Hi Ryan, welcome aboard!
There are no official licensing requirements in Costa Rica. It would be good for you to take the board of realtors course, which is intensive but not too long. Then you can become a member of the board (Camara Costarricense de Corredores de Bienes Raices - CCCBR)
Then you have to find the area that you like, probably staying within the more popular areas. Tamarindo, Flamingo, Jaco, the Central Valley are the most popular areas. But you might like to look at popular, but up and coming areas like Dominical, Coco, Papagayo, Hermosa (s), and more. That way you could get in on the ground floor and be experienced when the development really hits.
Look at the ABC Real Estate web site,
www.abccostarica.com , they have openings right now and a page on joining them.
Also, Are their other business opportunities that are available for a college grad in business in Costa Rica and how hard is it to relocate there being a poor college grad?
You can look into your chances of being hired from the US and placed into a Costa Rican office of a multinational company. This is the best option as far as salary and benefits. They will help you get a work permit too.
You can come here and then try to get hired, the real growth industry here is due to the trend of "out-sourcing". There are several big companies (IBM, P&G, Alienware, HP, Sykes) that have their customer service lines answered here by Costa Ricans. I could see good possibilities for a native english speaker just graduating in business in a supervisory type position. The drawback of getting hired here is probably the salary as $1000 per month would be a great salary here. Since the whole idea of outsourcing is to save costs, I don't know how flexible these companies are when they hire locally. What I mean is I'm sure they would be glad to have you and even help you get a work permit, but you would have to consider that they would probably want to pay you local wages if you are hired here.
As to relocating, you are probably looking at being a "wetback"or "perpetual tourist", since work permits and visas longer than 3 months are hard to come by. Most options for residency are geared toward people with pension income or investments. This means that as an illegal, you leave once every three months for 72 hours and return. You take a small chance that you could get refused entry upon return. Companies can get work permits for executives, they have to justify to immigration why they need a foreign worker rather than a Tico. The larger the company, the easier it is.
If you are able to come up with any sort of capital (like $5000 - $10,000) there are probably plenty of opportunities for you to start up a small business. That would be a matter of what interests and hobbies you have, looking at the local providers and determining what opportunities are suited to your budget and abilities. The only way to make money in Costa Rica is owning your own business or in sales, since salaries are generally very low.
