Zona 7

About Zona 7:

Zona 7 covers 12.7 km² on the western side of the city. Barrancos mark its eastern edge: Colonia La Verbena looks across one towards Zona 3, and Bethania, which everyone calls the Península Bethania, meets Zona 3 on its eastern side. To the north and west the zone runs into Mixco, with Lo de Fuentes and El Naranjo just past Bethania, and to the south it meets Zona 11 around the Calzada Roosevelt. The Anillo Periférico cuts through the zone and crosses the Puente El Incienso into Zona 1, and Transmetro Line 7, opened in stages from 2019, runs along it with stations at San Juan, Ciudad de Plata, Villa Linda, Cuatro de Febrero, Bethania and Incienso. The Calzada San Juan leaves the Periférico heading west towards Mixco and La Florida in Zona 19, the Calzada Mateo Flores serves the colonias on the western edge, and the Boulevard Monumento a la Madre carries thousands of cars and buses a day past Quinta Samayoa.

The Maya city came first. Kaminaljuyú was lived in for more than 2,000 years, from around 1100 BC into the Late Classic, and when it was first mapped it had some 200 platforms and mounds around the Laguna Miraflores, a lake that no longer exists. The modern zone began in 1935, when the Ubico government bought the Finca La Verbena for a new cemetery; the Cementerio La Verbena opened in 1939, and the workers who built it settled around it and brought their families, which is how Colonia La Verbena started. Bethania was born of an emergency: after the October 1949 storms the state began building houses on the Finca Nacional Bethania for families who had lost theirs, and handed over 620 of them in October 1952. Landívar filled up in the 1950s and 1960s, Quinta Samayoa, 71 blocks in all, in the 1960s and 1970s, and after the 1976 earthquake new colonias and asentamientos grew up around Bethania, many settled by families from the interior. As the streets went in, most of the ancient mounds disappeared under houses; the Parque Arqueológico Kaminaljuyú, about half a square kilometre, is what was kept.

Daily life here is residential, with commerce at the scale of the neighbourhood: tiendas, bakeries, workshops and small businesses on the ground floor of houses. Landívar holds the Estadio Manuel Felipe Carrera, known to everyone as El Trébol and home ground of Municipal, as well as the Kinal technical school and the parishes of Nuestra Señora del Carmen and San José Obrero; for some 75 years its reference point was the Panadería La Industrial, on 6a avenida and 10a calle. The archaeological park, at Calzada San Juan and 30 avenida, opens every day, with guided tours from Thursday to Sunday. The Parque Erick Barrondo, once Parque La Democracia and renamed after the race walker who won Guatemala’s first Olympic medal, is given over to exercise and recreation, Colonia Centro América has its own park, and in Bethania the Liga de Fútbol Bethania is a fixture of local life.

About 137,000 people lived in Zona 7 at the 2018 census, slightly fewer than in 2002, so this is a settled zone where houses pass from one family to the next far more often than new streets are opened. In Landívar and Quinta Samayoa many residents are older owners who have lived in the same house for decades, with children and grandchildren in the same house or nearby. The stock follows the zone’s history: single-family houses in the colonias from the 1930s to the 1970s, gated sections inside some of them, dense colonias and asentamientos around Bethania, and a newer belt of apartment towers on the western edge and along the Calzada San Juan. Compared with Zona 11 to the south, with its hospitals, office towers and shopping centres, Zona 7 is a zone of colonias first, and its new flats are sold on monthly instalments, which puts them within reach of buyers without a large lump sum.

Houses in Zona 7:

Houses make up the bulk of the zone’s homes. In Kaminal Juyú I you will find two-level houses of around 255 m² on lots of about 205 m², with four bedrooms and generous parking; in Kaminal Juyú II there are bigger houses inside a garita, on lots of up to 387 m², with garage space for three cars and four bedrooms plus a service room. Plenty of houses already earn something: one Kaminal Juyú II house on a lot of 10 by 20 metres holds two separate apartments and three water cisterns. In Quinta Samayoa smaller two-bedroom houses of around 125 m² come up on streets that are almost all paved and fully served. When you compare houses for sale in Zona 7, check whether the street sits inside or outside a garita, because the same colonia can have both.

Apartments in Zona 7:

Apartment buildings are a recent arrival and stand at the zone’s edges rather than inside the old colonias. Di Fiori, entered from both the Calzada Roosevelt and the Calzada Mateo Flores, has three-bedroom units of up to about 117 m², some on the ground floor with a garden. Parque Mateo, at Calzada Mateo Flores 36-75, offers two-bedroom, two-bathroom flats with two car spaces and appears in bank home-loan programmes. On the Calzada San Juan, in Kaminal Juyú I and a short walk from the Periférico, Kaminal 7 puts one- and two-bedroom flats of 23 to 63 m² above a two-level shopping centre, with two basement levels of parking. Most apartments in Zona 7 are sold with a down payment split into instalments and a monthly payment after that.

Rentals in Zona 7:

Rentals here are mostly small. Two-room flats inside houses in Kaminal Juyú I, single rooms and second-floor units are common, while the towers on Mateo Flores let furnished two-bedroom apartments and three-bedroom units with a garden. Whole houses come up too, sometimes for business use, such as one in Kaminal Juyú I with 360 m² of construction offered as a commercial house. Before you agree on any of the rentals in Zona 7, get in writing which services the rent covers, since some small flats are let with them included and others are not.

New Developments in Zona 7:

Alira 7 is the main project now in presale, on the Calzada San Juan close to the Periférico. It plans two towers over four basement levels, with two- and three-bedroom apartments from 59 to 83 m², most with two parking spaces, a commercial area and more than twenty shared amenities, among them a pool, a running and calisthenics track, a gym and a pet park. Its sales office is in Mixco rather than on the site, so go and see the lot itself before you sign. With new apartment projects in Zona 7, also ask whether the site needed an archaeological clearance and whether the developer has it, because this is the part of the city that was built over Kaminaljuyú.

Commercial Property in Zona 7:

The Calzada San Juan is the zone’s commercial spine, carrying private cars, delivery vans and industrial traffic between the Periférico and Mixco. Lots on it often come with older buildings: one of 882 m² has 13.5 metres of frontage on the calzada, a masonry warehouse and five one-level rooms let as apartments on the side street. Kaminal 7 adds shop units at the base of its tower. Inside the colonias, business happens on the ground floor of the family house, from the corner tienda to the workshop, so before you buy for a business, check the authorised land use and how a truck would load on your block.

FAQ:

• Could there be a Maya mound on or next to the house I want to buy?

  In parts of Zona 7, yes. The surviving mounds in Villas de San Juan, Castillo Lara, Kaminal Juyú I and around the park were declared untouchable national heritage in 2011, and in 1999 a stela fragment and a carved throne turned up in Quinta Samayoa beside another mound. If a lot holds or borders one, digging foundations, demolishing or adding a floor needs prior authorisation from the Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural, and the municipality cannot license work on a registered cultural property without a favourable opinion from the Instituto de Antropología e Historia. Get a certification of the finca from the property registry to confirm owner, area and liens, then ask the IDAEH whether the lot is on its register before you plan any building.

• A seller calls the house “zona 7, El Encinal”. Is that the same zone?

  No. El Encinal belongs to zona 7 of Mixco, a different municipality with a numbering of its own. The Zona 7 on this page is the capital’s, the one with Kaminaljuyú, Landívar, Bethania and the Calzada San Juan. Confirm the municipality on the property’s registry entry, because property tax and building licences go to a different city hall on each side of the line.

• Which Transmetro stations serve Zona 7?

  Line 7 runs along the Anillo Periférico through the zone, with stations at San Juan, near the Calzada San Juan, Ciudad de Plata, Villa Linda, Cuatro de Febrero, close to the Boulevard El Naranjo towards Mixco, Bethania and Incienso, by the bridge into Zona 1. To the south it continues through Zona 11 to the Universidad de San Carlos, and to the north it reaches the Centro Histórico and Parque Colón.

• Is it worth paying more for a house inside a garita?

  That depends on the street and on how you live. Colonias such as Kaminal Juyú II have sections behind a garita and houses on open streets, sometimes a few blocks apart. A gate changes who can park outside, how visitors and deliveries get in and how the street feels at night, so ask whether residents pay towards the garita and what that covers before you compare prices.

• What should I know before buying in or near Bethania?

  Bethania began as 620 state-built houses handed over in 1952, and the area around it now takes in some twenty-one colonias and thirty-nine asentamientos, many formed after the 1976 earthquake. On the zone’s eastern side barrancos cut between the colonias, so a lot can end at the top of a slope. Compare what is built with what is registered on the finca, and if the back of the lot falls away, have an engineer look at the ground before you commit.