Volio

About Volio:

Volio takes up just under 21 square kilometres of hillside north of San Ramón city. Its centre stands at 1,160 metres, a hundred metres higher than the middle of town. Ruta 703, a tertiary national road, does most of the work: it leaves San Ramón, crosses the district and runs on through Naranjo’s San José and Cirrí Sur districts toward Zarcero. Buses on the San Ramón–Volio and San Ramón–Zarcero routes cover the trip to town in around twenty minutes. Besides Volio centre, the district takes in Dulce Nombre, Sifón, Bajo Tejares and Alto Villegas, and between Dulce Nombre and Alto Villegas the road crosses the Río Barranca. Everything here shares postal code 20210.

Julián Volio Llorente, the scholar and politician whose surname the district carries, arrived in San Ramón in 1870, exiled for his politics, and built a farming business in the canton. On his Hacienda Concepción, in what is now Volio, he planted the first seedlings of a coffee he had found on the banks of the Río San Lorenzo, the plant that became known as café San Ramón. Coffee is still the main crop on these slopes, much of it Catuaí grown around 1,200 metres, and farms mix it with plantain, banana and citrus. Volio has its own primary school, the Escuela Julián Volio Llorente, which moved into new buildings in 2016, and its own ASADA for drinking water. For the Carlos Luis Valverde Vega hospital, the banks, the University of Costa Rica’s Sede de Occidente and the big supermarkets, people go down to San Ramón.

This is coffee country on a slope, not on a valley floor. The height is what brings buyers up from town: the air is fresher than in San Ramón, the nights are cooler, and many parcels look out across the hills on either side of the Barranca. The same slope decides what building costs. A lot with its own entrance and a level pad already cut is worth more than a cheaper one where the earth still has to be moved. On a hillside finca, walk the ground before you trust the area on the plano, because steep banks and stream edges are not building land.

Volio has grown fast for a rural district: 1,062 people at the 1984 census and 2,270 at the 2011 census, more than double. It is a district of Costa Rican families, close enough to San Ramón for school, work and shopping in town. Buyers who come from outside are mostly after land and the cooler air, whether a finca with a house or a lot for a country home within reach of the city. Lots and village houses are priced in colones, while the larger country houses and some of the fincas are quoted in dollars.

Houses in Volio:

Houses here come at two very different scales. In and around Volio centre, village houses with three bedrooms and one bathroom stand on lots of a few hundred square metres and sell in colones at modest prices. Further out, country houses and chalets of three to five bedrooms sit on 8,000 to 10,000 m² of garden and trees, and these are the ones quoted in dollars. When you compare houses for sale in Volio, ask how the house gets its water and whether the access road is public, because on the larger properties the private drive is part of what you are buying.

Fincas in Volio:

The working farm is the typical Volio property. Fincas run from 1.6 hectares with a house up to 26 hectares, and most are planted: one on the road to Alto Villegas covers six and a half manzanas with thousands of coffee trees alongside plantain, banana and citrus. Others come with two houses on just over a hectare. A finca for sale in Volio de San Ramón is bought for the land first, so price the coffee as a crop you will have to manage, not as scenery.

Land and Lots in Volio:

Smaller building lots turn up in Sifón and along the district’s rural roads, some of them around 440 m² with their own entrance and a level pad ready. Larger parcels of 1.4 to 1.7 hectares are sold as land for a country house or a small farm. Before you commit to one of the lots for sale in Volio, get the ASADA Volio’s water availability letter in writing and check that the lot already has its own plano catastrado, not just a promise that it will be segregated later.

FAQ:

• How long does it take to get from Volio to San Ramón?

  Ruta 703 links Volio directly with the city, and the bus on the San Ramón–Volio route takes around twenty minutes. The San Ramón–Zarcero service runs through the district as well. From San Ramón, Route 1 takes you east toward the Central Valley or west toward the Pacific.

• What happens when the Río Barranca bridge on Ruta 703 is closed?

  The bridge between Dulce Nombre and Alto Villegas has been shut completely at times, and run on a single lane at others, after material came down near it. If the property you like sits on the Alto Villegas side, ask the neighbours how often that happens and which detour they use. On the San Ramón side of the bridge, your drive to town does not cross it.

• Who supplies water in Volio, and how do I check it for a lot?

  Drinking water in the district is run by the ASADA Volio. Water is a recurring concern across San Ramón canton, so for an empty lot ask the ASADA for its availability letter before you make an offer, and for a finca find out whether the house is on the ASADA network or on its own spring. A lot without a confirmed connection is not yet a building lot.

• Can I build a house on a coffee finca or split off a lot in Volio?

  Much of Volio is farmland, and a lot cut from an old coffee farm is only safe to buy once the segregation is finished and has its own plano catastrado. Ask the Municipalidad de San Ramón for the land-use certificate of the exact parcel, and check what the neighbouring land is allowed to do too: some parcels here carry uses that combine housing with agriculture and pig farming. Then check title, liens and the plano in the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario) before you sign.

• Which villages are part of Volio?

  The district takes in Volio centre, Dulce Nombre, Sifón, Bajo Tejares and Alto Villegas, all under postal code 20210. Sellers often write only “San Ramón”, so ask for the district shown on the plano. Concepción, despite the name of Julián Volio’s old hacienda, is a separate district of the canton.