story of an image of the Virgen de las Mercedes found at the foot of one. Her feria runs from 23 to 25 September, with the main day on the 24th. The place was already known as Sansaria in the 1760s, belonged to the department of Jalapa from 1873, and moved to El Progreso when that department was created in 1908 and again when it was re-created in 1934. Aldea Estación Jalapa owes its name to the railway: it was the stop where people from Jalapa came by bus to catch the train, and the old station platform is now the stage for the Festival del Tamal de Yuca. The town also runs an annual bicycle race, the Carretera Valle del Sare.

Around 13,700 people live in Sansare, and about half of them are in three places: the town and the aldeas Los Cerritos and Poza Verde. Those three are also the only places with a diversificado institute, so teenagers from the rest of the municipality travel to them or to schools in Sanarate, Guastatoya and Jalapa. Plenty of adults earn their wage outside too, in those same towns or in the capital’s maquilas, and some leave each year for the lemon, coffee and tomato harvests. At home, farming means maize and beans, yuca along the Sansare river, peanuts, and coffee and potatoes in the upper aldeas. Sansare is also the only place in El Progreso where basketry is made, alongside jarcia, furniture and fireworks.

The municipality climbs from the warm, dry valley around the town to wooded high ground on the Jalapa border, and the two ends are different country. Down low, the dry season from November to April is long, drought years hit crops hard, and anything beyond milpa needs irrigation; in 2026 MAGA rebuilt the irrigation canal used by growers in aldea Río Grande. Up high, La Montañita, Santa Inés Quebrada Grande, El Aguaje and San Felipe La Tabla grow coffee under shade. The forest above them is where Sansare’s water starts, and it has been losing ground to felling, firewood cutting and coffee planted on slopes better left in trees.

Houses in Sansare:

Most homes here are family houses in block in the town centre and its colonias, such as San Vicente de Paul, on lots of around 15 by 20 metres. Two-storey houses for sale in Sansare come up near the centre too, one of them right across from the Estadio Municipal. Los Cerritos and Poza Verde, the two biggest aldeas, are the other places to look if you want a secondary school and local shops within walking distance. Buyers are mainly local families and people who work in Sanarate, Guastatoya or the capital and want to stay close to the RN-19.

Land and Lots in Sansare:

Lotificaciones are where most of the movement is. Sares Don Antonio, practically inside the town, sells 8 by 16 metre lots with electricity, water, drainage and wide streets on the developer’s own financing, and Lotificación Las Mercedes works the same way with a small down payment. Bigger single lots also appear, 15 by 36 metres for example, offered with water, power and the predial paid, and some lots for sale in Sansare are advertised as completely flat. Much of this new building has gone onto former yuca land. Outside the town, land is milpa and yuca in the valley and coffee higher up. Sansare’s land-use plan keeps the steep forest-class slopes for trees and steers rural housing toward low density, so a cheap hillside parcel may not be buildable at all.

FAQ:

• The lot comes with water, power and the predial paid. Is that enough to buy?

  No. A predial receipt shows that the property tax is paid, not who owns the land. Sansare has not finished its cadastre, and there is municipal land in the territory, so first ask whether the plot is private property or municipal land held under some other arrangement. Then check at the property registry that your lot has been split off from the developer’s parcel and carries its own registration number, and get the instalment terms and the date the deed passes to you in writing.

• What will the four-lane RN-19 mean for property along the road?

  The widening of the RN-19 between the CA-9 and Sansare, Tramo I of the Anillo Regional C-50, has been contracted but is running well behind schedule, with work concentrated at the Sanarate end. Sansare’s land-use plan also treats the road as a corridor with building setbacks. If a lot fronts the RN-19, ask the municipality and the Dirección General de Caminos how much of it falls in the right of way before you pay for frontage. Heavy rain has also undermined the road inside Sansare, at kilometre 75.5, so look at the drainage on the stretch in front of the plot.

• How far is Sansare from Guatemala City and Sanarate?

  Guatemala City is 70 kilometres away: the CA-9 Atlantic highway to Sanarate, then about 15 kilometres on the RN-19. Guastatoya is 37 kilometres off, and the RN-19 continues south from Sansare to Jalapa. Plenty of residents make the trip to work every day.

• Is water a problem in Sansare?

  It can be. The valley is dry from November to April, and drought years are hard on the land. For farmland, find out where the water comes from in March, not October, and whether the plot is on an irrigation system such as the one in Río Grande. For a house, ask the neighbours how regular the supply is.

• Can I buy coffee land in the upper aldeas?

  The coffee country is around La Montañita, Santa Inés Quebrada Grande, El Aguaje and San Felipe La Tabla, near the Jalapa border, where coffee grows under shade trees. Much of the high ground is forest-class land and the area that feeds the municipality’s springs, so cutting trees there needs INAB permission and new clearing is discouraged. Walk the boundaries with the neighbours and check the access road before you agree a price.