Aserrí

About Aserrí:

The canton is a long strip of hill country running south from the edge of the capital. Alajuelita and Acosta lie along its western side, Desamparados, León Cortés Castro and Tarrazú along the east, and its southern tip touches Parrita, in Puntarenas province. The canton seat stands at 1,308 metres, some ten kilometres by road south of central San José, while the Caraigres ridge on the Acosta boundary passes 2,500 metres. Route 209 is the spine, climbing from Desamparados through Aserrí town and Tarbaca and then dropping through Vuelta de Jorco to San Ignacio de Acosta. Route 217 crosses to Alajuelita, Route 304 heads from the Salitrillos side toward Cartago, Route 222 branches east from Tarbaca through San Gabriel, and Route 313 runs south through Monterrey and Legua toward León Cortés. Buses from San José serve the town, Salitrillos and San Gabriel, and the Acosta line covers Tarbaca and Vuelta de Jorco, but La Legua gets only a few departures a day and many rural roads are still gravel.

Aserrí counts, with Curridabat and Nicoya, among the oldest towns in Costa Rica. Juan Vásquez de Coronado passed through in January 1563 on his way to Quepos, two years after Cavallón first reached the village. The town became a pueblo in 1825, spent twenty years from 1862 as a district of the newer canton of Desamparados, and was made a canton in its own right on 27 November 1882, at first with what is now Acosta inside its borders. In 1920 the seat was given the title of city, and it still holds what the canton runs on: the municipality, the CCSS clinic, the Liceo de Aserrí, open since 1970, and the shops the hill districts come down to.

The numbers describe two cantons in one. Aserrí district and Salitrillos hold about seven in ten residents on less than a fifth of the land, while Legua, at 81 square kilometres almost half the canton, is home to fewer than one in thirty. The north lives at the pace of the city: many people commute to jobs in Desamparados and San José, family tamaleras work all year and flat out in December, and every 31 October the mascaradas and cimarrona bands bring the whole canton into town. South of Tarbaca the slopes belong to coffee, grown on small family farms alongside avocado or citrus, with beekeepers working around the flowering. In the hill towns of Tarbaca, Vuelta de Jorco, San Gabriel and Monterrey, many houses stand on terraces cut into the slope and held up by retaining walls.

Two protected zones created in 1976 reach into the canton: the Cerros de Escazú on the high ground around Tarbaca, and Caraigres in the south, which Aserrí shares with Acosta and León Cortés. Inside them, as in the protected strips along rivers and around springs, clearing and building are restricted. Water is the other constraint. The municipality runs its own aqueduct for Aserrí town and Salitrillos and has rationed it by sector for years, while the rural districts depend on community water associations, the ASADAs. Buyers are mostly local families and people from the south of San José who want a house and yard they can afford, along with city households heading up Route 209 for cooler air, a view or a few rows of coffee.

Houses in Aserrí:

Detached family houses on their own lots make up most of the market. In Aserrí town and Salitrillos they stand in established barrios, from older single-storey homes to two-storey builds on lots of 200 m² or less, with the occasional small gated group of houses. San Gabriel and Vuelta de Jorco add compact new homes sold with bank financing for first-time buyers, and in Tarbaca a house usually comes with a garden, fruit trees and room to spare. Among houses for sale in Aserrí, the district decides as much as the house does: it sets the commute, the water supplier and how steep the ground is.

Rentals in Aserrí:

Renting is concentrated in the north. Around Aserrí centre you will find furnished studios and two-bedroom apartments in small buildings let by local owners, while in Salitrillos and the hill towns the offer is mostly whole houses, often with services paid by the tenant. Along Route 209 in Tarbaca, cabins are let for short stays to people who come up for the view. Before you sign a lease, ask how the street fared in the last round of rationing and whether the house has a tank.

Land and Lots in Aserrí:

Lots range from infill plots between existing houses in the lower barrios of the town to view lots of 600 m² and more in residential developments on the slope above it. Tarbaca has plots from around 500 m² on a public street up to a few thousand, with the ones facing the Central Valley the most sought after, and near La Legua centre house-sized lots of around a thousand square metres front the road with power and an ASADA connection. Most of this ground slopes, so measure the flat area you can build on rather than trusting the total on the plan. Look for lots for sale in Aserrí that already carry a water availability letter, because no building permit moves without one.

Fincas in Aserrí:

South of the town the canton turns into farmland. Coffee fincas of one to two hectares come up in Tarbaca and Legua, often with a family house and trees still in production, and larger parcels in Legua mix pasture with forest on the slopes below Caraigres. Costa Rica’s Forestry Law forbids changing the use of forested land, so on a mixed finca only the open ground can take a house or cabins. Ask how old the coffee plants are and where the harvest is delivered before you count on the farm to cover any of its costs.

FAQ:

• Which part of the canton works for a daily commute to San José?

  The north. Aserrí town and Salitrillos have their own bus lines into the capital, although the road runs through Desamparados and slows badly at rush hour. Tarbaca and Vuelta de Jorco sit on the Acosta line, San Gabriel is about an hour away by bus, and La Legua is a long ride with few departures. Try the trip on a weekday morning before you pick a district.

• Who supplies the water, and how do I confirm a property has it?

  It depends on the district. Aserrí town and Salitrillos are on the municipal aqueduct, which has rationed supply by sector in dry spells, while San Gabriel, Tarbaca, Vuelta de Jorco and La Legua are served by their own ASADAs. Ask whichever one serves the address for a written water availability letter, and in the north budget for a storage tank as well.

• Rural fincas here are often inherited and most lots sit on a slope. What should I check before buying?

  Start with the owners and the ground. Rural titles are often still in the names of several siblings or of a parent who has died, so confirm at the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario) who every registered owner is, that all of them will sign, and that the cadastral plan matches the fences. On a hillside lot, have an engineer look at the bank, the retaining walls and the drainage. Then get a land-use certificate from the Municipalidad de Aserrí before any money changes hands.

• Can I build inside the Cerros de Escazú or Caraigres protected zones?

  Sometimes, but with limits. Both zones were set up in 1976 to keep forest and springs, and forested land anywhere in Costa Rica cannot be cleared to change its use. Find out whether the parcel lies inside either zone, or holds a spring or stream, before you fall for the view, and ask the municipality what a house or cabin there would need.