Guys In The Zone: Costa Rica Real Estate

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.

(Read the rest of this entry.)

Evaluating a property here in Costa Rica is a dicey prospect, and “comps” as often as not, are based on what someone else is “asking” for their property, and not so much in what something comparable has actually sold for. The problem is, there may have been a gap of time since a nearby property has sold, and what the seller calculates his property to be worth now. This is based on the word-on-the-street about land value appreciation here. Or there may be an anomalous sale somewhere in the zone that can be referred to. So there is often a huge disparity between what the last nearby property sold for, and what the seller thinks his property is worth.

(Read the rest of this entry.)

Down and Dirty:

• Pick your real estate agency
• Pick and Consult with your agent
• View properties
• Make an offer either in writing or verbally through your agent to the seller
• Negotiate the price and terms
• Get signed Offer To Purchase document to lawyer that outlines the details of the deal so that he/she can draft the Purchase and Sale agreement
• Deposit 10% with the accepted offer. The deposit is “non-refundable” with the exceptions of the contingencies mentioned in the offer. The deposit is held in escrow until closing.
• Due Diligence period
• Close

If you want to know specifically about any of the above details without reading through this entire 3 part article, please click on the bulleted point above to go directly to that information.
(Read the rest of this entry.)

Go and View Properties:

Once we have identified the purpose that the person(s) have in looking to buy land in Costa Rica, the agent will consider this as he directs them to the available properties that suit their interest.

I have always found it interesting to watch the process of land selection. I think that we all come down to Costa Rica with some pre-conceived notions of what we want, and for most of us, these change after we’ve stood on a few properties. Our marketplace is, for the most part, coastal mountain terrain. It’s hard to arrive here knowing what these properties are like; they are quite unique, even on a global scale.

Throughout the consultation and property viewing, the buyer is asking questions, getting informed, and making decisions. They are considering the various value affecting features of the property such as: the view, the access, proximity to neighbors, proximity to the beach, golf course, waterfall, how much breeze there is, the jungle, and so on.

Most buyers of land in Costa Rica are not all that familiar with the peculiarities of the land. However, most have had experience in land transactions somewhere, and that familiarity of basic good business is helpful. Basic good business practices are the same everywhere. The broker should be an open book with respect to the properties, “full disclosure” being the key words here. You should get the sense that your broker wants you to know everything that he knows about the property, good, bad, and indifferent. If you don’t get that sense from your broker, get rid of him/her and find another one.

When their property is found, it is time to move on to –
(Read the rest of this entry.)

Due Diligence

The term for due diligence is normally 3 weeks, and closing is usually in 4. Due diligence starts when the deposit is made, and the written offer has been signed by buyer and seller. This document will have the contingency points detailed out. Some properties have no contingency points, some have several, it depends on the property. This is one of the more important areas where you, the buyer, has to rely on the expertise of your broker.

Your broker may have an intimate understanding of the property. He/she may not due to the amount of inventory available in the area.It just isn’t possible to know each property that well. I have some properties that I know extremely well, perhaps having sold a number of lots in the development already, and so I can authoritatively speak to the specific contingencies that should be itemized on the Offer To Purchase (OTP) form. When I don’t have this familiarity with the property, it still works out since I know what the basic concerns are. Road, water, electric, soil stability, and knowing for sure that the buyer will be able to use the property as they wish.
(Read the rest of this entry.)

In the process of buying a piece of land in Costa Rica, we get to a point where the client has to make a rather strange decision. Should they declare the full value of the property on the Purchase and Sale agreement? Or should they under declare so that they can avoid paying taxes on the full amount? This may sound like a “shady” decision. One would think it to be illegal to not declare the actual amount paid for the property on their contract. It’s not. In fact, the common practice here for years has been to declare a lesser value and the practice has been embraced by virtually everybody in the country. So, the consideration of “how much to declare” is a feature in nearly all land transactions in Costa Rica.

(Read the rest of this entry.)

I received a question in the forum at Dominical.biz by a gentleman who wondered if he should continue in his endeavor to retire to Costa Rica. His concern was based on a recent article on the front page of the Tico Times that described some rather frightening tax scenarios for owners of Maritime Zone properties up north in the Guanacaste Province. There was the example of a couple whose beachside property’s taxes were increased from $70 annually to $15,000.

I have had a number of clients wonder if maybe the days of Costa Rica being a good investment, and a place to retire are over. It would seem from the various questions that I get that the article gives the idea that there is a new tax law in Costa Rica. So, being the ever vigilant real estate agent that I am, I called my lawyer to ask about the “new tax laws”. The answer surprised me. “Don Benjamin, there is no new tax law”, nor was the existing tax law changed. What the Costa Rican government is doing is re-assessing properties, primarily in the Maritime Zone. The extreme increase in taxes resulted from two likely causes.

1. Enormous appreciation of the property since it was last assessed
2. Likely the “declared value” of the property when it was bought by the current owners was considerably less than what they actually paid for it. This is a common practice here in Costa Rica.

To understand the amount of appreciation that has occurred here in Costa Rica over the last 15 years, we have to understand some about the culture. Land was essentially “value-less”, it didn’t really factor into a family’s budget concerns, not that they really had any budget concerns. The point being, land was a given. Someone in the family had a property large enough, usually much larger than necessary, to house everyone in the family, and their friends too. Well that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. The Tico (Costa Rican) culture was, and still is to a lesser degree now, mulit-generational. To this day, a number of my friends in San Isidro de Perez Zeledon, live on a now smaller piece of land with a cluster of Tico style houses where you will find grandparents and great grandparents, as well as adult sisters and brothers with their families living. Family compounds are what I guess we’d call them in our culture.

So up until our start date of say, 1993 for understanding the valuating of Costa Rica land, many Tico families lived on property that was multi manzanas in size. (A manzana, as you may know means “apple” in Spanish. However, in Costa Rica it also means a piece of land that measures 1.7 acres. “Manzana” is not unique to Costa Rica, but it is one of very few countries that uses that measurement.) It seems that a 60 manzana parcel was a common size for a homestead stake. Land was so value-less at that time that the government was looking for men that would simply take responsibility for a particular piece of land, so they granted them ownership rights to the land simply by the Tico land owner being willing to own the property. From that point on, anyone in the family, due to the cultural structure, could live on that piece with their extended family in close proximity.

Then came the foreigners. Upon discovering the beautiful beaches of Costa Rica, as well as its expansive valley and mountain views, and postcard overlooks of quilted patchwork coffee fields, adventurous foreigners would approach one of these land owners about purchasing their property. Money, to the Tico at that time, was hard to come by. When I arrived in Costa Rica in 1999, the going wage for most labor services was around .80 - $1.00 per hour. The Tico didn’t have a mortgage nor rent in mind for what he needed to earn. Housing was essentially free. They would get the wood they needed to build their house from the trees that were in abundance on the family farm. Family and friends would help with the construction. Houses were not built in a permanent way and they would need to rebuild the house after some years. The exceptions to this were when there were certain types of woods available that essentially have the same durability as cement. Manú is one and there is another called Ajo, or “garlic wood”. Houses built with these woods are still around. These little Tico houses that endure to the present have the most beautiful wooden floors in them, burnished by years of foot traffic and daily sweepings and waxings.

The concept of say, $10,000, was nearly inconceivable to the people that lived at that time in that cultural structure. This really wasn’t that long ago. Comparative values in the States and Europe made the land here seem free. Twenty acres of ocean view property for $10,000? Imagine! Add to this the custom of under-declaring the value of the transaction so that the title transfer taxes would be almost nil all add up to the situation that we have now with this re-assessment situation. The properties of Costa Rica are registered as having a value of $3,000 lets say. In more recent times the figure of $20,000 is a common declared value. By the way, this practice of under-declaring is not illegal and is universal in its practice.

There is currently no capital gains tax in Costa Rica. There is no reason for there not to be, so we are expecting a capital gains tax at some point. When this happens, there will no doubt be a period of time during which land owners will be able to reassess their properties. For those that don’t reassess, there will be some huge hits, such as those cited in the Tico Times article, to those who are sitting on a property with a declared value of $3,000 and the property then sells for $500,000.

The properties discussed in the Tico Times articles were all in the Maritime Zone (Google: “Maritime Zone” or “Zona Maritima”, “plan regulador”). Most of our land deals here in the Dominical, Uvita, Ojochal area are on land that is titled and is classified “Agrícola” or agricultural. Agricultural zoning serves the needs of single family lots just fine. You can build on 15% of the land size, and the minimum lot size is generally 5,000 square meters (1.25 acres). I can’t imagine that the tax laws for these types of properties will be changing any time soon. Nor do I see a push to re-assess such properties in the foreseeable future. Costa Rica is still made up of the farming, family compound-like life style. To enact such a change in law, or require that the Tico farmer pay annual taxes on the modern value given to his land, would severely hurt a large percentage of Costa Rica’s people. Conversely it makes sense to focus such taxation concerns on the zones where large hotels and lucrative tourism enterprises reside.

Please keep in mind that this viewpoint is derived from my personal observations of this land and the time that I have of living here and being fascinated by the new and different culture among which I live. In other words, I reserve the right to be wrong and to have the Costa Rican government surprise me. But I suspect that you can understand the logic.

If you are looking to invest in Costa Rica real estate, you must learn all you can and develop your own crystal ball. What do you think is going to happen? As a land owner and real estate broker here, I feel sufficiently secure and optimistic about what is going on with regards to ownership rights and taxation to continue building and working my portfolio of properties, and helping others to do the same.

Its changing. (Now there’s some real insight for you).

The global markets are in the throes of change. The US dollar is at an all time low. The Canadian dollar is, for the first time in some fifty years, stronger than the US dollar. Even here in Costa Rica, the Colon, for the first time in anyone’s memory, gained against the dollar.

So, whats happening here in Costa Rica with land sales and investments?

A little history:
We boomed here, super hot, from about mid 2004 up through mid 2006. Properties were snapped up and the biggest concern that us real estate agents had was, is there enough property to go around? Literally - I had numerous discussions with other Realtors on the topic. “Do you have anything to show your clients?”

After the boom, we settled into a steady flow of business with the occasional BIG story happening. Talk of big money hoteliers coming in, or at least, having an interest in the area started up and are continuing on at this writing. One seller that I have spoken with had some serious talks with Marriot about a hotel here. But the thrust of the market was and is single family lots that offer an ocean view.

The equity buyers from the land boom and easy financing in the States powered a lot of what we did here. People were enjoying large chunks of equity capital from the appreciation in their homes in the various hot markets such as, from Florida up the Eastern Seaboard, Colorado, and Southern California. Liquidity was rampant.

The change:
Lending practices (among other things) in the US have thrown that country’s economy into a tail spin and it is now difficult at best, to get financing. The equity buyers are gone and the prestige and buying power of the US dollar is declining.

United Kingdom:
A few months ago I went to England to a real estate expo put on by a reality television program there called “A Place in the Sun”. It is evidently a big deal over there. “A Place in the Sun” is a program that locates single family properties in beautiful parts of the globe and then screens applicants that are looking for such properties. They take these couples to the various selected properties where the prospective they view, and then likely buy, that property. They film the whole thing. The show is a hit.

I was helping a friend with a booth there that was exclusively for Costa Rica real estate. Walking around the expo was an enlightening experience. There were maybe two other booths that dealt with Costa Rica real estate, but only peripherally. Ours was the only one that dealt exclusively with Costa Rica real estate, so I would say that Costa Rica was not represented in a big way. But Spain was. And Croatia, and Turkey and Morocco etc… It was quite the exotic presentation.

The Brits have got money, plus their currency currently is enjoying about double (and increasing) the buying power of the U.S. dollar. My few days there in England were easily the most expensive few days of travel I have yet experienced in my life. The hotel where I stayed charged ₤285 (sterling) which equated out to $570 US per night. We got a break for being at the Expo, but still… I didn’t even think that the hotel was all that great. The hotel was packed.

The flush Brits have lots of interest in spending their money outside of the UK. There are tax laws in the UK that have the effect on the residents there of wanting to get their money out of the country. It seems strange to me that a country would have such laws, but there it is. They have effectively pushed ocean view land values, especially in Spain, Turkey, and Croatia through the roof. The booths in the show were elegant and peopled with some gorgeous human specimens. Big screen displays showing how you can buy into a nice ocean view condo along what some marketer had name “Costa Blanca” in Spain for a mere ₤750,000 ($1,500,000 US) and so on.

From our booth at the expo we would watch as say, a couple would saunter on by. They’d glance up at our sign that said “Costa Rica” and keep on walking. A short peice down the way they would stop, talk with each other, turn around and come back. First question: “Where is Costa Rica?” Many, of course, thought Costa Rica to be an island. I eventually printed out an add-on for our marquis that said “Central America” to try and help a bit.

So, the conversation would go from what I would call an absolutely cold beginning, to some pretty serious interest in investing in Costa Rica.

United States:
A few months ago, a Realtor from Boston Massachusetts referred a stock trader from New York down to me that ended up buying in the San Buenas area. They bought a beautiful 6+ hectare (2.48 acres to the hectare) property alongside a year round waterway that features a 50 foot waterfall. The property listed at $265,000. This resulted in a generous referral commission check to that Realtor.

My most recent travels took me, as chance would have it, to Boston. I just gotta say, it was COLD there. I had the chance there to talk with a number of Realtors there about the state of the market. They all had done extremely well in the recent years of prosperity in the States, and were now, well… quite frankly, they seemed a bit scared about the situation in the real estate market there in the States. Consequently they had a pronounced interest in Costa Rica as a possible referral option for branching out and developing an alternate income stream from their existing client base. Their clients have money. The equity buyers may be gone, but there is still, evidently, a good amount of money in them thar States.

So here is my guess as to what we are heading into here in Costa Rica as regards land sales and investment opportunities. I think that we are going to be seeing more investors from Europe, and a new breed from the States.

Yesterday I was out on our San Buenas Golf Resort with some investors from France and Italy. They bought two lots. We had to use horses to get up onto the properties and we stood amongst the Melina trees and peered through them at the ocean, and over the golf course. They moved easily into the concept of investing there since it seems that investors the world over can relate to properties in a golf community. This particular deal though was more than investment only; they intend to use the properties for family and friends to enjoy as vacation homes, as well as income generating properties. They purchased three lots.

The day before that, I was out in the same project with an old hand here at investing in Costa Rica real estate. He has been living in Costa Rica for some ten years and has done extremely well. His interest in some of the proposed condominiums in this development piqued my interest as I have been trying to formulate where we are headed here in our land sales.

My summation:
The loss of the equity buyer does not appear to indicate that we are out of buyers. I think that we are seeing a wave of well heeled global investors, including US, buying into property in Costa Rica as a strong international haven for their investment funds. Take and put the sagging dollar into land that is being bought up by those that have the strong currency now. Our land values, although having risen sharply over the last few years, are by comparison to what I saw in the UK, quite low. To be invested in a market where strong currencies are buying seems to offer a hedge against declining currency strength in the US.

Before getting started, please check out the new site at www.uvita.biz. I have put up the type of site there that you can contribute your own writings and photos to by logging in. But more on that later.

We are approaching the end of rainy season here. Its funny but I was thinking how long it took me living here to even key into the changing seasons, its so obvious now. We are in early November of 2007, and the rainy season seems to be trying to go out with a bang. This morning I drove down from Escaleras in a downpour. The roads are deeply rutted from the rains, and out on the costanera (coastal highway) there were trees down from the saturated earth being rained on so heavily. We definitely live in the rain forest here in the Uvita area of Costa Rica.

Along with the seasons there is a constant and rather rapid progress of change in the human sector as well. I really enjoyed the read of John Marañon “Gringos Hawk”, which is the account of a Gringo coming to the Uvita area in the early ‘70s and cataloging his experiences. The book gives us a peek at the way it was here just 30 years ago, and now to look around and see the growth. Uvita is in the middle of a white hot explosion of growth and development.

The Uvita area is shaped kinda like a diamond. The coastal mountain range runs down from Dominical, pretty much parallel to the ocean. When it gets to Uvita, it takes a sharp turn inland to a point, then it heads back out towards the beach, causing a diamond shaped plain that is rimmed by a bowl of mountainside that is full of rivers, waterfalls, jungle and rain forest wildlife. It is an amazing place that is surely destined for being the center of community in this area of the coastline. It’s up in this rim that there has been a tremendous amount of residential buying of real estate. Down on the diamond shaped plain, and all around the coastal highway that runs through it, there is a lot of commercial development going on.

I get asked on a regular basis, “howzit going down there in Uvita” or “what’s going on there in Uvita?”, well I’ll tell ya.

Uvita has been the primary area that I have done business in, even though my first few years in real estate, my office was in Dominical. Now I am situated in the commercial center of Uvita. As I looked around my office the other day, I noticed a rather recent phenomenon was taking place. I had clients in my office that actually now live here. How many times I have heard the question: “who are your clients”. There is no real demographic here that is constant enough to actually help a market “target” the buyers here. People come here and buy land here for a number of different reasons. Some are simply looking for a good investment and don’t have any interest in living here. The simplest form of investment here is to land-bank: just buy a piece of raw land and let it sit for a few years and then sell it. The next would be to develop the land, build a structure on it that will then generate income. This can be a commercial, but is more often a vacation rental home or cabinas. This can serve to generate income and provide a vacation home for the owner while there is the substantial asset appreciation that Costa Rica land is currently experiencing. Then there are those that simply want to relocate to Closta Rica. Perhaps they are retiring and want to go where their fixed income dollars will go a bit further, or they may have an ideological reason for wanting to get to the jungles of Costa Rica.

I used to say that most of my re-locators were going to come down in 3 – 7 years. Well, I guess that some of those years have gone by and so now… here they are. Life here as we know it is changing.

Construction is going on now. There is lots of building going on, and its for this reason that this blog will be dealing a lot with that topic. I’ll be posting resources and info to the blog on a regular basis.

As for land, well there are some interesting things going on all around us. Up in what I like to call the “Gold Zone”, between Dominical and Uvita, there has been limited inventory over the last couple years. I’ve got some very lovely pieces up there. Nothing inexpensive mind you, but really nice stuff. Although, there is one piece up in Escaleras, about 3 acres for $235,000, with a big northerly view up to Manuel Antonio. The lot is sloped, so it would need some tractor work to make it build-able. Or, you could do the other way of building and do a pier type thing. This is where you pier up to the floor, leaving a space under the living area. Anyway, I think that it’s quite a good value. Since it is in the Escaleras area, there just isn’t much there and when there is, it’s expensive. Lots of vacation rentals around up there.

Also, there is the Big Screaming Development up at the top of the Escaleras development. Lots range from non-ocean view, but great valley and waterfall view properties starting at around $195,000 for good sized (5 acres) lots, up to $800,000 for mind-blowing, life-altering, Pacific Ocean view lots. This is by a long time resident of Costa Rica’s southern zone who is likely the best around, very conscientious and knowledgeable. (links to come)

Also, right here in Uvita we’ve got some very interesting ocean view villas that are beautifully designed and are, to my way of thinking, rather low priced. (links to come)

I’ve got a couple of pre-development projects in and around Uvita as well. One is just to the south of Uvita on the ocean side of the highway. It is in the flats there. There will be a commercial area and about a 30 villa complex with an easy walk to a gorgeous, in fact it is the Marina Ballena National Park beach. I will have the master plan to this shortly. If you want to get in on an early deal right there near the beach, drop me a line. (links to come)

I have just received an exclusive listing. This one was/is really cool since it is the construct that I live for in a business deal. The seller is a long time resident of the Dominical area. I have handled some of his property in the past and so can vouch for his conscientious and gentle nature. He had the foresight to buy in the maritime zone some years ago. It has taken the passing years to get the paper and legal work in order to make the property ready for market. He has approached me about marketing these properties in a non-rushed, lets just do it right, kinda way. He got in early enough to where there is plenty of profit in it for him to go the extra mile. This is a community of 15 lots, all within 200 yards of the ocean. There is water, electric, super-easy access, and even though the property is right on the ocean, the property rises immediately from the ocean, so it is up in the breeze yet still right there on the ocean. Anyway, this also is an early buy-in opportunity. They should start at around $500k for the first few. This is for a house on the property.(links to come)

Oh, I almost forgot, Whale’s Tail Estates. This is what will no doubt be the last of its kind in Uvita. Large, multi-acre lots, huge Whale’s Tail views (see photo to the left), and access down to a gorgeous stream (see photo to the right) complete with cascades and waterfalls. There are 6 single family raw lots there available.(links to come)

Last but not least, you’ve got the golf course going in about 15 minutes south of Uvita. You can pick up a ½ acre lot there for around $50,000. 10 minutes to a gorgeous beach, and the golf course itself is shaping up to be pro-quality. Click here for more info.

Headnote: at the bottom of this article you’ll see the word “Labels” and then “construction”. If you click “construction”, you’ll get the articles that are written on the blog about that topic.

About Construction in Costa Rica

I think that most of my clients come to me intending, or wanting, to buy an existing house.
The vast majority of my clients end up buying raw land with the view of building on it.

How does this happen?

Well, I think that it helps to understand that we are EARLY in the cycle of development and growth here in Costa Rica’s southern zone.

Looking back over the last few years here in real estate, I think that it is notable that I have personally been involved in very few sales of developed land, this is to say, land that has a building on it. Nearly all of my business has been on raw land. Large farms to later be subdivided, or lots in an existing development, these are what has been the stock and trade of my business here.

This is a key point in understanding investments in real estate in the southern zone of Costa Rica. It seems that in real estate we (“we” being us land buyers) feel like we’re late and that we’ve missed the deals and so we’ve got to settle for less. We’re early here people! How long ago were we at this stage of the cycle in say, Boston, or Manhattan? Do you expect to be shown some raw, never been built on land when you walk into a real estate office in those or other cosmopolitan areas? I think not. Well not only is it common here, but its essentially the nature of the business here. So, a quick study of history and how these cycles work would indicate that we are heading into the part of the cycle that, for the purpose of this article, we will call the “construction” phase. This leads us nicely into the question:

How does one go about building a house in Costa Rica?
Well, if you have a real estate agent that is worth his salt, he should be available to help with this sort of post-sale support. Yours truly is just such a real estate agent here in Costa Rica. I figure that if you want to go to the trouble to travel all the way down here, to this foreign land, and buy a piece of property from me, I’ll be there for you with some of the follow up concerns that go along with this sort of an acquisition.

The First Step:
Your real estate agent should have a line on some general contractors in the area. Since here in Costa Rica we are going into this part of the development phase, there is an awful lot of movement: new companies popping up, reputations on the part of some individual contractors being established, (and dashed in some cases). There aren’t too many builders that have a long history down here with a satisfied following. So the first step is to get some recommended contractors that you can interview. The interview is an important step since you are going to be working closely with whomever you choose over the course of the project, which will likely take between 12 and 18 months. And there are going to be some trying times in the project. I don’t think this point is unique to Costa Rica. I think that building a house is a daunting task no matter where it is done. But I gotta say, it is particularly daunting here in Costa Rica for a number of factors that I may or may not mention later on in this article. In any case, your selection of your General Contractor is the single most important decision in the process. Interview three contractors, and if nothing clicks, interview another three. Talk to lots of people. Drive around the hills near your property and talk with the folks at any construction sites that you might find. Get some recommendations this way as well.

The handling of this first step is going to set the stage for how the project goes, all the way through. I am involved in a project now that is being stymied with the installation of windows due to the window holes, which were put in a long time ago by the first contractor who had to be fired and sued, the openings are not square. Had he been any good, we wouldn’t be having these, and various other problems now.

Should you be here for the whole project? Yes.
What if you can’t? Well, do the best you can. Lets talk.

This situation obviously comes up as often as not. Not everyone can take the time off from life to live in Costa Rica for the twelve to eighteen months that such a project requires, just so they can oversee their project. So, a number of the contractors are sensitive to the needs of the home owner and their desire to have a customized home that experiences some modifications along the way from the original plans. Since it may be that the owner decides to build in absentia, there are some unique needs that the contractor should seek to satisfy. Communication is foremost. You want to know how the project is going, really. This can be achieved through photos and videos and regular conversation.

The contract should be as specific as it can be. When there is a deviation from the contract, for instance with regards to time projections or costs, it will serve both the homeowner and the builder well to stop and talk, and document the changes necessary to accommodate the new situation. If the “stop, talk, and doc” (a little saying I just made up) procedure is followed from the start, a lot of problems can be avoided.

Costa Rica is a land of friendly people. Frankly, so is the US, but it’s a nice way to start this sentence to make this point. Costa Rica is a land of friendly people. We get enamored by the place. The scenery is paradisaical (that is to say, paradise-like), there is wildlife running, flying, and swimming all around us here, and the people here are more than happy to assist us in our efforts to share in it. In other words, to move here, or to visit regularly. So in this friendly setting, we can relax the need for good clear documentation because, hey, don’t you trust the guy? Yes you do, but you want to document it anyway. Good neighbors build tall fences, good buds document all business agreements.

Building a house in Costa Rica is a complicated endeavor. Take the necessary time to choose a good project overseer that you can communicate well with. Make sure to read the contract and take the time to get it right. Make it detailed. Put in time terms of when certain benchmarks can reasonably be reached. Have provisions for if those benchmarks aren’t hit.

Follow good business practices in your efforts to build a house here in Costa Rica, and one day you’ll really be able to call this amazing place home.