Nosara

About Nosara:

Nosara became the sixth district of Nicoya on 26 January 1988 and covers about 134 square kilometres on the Pacific side of the peninsula. Its head town, Bocas de Nosara, sits in the valley of the Nosara river, which winds through mangrove to the sea between Playa Nosara and Playa Pelada; further south come Playa Guiones and the fishing village of Garza, and inland lie hamlets such as Esperanza Sur, Delicias, San Juan, Santa Marta and Cuesta Winch. Until the 1950s the road from Nicoya was only passable in the dry season, and coastal steamers carried mail and crops to Puntarenas. Today most people drive in from Nicoya on the Sámara road, turning north before Sámara and coming up Route 160 through Garza; the ten kilometres from Garza to Nosara were finally paved in 2020, after decades of promises. North towards Ostional the road is still gravel. A small airstrip beside Bocas takes domestic flights, and Liberia’s international airport is two and a half to three hours away by car.

The beach changed the local economy completely. Foreign buyers who arrived to buy land and build houses pulled most residents out of farming and into tourism and construction, and the district’s population grew by about 70% between the 2000 and 2011 censuses, with the building boom carrying on since. Surf schools, yoga studios, boutique hotels, restaurants, property managers, a Spanish school and Del Mar Academy, an internationally accredited Montessori school, now set the rhythm of daily life. Bocas de Nosara keeps the public services: the EBAIS health post, the Red Cross, the police, the post office, the library, primary schools and the colegio, plus supermarkets and the hardware trade. Guiones has the area’s two bank branches, Banco de Costa Rica and Banco Popular, along with a private clinic, lawyers’ and architects’ offices and most of the cafés, and for a hospital residents go to Nicoya. Artisanal fishing still works out of Garza, rice is grown with machines on the valley floor, and cattle graze the hills.

The setting is a river valley ringed by forested hills, and the hills are where the views are. From the ridges of Las Huacas, and from the ridge between Guiones and Pelada, you look straight out over the Pacific. Along the shore, the Ostional refuge protects olive ridley nesting beaches with a strip 200 metres deep that runs from Ostional past Playa Nosara, Pelada and Guiones, and behind it the Nosara Civic Association looks after some 250 hectares of private reserve inside the old subdivision. Together they give Nosara its look: footpaths through forest to the sand, howler monkeys in the mango trees and almost nothing built in view of the beach. Pelada is known for the rock shelf and tide pools that appear at low tide, and Guiones for a long, consistent beach break that suits beginners and experienced surfers alike. The seasons matter to anyone who builds here. From May to November heavy rain turns the gravel roads to mud, while in the dry months dust rises and water runs short; Guiones and Pelada have been through rationing between February and April, and many houses carry their own storage tanks.

Who buys depends on where you stand. The beach sections draw foreign buyers, many of whom now live here all year, run businesses or have children in local schools, and they carry the district’s highest prices. In 2025 sellers close to Playa Guiones or with big ocean views barely moved on price, while asking prices in the outer areas fell much further. Most people who work in Nosara live in Bocas de Nosara, Esperanza Sur, Garza and the inland hamlets, where land and houses trade at a fraction of beach-section prices. Investors buy mainly for holiday letting, a market that softened in 2025 as more homes competed for the same guests.

Houses in Nosara:

Addresses in the beach area go by section letter, and each section sells differently. K, at the southern entrance to Guiones, has larger lots screened by jungle and many of the best-known rental homes; J and I, around the main beach entrance and the Café de Paris centre, mix houses with hotels and shops; H is the street locals call Calle Los Mangos, a quieter residential corridor under big mango trees. Up the hill, the Las Huacas sections, E, EE, F and M, hold estate homes on large parcels with ocean views, and the D ridge between Guiones and Pelada has seen a lot of recent contemporary building. Pelada’s C section has tended to be the more affordable way into homes for sale in Nosara near a beach, while L and N, around Del Mar Academy and the gas station, are full of year-round residents and long-term tenants. In Bocas de Nosara, Garza and Esperanza you find ordinary Costa Rican village houses on their own plots, bought by local families far more often than by outsiders.

Condos and Apartments in Nosara:

Apartments are a small slice of this market, because most of the old subdivision was drawn for single houses. North Guiones, the G section, has a tighter grid and takes the denser building, and the commercial centres have apartments and offices above the shops. Turnkey one-bedroom units of around 50 square metres have been sold off plan in the Guiones area to buyers who want something to let while they are away. Before you sign, find out how the building’s water connection is registered and whether its rules allow short stays.

Land and Lots in Nosara:

Lots in the beach area are known by section and number, so a code such as K45 tells a local exactly where the land is. The A and B sections at the river mouth, near Lagarta Lodge and the Nosara Biological Reserve, are prized for their sunset views over the estuary, and R section, which locals call Nosara Springs, runs along the river through mature forest. A lot that already has a water meter is worth noticeably more than one that does not, and the buffer-zone building rules, which allow no more than half the lot to be built over, decide how much house a parcel will really hold. Away from the sections, acreage and fincas come up to the east around San Juan and to the south towards Garza and Esperanza, sold as pasture, forest or space for a private home or a retreat.

Rentals in Nosara:

Holiday homes make up a big share of the housing here, from small apartments a short walk from Guiones to large villas with pools in K section and the Las Huacas hills. Demand peaks in the dry season and over the Christmas and Easter weeks. In 2025 holiday letting slowed across the board, partly because more houses were chasing the same visitors, so if you are buying to let, plan on a realistic occupancy rather than a peak-season one. Long-term rentals in Nosara are concentrated in L and N sections and in Bocas de Nosara, and they suit people who work locally or have children in school.

Hotels and Retreat Properties in Nosara:

Wellness tourism has made hotels and retreat centres a market of their own here. Boutique hotels, yoga shalas and small resorts sit in and around the beach sections, from the Harmony Hotel in J section to the Bodhi Tree in K, and hotels, going businesses and group-retreat properties are bought and sold alongside houses. Before you buy one, confirm that the land-use certificate allows commercial lodging, that the water connection is rated for a business rather than a single home, and that the lighting and wastewater system meet the buffer-zone rules.

FAQ:

• Can I buy a house on the beach at Guiones or Pelada?

  No. The shoreline belongs to the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, a 200-metre strip behind the sand covering Playa Nosara, Pelada and Guiones, so this is not ordinary maritime zone where the municipality grants concessions. A 2016 law tried to turn the refuge into a mixed one with concessions for long-standing occupants, but the Constitutional Court struck it down in 2022. The closest you can own is titled land behind the refuge, which in Guiones can still be a five-minute walk from the surf.

• What building rules apply in Nosara?

  Bocas de Nosara and the beach sections lie inside the buffer zone of the Ostional refuge, which reaches five kilometres inland from its edge. The Municipalidad de Nicoya’s temporary building regulations for that zone cap the built footprint at half the lot, set a lower height limit in the first kilometre and on slopes visible from the beach than further inland, require every building to treat its own wastewater, and ban outdoor lights that can be seen from the sand. A developer’s lawsuit kept the rules suspended from 2021, and the Sala Primera upheld them in June 2026. Every building permit is also reported to SINAC’s Tempisque Conservation Area, so have your architect design to these limits from the first sketch.

• Will I get water for a new house?

  Find out before you make an offer. Guiones and Pelada are served by the Playas de Nosara ASADA, which froze new water availability letters in 2024 after years of dry-season shortages, and other parts of the district rely on smaller ASADAs or on private wells that need their own concession. In 2025 the municipality shut down a group of villas in Pelada that had building permits but no water letter. Make a valid letter for the lot a condition of the purchase and note when it expires.

• The lot I like backs onto a green belt. What should I check?

  In the old subdivision, the forest between sections is not all the same kind of land. Most of it is private reserve held by the Nosara Civic Association, but in August 2025 the Constitutional Court gave the Municipalidad de Nicoya 18 months to establish whether some 80 hectares, mostly in Guiones and Pelada, were public areas in the originally approved plan. Order a registry study from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), walk the boundary markers against the cadastral plan and get the land-use certificate from the Municipalidad de Nicoya, so you know whether your boundary touches land whose status is still open.

• Should I look in Bocas de Nosara or in Guiones?

  It depends on how you want to live. Bocas is the Costa Rican town, with the airstrip, the health post, schools, supermarkets and much lower prices, but you will drive to the surf. Guiones and Pelada put the beach, the banks and the restaurants within walking or cycling distance, at beach-section prices and with more holiday traffic on the roads.