by John Doe

Maybe you have read John Doe’s first blog, "Early in the Costa Rica property purchase process" in December last year. We are now 1 month later.

John described the initial stages of their property purchase in Costa Rica; touring around the amazing Costa Rica countryside, meeting its friendly, welcoming citizens and other expats, finding a developer with a property they were very attracted to, delaying their flights back home to stay two nights in the property and signing papers to purchase the property for sale.

John’s story is a great one as it is a first-hand and interesting experience of purchasing a home in Costa Rica. The name John Doe was used so it won't upset any people who are involved in the stories. Let’s see what John has to tell us:

by Ivo Henfling

What if a burglar could not see anything, and could therefore not steal anything? Once in a while, like almost every day, we see on the news or read in the local papers that another burglary has happened. I hear the same happens in Ecuador and almost every country that is on a list of top retirement destinations like International Living or Forbes.

Countries with a lower cost of living have more security problems and the more burglaries happen, because there are a lot more poor people than in developed country that have a higher cost of living.

But do not worry, we now have the solution for your property in Costa Rica: fog protection.

by Ivo Henfling

In all my years as a Costa Rica real estate agent, I have had very few clients ask for Costa Rica title insurance. North American buyers are used to take title insurance when they purchase a property but a European or Costarican client don’t even know what title insurance is.

When you purchase a home or land in Costa Rica, you should be purchasing land that is free and clear from any claims, debts or other impediments. Costa Rica's national registry operates under the Torrens system, so with the proper steps you can be certain that your title is free and clear. For sure you don't want the headache of a bad title, so make sure you are informed about your options.

By Ivo Henfling

When in school, you might have learned about yards, inches, square feet and acres. Well, in Costa Rica, all that is no good and you will have to learn about the metric system. Unless you have found a real estate agent you trust.

If you are buying property in Costa Rica, you will find the measurements will normally be in the metric system, though many real estate companies list the size of the house for sale in square feet and the size of the land in acres as well as in hectares.

I know, you do it different back home but just like you have to learn the Spanish language to make your new life easier, you will also need to understand how we measure properties in Costa Rica.

By Ivo Henfling

When we drove to Nativa Resort a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that on the new highway to Caldera, the Autopistas del Sol concessionary was doing landslide prevention different ways because in some places the rainfall is causing a lot of damage. They sprayed concrete on the hillside and drilled pipes into the mountains to take the water out and through the concrete, when they re-did part of the highway at the turnoff between Sabana and Escazu, This was the first time I saw it done in Costa Rica. A little past the beautiful town of Atenas, they are now making incredible use of the large rocks they took out before they put the pavement in.

As most of you know, Costa Rica's rainy season runs more or less from July from November but September and October generate the heaviest rains. Although in July this year 2011, we already had some incredible downpours. It looks like we're going to get more and more rain every year. While coming out of a real estate closing on the east side of San Jose with AE affiliate Barry Ashworth, I saw a car disappear in the water OVER a bridge. I don't know what happened to the driver or the car. That was VERY impressive.
 

by Ivo Henfling

When I started writing this article about the angry seller of Costa Rica real estate last week, I found out that there were more than only 5 points that made my life miserable on that last deal I did were I had an angry seller because the sellers decided to take the buyer’s offer.

Let me repeat point 1 again, so you don't have to go back to the other article all the time:

1. Yes, the Costa Rica realtor gets paid by the seller, but not until the real estate closing. The realtor does not get paid for advertising, gasoline, tires, phone bills lunches with clients and all efforts made unless he/she sells the property in Costa Rica. Just the fact that the sellers pay the real estate commission doesn’t give you the rights to abuse the realtor.

By Ivo Henfling

The famous Costa Rica rainy season, also called the wet season but baptized some years ago by tourism gurus "the green season" has just started. For most days, we have nice weather in the mornings and might have some rain in the afternoon. Some days might be a bit gloomy or fogged up and it doesn't rain all day long.

Yesterday, we had so much rain come out of the sky, I thought of Noah and his Ark, I was waiting for that Great Flood. As many of you know I am not very religious, but I almost started praying. Then I thought of the gutters and drains at my house and the damage rain can do to your property, which is when I though to write this blog. if you own Costa Rica real estate, you should read on....

By Ivo Henfling

It is surprising what selling a house might do to perfectly nice people. When you need to sell your house in Costa Rica because for some reason you need to go back where you came from, and you have been waiting for a while for the right buyer to show up, then you suddenly might have to take this low ball offer that doesn’t make you happy at all, but you decide to go for it.

I just finished up the ugliest sale I have done in my Costa Rica real estate career, because my sellers wanted to take a bad offer and apparently thought it was my fault, though I never put a gun to their heads to accept.

Just like some of the abusive buyers we get, the angry seller is what takes the fun out of being a real estate agent in Costa Rica. From day one, after signing the option to purchase sale agreement at a sales price they really didn’t want to take. The sellers were never cooperative during the 2 months to closing, especially when the buyer was asking for perfectly normal procedure to Costarican standards.

By Ivo Henfling

Some sellers of property in Costa Rica offer their property for sale “turnkey”. Read turn-key, not turkey. Turnkey means you will be buying the property with everything in it, except the sellers. Most sellers offer their property as such because they want to save themselves the hassle of shipping all that stuff back. Some times its nice stuff, sometimes its old stuff. Sometimes cars are included, animals and girlfriends….The word turnkey comes from "just turn the key" or "just bring your suitcases".

As a realtor, I generally prefer not to get involved in furniture being part of a real estate deal, unless you want to give it to me as a gift after closing. I’m not a used furniture sales person, nor am I a used car salesman, I'm a realtor (or try to be). Keep the furniture and the car out of the deal and you’ll make me a happy person. Over the years, I have been able to accumulate quite a nice inventory of flat screen TV’s, furniture and coffee makers. The other day I even got a tripod for my camera as a bonus.

By Ivo Henfling

The Costa Rica National Register anounced today, Friday the 10th of June that soon they will offer through an automatic alert, a digital guard service, that will let the owner of a property know through a text message or an email that there was some kind of movement in the title registry of this property.

Osvaldo Henderson, public prosecutor of the Fraude department of the Costarican Ministry of Justice, has told local newspaper La Nacion that their department receives up to 20 formal complaints of some kind of property fraud by a public notary.

In Costa Rica any attorney can become a public notary by doing an extra test that will allow them to work as a public notary. A public notary in Costa Rica can ofically give faith of a signture to belong to a certain person, which allows for crooked public notaries to file the sale of a property in Costa Rica, a mortgage on a Costarican property or any other lien that can change the title of a property.

By Ivo Henfling

Today, I showed some Costa Rica real estate to a client and I found the perfect seller, probably for the first time in my real estate career. My buyer is looking to buy a property in Costa Rica that offers views and security and I listed this incredibly nice condo in Escazu that looks like a house on the outside but is really a penthouse, even though its on streetlevel. Weird eh, check it out.

But today I really don´t want to talk to you about how nice and how cheap this penthouse is, though it really is, but to tell you how anybody who wants to sell their home should behave. The situation in this case is really special because the seller used to be a realtor in the US before they moved to Costa Rica, so he and his family know this inside out. Allow me to tell you how refreshing this was to me, the listing agent, and to my buyer in particular. I hope every seller in Costa Rica from now, until I die, will read this blog.......

By Ivo Henfling

Most people, when looking at condos for sale in Costa Rica, they look at how well the condominium is located to their needs, what amenities the condominium has to offer and how good the security of the community is. But many buyers of condominiums in Costa Rica forget how important all the legal issues are. And by legal issues, I don't mean the things that your attorney takes care of at closing.

I'm talking about many other issues that most don't think of when they are ready to buy a townhouse or an apartment, especially if the property is offered by the developer of the condominium or their sales people. Let me tell you a bit about all these pros and cons you should look at before you purchase a property in a condominium, no matter if it is a home site, a town house or an apartment.

By Ivo Henfling

Who knows what a Costa Rica condominium is really all about? Our real estate company has a wide selection of condominiums for sale in Costa Rica.

My webmaster has complained that I should write more about real estate and tell you less stories about the holes in the roads in Escazu or about the Bishop of San Jose trying to confess the citizens. Therefore, you will find more blogs about real estate related issues than ever before. But I promise, I will try to keep them informative as usual.

By Ivo Henfling

This week, Daniel Langlois, moderator of a forum on Yahoo called CostaRicaCentralValleyLiving asked me to reply on a small discussion some people were having.

I checked it out and though it a very interesting issue and as most of you know, I love to reply on a variety of issues, but mostly when I think people are sooooo wrong..... :-)

It went like this:

Posted question: Anyone know if $159k is a good price for a property in Grecia with a river
running through it and is on a mountainside? The property is 4800 sq meters and
is on a paved road at edge of town- thank you

By Brooke Bishop, your GoDutch real estate expert for Grecia - Naranjo - Sarchi

The Grecia Municipality offers a pretty good update about their Zoning Plan and Zoning maps. For those who are looking into buying Costa Rica real estate and especially in the Grecia area, I would like you to be aware that the information on the zoning regulations is published on the website of the Municipality of Grecia.

A regulatory plan is "a local planning instrument that defines a set of plans, maps, regulations and any other document, graphic or supplement, development policy and plans for population distribution, land use, roads circulation, utilities, community facilities and construction, maintenance and rehabilitation of urban areas. "

By Ivo Henfling, your Escazu real estate specialist

When you plan to buy property in Costa Rica, make sure you look at your surroundings. This morning I had a listing appointment in San Antonio de Escazu and saw the perfect example of what I wrote about in a recent article in our AE newsletter.

This home in the pictures below, was built maybe 3 years ago and they built it on what we call "gaviones", which are large cages of chickenwire filled with rocks, so they could get the beautiful views of the Central Valley.

This home was built at least 10 meters (30 feet) away from the river, as that is what the zoning indicates. In just a few years, the rain has washed away those 30 feet and the river is undermining the "gaviones" already.

By Rudy Matthews

I share with you comments that I hope will be informational and helpful concerning Costa Rica Real Estate to you , your family and friends . My comments are based on my personal perspective of the real estate market here in Costa Rica.

FOR SALE BY OWNER

Several months ago there was a discussion of buying  Costa Rica real estate on CRL. One article caught my eye stating number one - DO NOT HIRE A REALTOR. That is interesting because a person much wiser than me warned me many years ago about making broad generalizations about people, professions and even countries. I have always believed that and generalizations can sometimes get you in trouble.