Our Story: The Stoplight and the Hotel

Speech written by Juan Pablo Bustamante, youngest son of company co-founder Luis Bustamante del Valle, and read by Luis’s firstborn Carlos Bustamante at the XXXIII Fedelonjas Real Estate Summit on August 17, 2017.

The story of Inmobiliaria Bustamante began with a stoplight and a hotel. I heard this from my father, Luis Bustamante del Valle, whom the Colombia Association of Realtors (Fedelonjas, the Federación Colombiana de Lonjas de Propiedad Raíz) honors today with the Hernando Luque Ospina Lifetime Achievement Award. My father was driving his Chevrolet pickup truck, a 1971 model, on Bolívar Avenue in Barranquilla. He had just left a business meeting and was heading back to his home in Cartagena. But a red light made him stop at an intersection near a street cook who was selling her goods on the sidewalk. The smell of arepa filled with egg reminded my father he had skipped lunch. He rummaged through his wallet as he debated whether to ask the cook to make him a fresh one.

However, a chubby man pulled up next to my father at the light and solved his conundrum by telling him to save his money. The man was a childhood friend whom my father had not seen for a long time and who invited him to dinner at a Barranquilla restaurant. My father chuckled and replied that although he was happy to see his friend again, his suit was drenched in sweat, he had no change of clothes, and he could not stay overnight. The stoplight turned yellow. My father said goodbye, asking to send his regards to the chubby man’s girlfriend. The stoplight turned green. A car behind him honked. My father accelerated, but he hit the brakes when the chubby man shouted it would be a double date. The chubby man’s girlfriend would introduce my father to one of her coworkers—a blonde with blue eyes, just like my father preferred them.

Bathed in Jean-Marie Farina cologne, my father went to dinner with the chubby man, his girlfriend, and the blue-eyed blonde. Almost a decade later, my father and that blue-eyed blonde, Cecilia, would become the founders of Inmobiliaria Bustamante. But before that happened, just two months after meeting my father, she became his wife. They celebrated their honeymoon in Madrid, Spain, where they also lived for a few years while studying for their master’s degrees.

Upon returning to Cartagena, they had their first child and opened a hotel resembling the hostels they saw in Spain. They called it the Leonela Hotel in honor of a character from Don Quixote. They soon decided that taking care of guests was their calling and joined the industry associations. They imagined a future where they would have branches throughout Colombia. At the same time, they agreed my father would continue working as an employee to ensure a monthly income while they gained full financial independence. During those years, he held roles as a professor at the University of Cartagena, Telecartagena’s general manager, Bolívar State’s secretary general, and Cartagena Utilities Company’s general manager, among others.

But something left my parents feeling uneasy: Cartagena’s Old Town. My parents realized the historic district was undervalued in Cartagena, unlike what they had seen during their journey through similar places in Europe. Clinging to that vision, on February 6, 1977, they founded Inmobiliaria Bustamante in the Bocagrande neighborhood, in room number one of the Leonela Hotel. Three years later, after the birth of their second son, they moved the real estate company to a colonial house on Tumbamuertos Street in the Old Town, where we still operate.

Today, forty years after the founding of Inmobiliaria Bustamante, I receive on behalf of my father this honorable award from Fedelonjas, and my brother and I have committed to following his example. In turn, I ask for a round of applause for my mother because this award also belongs to her. She was not just the great woman behind the great man—she and my father formed a team. Together, they were the visionaries who catapulted our family business. Thank you.