Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes Often, future expats search online for guidelines on moving to Costa Rica. There are many reasons why we feel like moving to a new country, but our country is one especially interesting destination for many. Therefore we have published a ton of articles to assist you in finding out if…
Estimated Reading Time: 3 Minutes Depending on which country you come from, there is a good chance that real estate measures differently here than it does where you live! I am now talking about how we measure everything in Costa Rica, which is by using the metric system. We advertise construction sizes in square meters…
Estimated Reading Time: 6 Minutes Why use escrow in Costa Rica real estate and how does it work? Some foreign buyers of Costa Rica real estate just assume that this works the same as it does back home. Wrong! Let’s start at the beginning. In Costa Rica, local buyers, as well as sellers, do not…
Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes It’s funny how I found The Ultimate Guide to Buying Property in Costa Rica online but it’s not really a guide to anything. They advertised it on every Facebook group they could find. I read the whole article, but… It’s just another stupid article by a newspaper that didn’t even…
The very first time I had any idea what title insurance was all about was in 2002. In Costa Rica, title insurance was not customary. Only INS, the local insurance company, could sell insurance, by monopoly regulations. Not until 2008, President Oscar Arias signed a new law that opened up the insurance market in Costa…
A reader who did not receive title documents at closing is now unsure about the title of her property. She commented on an article in the Tico Times: I purchased land in Costa Rica about 4 years ago I only have “la carta catastrada” and a letter from the notary public. I have to pay…
Pocket listings are not very common in Costa Rica, but seasoned real estate agents do have them. It’s not that the agents are too lazy to promote pocket listings. The owners just don’t want them advertised. What are pocket listings, also called a hip pocket listings? Wikipedia explains what a pocket listing is in the…
When you purchase a property from a Costa Rica real estate developer, do you think you’d need to find out more about the developer’s record and building history? I bet you don’t.
Home sellers often have a misconception about what realtors do to earn a real estate commission. Let me clear that misconception up, so sellers understand what they really pay real estate commission for. Last week, The Tico Times published my article titled “8 reasons why your property in Costa Rica has not sold in 7 years”.…
Do you have any idea who might be hiding behind all those Costa Rica real estate websites you find all over Google? Don’t you want to know what your realtor in Costa Rica looks like? Have you ever asked yourself Who is Who? Don’t you want to know who you’re dealing with? Why don’t real estate…
What was the reason Barry Ashworth of Coronado Realty, Kjersten van Horn of Tucan Realty and I started the American European Real Estate Group Costa Rica in 1996? We wanted to have an organization with agents who know where the Costa Rica real estate bones were buried. That was the only way we could help our…
Are you reading this on your cell phone or iPad? If you are, you will see that our MLS is fully mobile friendly. You will still be able to use your desktop or laptop computer to look for real estate and read our articles. Google has been warning website owners that the growing percentage of mobile…
Supply & demand always affects the housing market, wherever in the world. As you all know, Costa Rica real estate is very connected with Florida real estate. Both are retirement markets and people look to move to warmer destinations as the weather keeps changing with more rain and colder. The Florida real estate market got…
Can you compare Costa Rica real estate with Florida real estate? An article in an online newspaper on Florida real estate this week, gave me a good reason to follow up on my last week’s article “Should Costa Rica real estate adjust its prices or not”. I am shocked at how little the Florida market…