I received the below e-mail last week and have been working with “Jim” (name is changed to protect…). His situation is one that I think a lot of folks will be able to relate to. 
Reading through your blog it appears that purchasing a home or property in the southern zone is now just for the wealthy. Those who have 5 or 6 other houses and for which one more is just another investment. There are those of us who would like to make Costa Rica our new home and leave the corporate hassles behind. We just may not have the $300K - $1M in cash for such a move. What do you recommend for those of us who are a little ahead in the US real estate game and are looking for a quiet, secluded, place to raise some fruit, veggies, etc. and settle down?
Nicely put, and meaty. I wrote back:
I hate to do this to you, but I’m going to answer your question with some questions. Nearly all of our deals here are cash deals. What amount of cash would you be able to put into the deal, and what sort of terms would you need? How much land would you like to see for the fruit and veggies? Does the property need to be ocean view? How close to the beach? Does it need to have a home on it, or would you build? What would a deal need to look like for someone in your position? Owner financing? Lower prices on property? Costa Rica financing? I’ve got a number of motivated sellers right now that would be open to some creative deal making, provided it put some cash in their pocket now. If we were to home in on some of the above details, I could perhaps help with finding you a property. We can structure a deal in such a way that it works for you, and then approach a seller with those terms and see if he bites.
Jim’s question got me thinking. I’ve had a number of sellers come to me lately saying that they need to sell something. As a result, they are lowering prices, or at least, indicating to me that they’ll listen to offers. So now I’ve got this idea of working with a buyer and really getting a good understanding of what their capability is financially (how much money they’ve got) and if we can set up an owner financing situation that will result in folks like Jim, who would like to own a spot of Costa Rica, with a view to some day being able to re-locate to here. Jim and I might go ahead and post the process that we’re working through here for other reader’s benefit. In a sense, what we’re doing here is spinning straw into gold. Taking a limited budget and working it in a down market to make it happen.