By Ivo Henfling

Well, guess what, they do things different in Costa Rica too. Whether you move to Costa Rica or retire to Costa Rica, you are used to do things a certain way. You do things different than people in other countries and other cultures do. We learn from our parents who learned from their parents and so on and so forth.

If your great grandparents came from Ireland or Italy or Poland, it makes a huge difference. Food, the language and the way you do things, it’s all different. Different doesn’t necessarily mean wrong. It has to do with culture, with growing up in an area where winters are harsh or summers are hotter than hell.

By Ivo Henfling

I am sitting next to Belize and I am in Cancun. Rudy Matthews and I are promoting Costa Rica living and Costa Rica real estate to future retirees, mostly from the US and Canada.

I think Obama will be doing us a favor by winning the next US elections, which will send lots of US citizens our way, just like it happened in the 2nd Bush administration.

So there are lots of people here in the Casa Magma Marriott in Cancun to check out Costa Rica because living in Costa Rica is the way to go.

By Ivo Henfling

It is not so important to have a licensed agent to sell Costa Rica real estate or not, you just need to find an agent who puts love and care in your property purchase and that is what today’s blog is all about. The day after a real estate closing, I received a call from the buyers agent, complaining the appliances weren’t there. I told the agent that the appliances were not included in the property purchase.

The property was not advertised with appliances nor is it customary in Costa Rica to include them. The agent said that in the US they are always included and since the buyer AND the sellers are North Americans, they should be.

Beside the fact that we are in Costa Rica and not in the US, which I chose to ignore, I asked the agent if she had included the appliances in the inventory attached to the offer and to the option to purchase – sale agreement. She said she didn’t check….

By Ivo Henfling

When you move to Costa Rica, you will be making new friends in Costa Rica and I can assure you’ll enjoy so many different people from different places, different backgrounds and different interests. Most of us leave the family back home and though communications through email, Skype and Facebook are easy now, you will be away from most friends and family. Most of the friends you have are those you grew you grew up with or from the baseball team or the parents of your kids friends. And now you have to start all over.

Making friends with the Ticos

Most of us come here with the idea of making friends with the Ticos. Let me tell you a secret: you’ll have a hell of a time to become buddies with the locals.  I am married to one, and another Tica before her and I still don’t have Tico friends, even after living here for 30 years. Oh, if you invite the locals to your house, they’ll all come, don’t worry about that. But they will hardly ever invite you back. Sorry, mistake, they DO invite you back but don’t tell you where they live. Most will not get any further than the acquaintance stage.

By Ivo Henfling

I have seen it happen over and over: buyers fall in love with a property in Costa Rica they have seen on their own, because of a sign on a property or through a FSBO website; they make a verbal offer to the seller and both parties think they have a deal as soon as they agree on the sales price. Falling in love and showing it to the seller is problem #1 and having to deal with an offer and all related to the real estate purchase is problem #2. Problem #3 is that a lot of those deals go down the drain because both buyer and seller make mistakes for lack of knowledge. And these 3 problems are only a few reasons why you should use a real estate agent when you purchase a home in Costa Rica. 

By Ivo Henfling

Ten things to remove before you have a showing

I have a request for all sellers of Costa Rica real estate. Clean up your mess before you put your property on the market and maintain it well after that. Quite a few homes for sale in Costa Rica are in terrible shape or look like they are and the sellers think it’s the bad salesmanship of the real estate agent that the house didn’t sell quickly enough. I got news for you. Those homes that look well painted, have a nice looking garden, have all the curtains open, a nicely painted front door, uncluttered rooms and no dog poop in the hallway sell relatively quickly. Building lots look overgrown and the grass gets never cut. What view? Where is that building pad where the house should go? How do you mean your real estate agent should take care of that….

Have you ever heard of bouldering? Well, they do it in Providencia de Dota. Where the heck is that? It’s a beautiful little town tucked away in the Los Santos mountains, near the National Park Los Quetzales. Most of you have never heard of El Valle de Los Santos. Well, we have a real good Costa Rica real estate agent there, Tony Warren, who has lived in the Los Santos area for some years now. He was the one who told me about bouldering.

I am writing the Spanish version of our American European Real Estate Group’s website in Spanish and in his description about the area of Los Santos, he mentioned something about bouldering. Last time I saw the word, I probably didn’t have time to call him but now I needed to ask him what the word in Spanish is. Well, today you’re going to add another word to your Spanish vocabulary as it is Escalada de Bloque.

By Ivo Henfling

Moving to Costa Rica is easy, if you want to spend the money on paying your moving company to pack your dishes and everything else for you. It is also pretty easy to move if you just throw it all out and start new in Costa Rica by buying all new stuff. 

Moving Home Boxes are available online and you can do most of the work yourself, although we recommend using a profesional packing company or moving company, so everything will arrive in one piece.

Most don’t realize that they will have to pay taxes on everything they bring, as soon as the container hits customs in Costa Rica. But that is for another blog, another day. Today, I’m going to tell you about how to pack your dishes and breakable articles.

By Ivo Henfling

Years ago, we would all get hundreds of flyers in the mail, offering all kinds of services and products. Some years later, we would get all these faxes in the middle of the night, because it is cheaper. Then the spam emails started, hundreds of them, every day. The latest waste of time and a huge bother for many is phone calls and text messages from banks, cable TV services and the phone company, offering their newest services.

I wish they were just offering, sorry, I should say PUSH their services. It drives me nuts. I sell products myself; I sell real estate in Costa Rica. But I send you only a blog once a week, and if you don’t want to receive it, you just unsubscribe from the service, you will never get it again. Financial institutions have other ideas though.

By Ivo Henfling

Great news!! GoDutch Realty was recently approved by International Living® and their commercial division Pathfinder, as their representative for the Central Valley of Costa Rica. AND we are invited to attend their next convention in Cancun, Mexico 21-25th February 2012. Rudy Matthews and Ivo Henfling will fly out to Cancun and promote Costa Rica property for sale in Cancun.

To be accepted and approved by International living is like winning an Academy Award in the international retirement and investment real estate community. For GoDutch Realty, it’s definitely an honor to be able to represent International Living® in the Central Valley of Costa Rica and to be able to attend their thousands of clients who are looking to retire to Costa Rica or invest in the Costa Rica real estate market and where they can compare all the options they have.

By Ivo Henfling

Moving to a new country like Costa Rica can be difficult, especially if it’s a country where they speak a different language and have a different culture.  There is definitely the uncertainty of the unknown mixed with the anticipation of starting fresh. If you really want to live that happy life when moving here, you need to work at it. While you’re doing your on-line due diligence, you may be thinking about how to settle in and how you will get familiar with your new surroundings. GoDutch Realty has been relocating hundreds of newcomers for many years that moved to Costa Rica to retire or just start a new life. No matter if you are going to relocate to Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua or Ecuador, I'm sure you can use a few great tips to help you introduce yourself to your new community.

By Ivo Henfling

Costa Rica has never really had a good MLS system and that is mainly because the two Costa Rica real estate boards have not organized themselves enough to make it happen. And most real estate agents in Costa Rica prefer 50% commission of nothing instead of working together. This makes it harder for a buyer to find the right home or lot for sale and this in turn makes many buyers not stay loyal with just one agent.  I turned in my CCBR (Cámara de Corredores de Bienes Raices as well as CCCBR) real estate license many years ago for the same lack of organization.

To my opinion, having a license from the CCBR real estate board doesn’t give my agents or me any value at all, except maybe for the 4-day course they teach and without doing an exam, you’re entitled to call yourself a licensed CBR real estate agent in Costa Rica.

By Ivo Henfling

I would like to share this funny story with you, just to show you that when you think you’ve seen it all, you find you haven’t. This is not a fairy tale and though all the actors involved in this novel thought about suing the writer, we decided that this seller either has a serious psychological problem or he is just a great writer, wasting an opportunity to become famous and make a lot of money. When things like this happen, I always think about how boring life would have been if I would have stayed in Holland and wouldn’t have moved to Costa Rica.

Let me tell you a bit about the author first and how I met him. Many years ago, our GoDutch Realty office sold a property in Escazu to a North American client. The single man lived there for quite some years, remodeled the home and then one day called us again that he wanted to sell.

By Ivo Henfling

On New Year’s Day 2012, it was such a beautiful day, Dany and I decided to take a day trip to Poas volcano. As usual, because we never use a sweater in Costa Rica, we forgot to bring any and I was cold for the first time in years.

It is normal that instead of snow, we get a lot of wind in December and January and the weather was no different on this 1st of January.

I always find the trip to Poas one of the nicest daytrips in the Central Valley, no matter if you live in Escazu or anywhere else. Even after 30 years living in Costa Rica, I still enjoy the beauty of this country.  I drive to the courthouse in Alajuela and from there, drive up to Fraijanes de Alajuela (I marked it on the Google Map below).

By Ivo Henfling

The long discussed tax on corporations in Costa Rica was just approved. The first time I wrote a blog about the tax the Costa Rican government proposed on corporate tax was in December 2010, so the approval has taken quite a while.

That doesn’t mean, it’s 100% that this will all happen because the Costarican citizens have the option of what’s called Sala IV, a court where they can stop a train running at 100 miles an hour. But for now, congress as well as Costarican government has approved the new tax, and it is coming into effect on April 1st, 2012.

By Ivo Henfling

Many of us who have moved to Costa Rica come from cold places. Most of us did so because of the nice weather in Costa Rica, amongst the best in the world. If I look at my list of clients, I have people from New York, Portland, Kelowna and even less cold places like Berlin, Amsterdam and Los Angeles where it still gets to temperatures of around 30ºF or zero Celsius. I even have one client who still works in Kazakhstan and comes home to Atenas once in a while to get warm, he must be freezing his butt off right now. Most of us moved to Costa Rica to never be cold again.

By Ivo Henfling

Nothing is better for business than a good service to your clients. In my business, Costa Rica real estate, I have always tried to excel in service as to my opinion it means the continuity of your business and it is a lot easier to keep an old client happy than making new clients. But mostly the larger business like banks and insurance companies have a hard time making their employees understand what good customer service is and end up with lots of frustrated clients. I am one of those who complain when service is bad. But I also think that when people do a good job, they deserve a pat on the shoulder.

This time it is don Isidro’s turn for a well-deserved pat on the shoulder. Who the heck is don Isidro some of you might say? Those who have asked me, after closing on their house, where to get their home insured and their car insurance, or a medical insurance, know who don Isidro is. Isidro gives an extraordinary service as an insurance agent for INS, learn how he keeps his clients happy.

By Rudy Matthews

Shell Johanson, a fellow associate recently wrote a great article about remodeling in Costa Rica and renovation. Shell made a point that remodeling is many times more difficult than building new construction and I totally agree.

I have done both and once you start remodeling the problem is you find more to be done than what you thought originally. Tile replacement, cabinets etc. are basic cosmetic items but once you start tearing down walls and find you need to replace wiring, plumbing etc. then the journey begins.

By Ivo Henfling

Now that most of you are on holiday, and I am not, you might have some more time available to enjoy the work of Isaac Martinez. Isaac is a panoramic photographer and does panoramic photos and virtual tours.
I met Isaac the first time in the year 2,000 when I was marketing and sales manager at a Costa Rica real estate project in Tarcoles, on the Central Pacific Coast, with the name of Lomas de Carara. Today, the resort is called Nativa Resort.

I had to market this incredibly beautiful development with nothing in it, but the beauty of the views, because there was nothing built yet. The human eye has a panoramic view of things but the lens of a camera doesn’t. That’s how I found Isaac.

By Ivo Henfling

Where I was born and raised, December is pretty cold. I’m from Haarlem, a city almost right on the Atlantic ocean, close to Amsterdam. Christmas in Haarlem, when I grew up, was generally under 32ºF and we could skate the famous canals and get really cold. Christmas in Costa Rica is different and that is one of the reasons I liked the idea of moving to Costa Rica.

During the month of December, the temperature in Escazu is around 80ºF most of the time, though we have a lot of wind. Nothing compared to Haarlem, Holland. The rains have mostly disappeared now, though once in a while we still might get a drop or two. So we don’t have a white Christmas in Costa Rica. No snow so no snowman, no snowballs and no ice skating, though you could bring your roller skates if you insist. Honestly, I don’t miss the snow and the cold at all.