Guys In The Zone: Costa Rica Real Estate

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this topic yet, you might want to. You can do so by clicking here.  You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  This article stands up fine all by itself.  However, to get a good understanding of the open listing, which is the most common type of listing here in Costa Rica, you’ll probably want to.  All right?

The quandary of how to best sell a property in Costa Rica

When we last visited, we were left with the cliff hanger – “what is a seller to do if they don’t live in Costa Rica?”  The absentee owners don’t have time to go to each real estate agency and distribute photos, write-up, survey and contract with every real estate agency.  This could really mess up a family vacation.  Not to mention the follow-up-regular-visits to see how it’s going with showings of the listing.

Before going into that and satisfying the “edge of your seat” drama that I have created here with this compelling topic, I’d like to give you a glimpse inside the mind of this Costa Rica real estate agent and share with you an alternate option to what has been the standard practice in Costa Rica for the exclusive listing of a property.

We have always known that the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) market place of the US is superior to the Costa Rica open listing model.  In our (Zone real estate agencies) efforts to improve our market, and to offer a better service to both buyer and seller, we have defaulted to imitating the MLS market place, without having an actual MLS.  The reasoning is simple: the MLS is a superior model that has evolved over time in response to gazillions of problems and concerns and has resulted in what we see there now: a mature business model that offers representation to both buyer and seller of a given piece of property.  So, we try and come as close to working like and MLS without having the actual infrastructure of an MLS.

For various reasons, I’m starting to think that this premise might be flawed.  AND it may be that, if we think outside of this box we’re in here, we might even come up with a solution that rivals, or perhaps (could it be?!?) even exceeds the MLS model of other countries.  Bear with me here.

How Costa Rica imitates the MLS model… Continue Reading

Guys in the Zone heresay service: I thought that I’d behave like a blogger this morning and so I cruised the Costa Rica news & real estate blogs.  The following are my findings along with some current gossip:

The PRETOMA (Programa Restauracion de Tortugas Marinas) website

The US Department of State`s Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science imposed a trade embargo on all Costa Rican shrimp exports to the US, effective as of May 1.  The embargo is due to Costa Rica’s failure to enforce its laws that require commercial shrimp fishers to protect sea turtles from capture and death in trawl nets by using Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs).

And then a little commentary on the matter from Globalpost:

It’s not the first time that the United States, Costa Rica’s chief shrimp buyer (shrimp exports to the U.S. grossed $2.8 million in 2007), has put a trade embargo on Tico shrimp. The ban has been imposed four times since 1999, in an attempt to penalize this country’s shrimping habits.

Fishers are netting shrimp illegally near river heads and protected marine areas in the Pacific, and aren’t using technology designed to prevent turtles from drowning in trawl nets, according to PRETOMA.

The article included statements that the biggest hit here is to Costa Rica’s “Green” reputation.  Costa Rica is apparently allowing shrimp harvesting in such a way that endangers the marine turtles — the green sea turtle, the olive ridley, hawksbill and leatherback.  So the U.S. is wielding its influence, and for those of us that like the idea of preserving the earth’s natural resources, this is good news.

Yesterday I was talking with Chef Dave from La Cusinga.  He’s doing some pretty interesting things here, one of which is cooking up a culinary experience at the La Cusinga restaurant which is called The Gecko.  I haven’t tried it yet, but for those that have, they say that it is nothing short of divine.

Anyway, it turns out that Chef Dave is a bit of a writer, and that he is interested in a lot of the things that I like writing about as well.  He’s started his own blog over at Chef of the Jungle.  He is the one that had originally told me about the U. S. ban on Costa Rica shrimp imports to the U. S. (You can read his commentary on the matter by clicking here).  That is indicative of the topics found in his blog.  Here is a clip from his website: Continue Reading

The big question of the day seems to be, is Costa Rica real estate being affected by the topsy turvy current global economy? In a word: yes.

In a previous article dated December of 2007, (click here to read) I had simplified the possible affect of the economic downturn in the States. I wrote that the affect can be negative, neutral, or positive. My conclusion at that time was that the affect had been positive. I’m modifying (please note my choice of word there) my position now that we’ve been in “the change” for some time. Please note that I’m not changing from my position, but as you will see, I am detailing out the affect of the global changes. I am still of the mind that, overall, the change is in the “positive” column.

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