Building a house in Mexico, Candice and Fidel’s viral dream

A strong wind sweeping across the cornfields reveals a house still under construction beside a small enclosure of sheep and donkeys. The two-story home, which is still unpainted, has a gable roof, a porch and a garage. It is the home that Candice and Fidel García Sánchez, a Mexican American couple, have spent the past five years building after he was deported from the United States and she chose to move with him to a rural area of the Mexican state of Puebla. Their building project has unfolded in full view of the public: half a million YouTube subscribers and more than 1.5 million people on TikTok are following the house’s progress.

Faced with adversity, the García Sánchez family found their own answer to the housing crisis affecting major cities almost everywhere. With property prices rising every day and the expansion of large construction firms, homeownership has drifted further out of reach for many who once dreamed of it. In Mexico, housing prices rose 4.4% over the past year, according to Banorte’s Housing Indicator, while interest in building a home has declined sharply in urban areas.

“Mexican consumers now prefer to go through real-estate developers,” says Alejandro Cervantes, Banorte’s head of quantitative research. In the village where Candice and Fidel live, however, that shift has yet to take hold.

After returning to Mexico in 2016, the couple drew up a 10-year family plan that included building their own home. “Moving here was the only way we could keep our family together,” Candice says of the life she shares with her husband and their three sons, Diego, Dominic and Daemon. They consulted architects and began laying the foundations on farmland owned by Fidel’s family. Candice remembers the days when her husband and a small crew of workers struggled to clear rocks from the site and prepare the land for construction.

Fidel had emigrated to the United States in 1997. “I had to leave to help my parents. Those were very difficult years,” he recalls. He settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he met Candice and learned the construction trade.

It is nearly noon, and the workers, who are now building the cistern, take a break for lunch. They share plates of barbacoa, pozole, spaghetti and garnachas. Most have known each other for years, in some cases since childhood, and have helped at different stages of building the García Sánchez home.

“Everyone who has worked on building our house is a resident of the town,” Candice says. “Fidel and I decided from the beginning that we wanted the money spent on the house to stay in the community. Most of the materials have come from local suppliers; rarely did we have to go farther, for example, to a more commercial area,”

Fidel considers himself another worker and says he has learned new techniques from his colleagues on site. In the United States, he built timber-frame houses that could be completed in a matter of months, sometimes even weeks. In Mexico, where construction relies much more heavily on brick and concrete, he has had to refine and broaden his skills.

“This is the first complete house I’ve built, but it’s a showcase of what I can do with what I’ve learned,” he says. “Back there, when I made a mistake, I could correct it quickly because it was wood, but here if I make a mistake it takes much longer,” he says with a grin.

Candice, who works remotely as a business consultant, has overseen much of the planning behind the build. Above all, however, she has documented the lengthy process on social media. In 2020, she launched a YouTube channel under the name laguerita70 — a reference to güerita, the nickname she is known by in Mexico because of her blonde hair and fair complexion — and, to her surprise, thousands of people became interested in the family’s story.

Her followers ask about construction materials, offer recommendations and weigh in on the next steps of the project. Candice says those exchanges have helped her ask better questions of the architects, builders and other specialists involved in the work. Her social media accounts, including on TikTok and Instagram, have also become a window into life as a binational family in rural Mexico.

The García Sánchez family has become something of an internet sensation, with their channel now attracting 190 million views. Candice says the venture has also helped finance the construction. “We already had some savings to start building the house when we decided to launch a YouTube channel, and we agreed to use the channel’s earnings to start construction,” she explains.

Candice adds that they also avoided taking on debt or a mortgage to keep the project moving forward. That decision, however, has tested their patience. Year after year, they watched construction costs climb — the price of building materials rose 4% in 2025, according to the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry — while their home was still unfinished.

“Material prices have increased significantly, but they are not the only factor energizing the sector: the Mexican economy is growing and driving housing demand, interest rates are at substantially lower levels and inflation is stable,” explains Cervantes from Banorte.

In Mexico, housing is more expensive in states such as Mexico City, Nuevo León and Jalisco. Cervantes notes that one contributing factor is that these regions “have above-average economic potential.” Puebla is below the national average, with housing valued at an estimated 26,761 pesos (about $1,500) per square meter, but its economy is growing faster than that of many other states. Its proximity to Mexico City and reliable public services have also made it an attractive area for residential expansion.

“Hello from México,” Candice says at the start of her videos before showing followers the latest progress on the house. Inside, each of the children’s bedrooms overlooks the fields where the family grows fruit and vegetables. The design blends Mexican and U.S. influences: the kitchen and bathrooms feature traditional Talavera ceramic tiles from Puebla. The windows have already been installed, although work remains to be done on several sections of the house.

The family knows the finish line is finally in sight and acknowledges how fortunate they have been. “Everybody deserves that right [to a place to live], and I think that it should be something that is more attainable,” says Candice. “It’s heartbreaking to see that that’s not a reality for hardly anybody anymore. It makes it hard when you have big corporations buying up properties and making them into rentals [...] It makes it impossible for people to own their own homes.”

Neither Candice nor Fidel yet knows what color they will paint the house, or exactly what they will do once it is finished. She dreams of taking the family on vacation. “The five of us have never been on a plane together,” she says. He hopes to keep building homes in and around the community. “I’ve loved this work. For me, it’s a dream come true.”

They joke that their followers may end up choosing the color of the house through a social media poll.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition