For Sale

New builds, off-plan and resale houses:

are three different purchases, even when the floor plans look alike. A brand-new house is finished, so you can walk it and check the finishes before you commit. Buying off-plan means reserving a unit in a project still on paper or half-built and paying in stages as it rises, for an earlier price and the risk that delivery slips. A resale house has a history you can inspect, and often a bigger lot or a location new projects can no longer get. Banks also sell homes they have taken back, listed as repossessions and sold as they stand. Land is its own decision: a lot inside a gated development is ready to build on, while a farm or country plot further out is bought for the acreage and the view. Shop units and warehouses are judged on frontage, parking and foot traffic. To rent first, start in property for rent, or try a town for a week through short-term and vacation rentals.

Block, prefabricated panels or light steel framing:

is the question to ask about any house in a country that feels earthquakes as often as Costa Rica does. Reinforced block with concrete columns and beams is the standard: heavy, untouched by termites and the easiest to extend. Prefabricated houses of concrete panels slotted between columns have gone up by the thousand; they are quick and cheaper, sound when properly built, but harder to open up for a new window or a second floor. Add-on rooms and upper storeys are often light steel framing clad in cement board, which spares the foundation but only stays dry if the joints are well sealed.

What a three-bedroom house asks, and what the bank will lend:

depend on the canton more than on the house. A three-bedroom house in a residential area of Cartago or El Guarco usually asks between ₡65 and ₡100 million; a similar one in Belén or Atenas starts nearer ₡140 million. A buyer on a mortgage negotiates against the bank’s appraisal, not the listing: lenders finance a share of the value their appraiser puts on the house, a larger share on a colón loan than a dollar one, and the buyer brings the rest as the down payment. A house listed well above what an appraiser will support tends to sit until a cash buyer comes along.

Termites, old wiring and the septic tank:

never show in listing photos. In a wooden roof structure or ceiling, small heaps of grains like fine sand and wood that sounds hollow under a screwdriver mean termites. Open the breaker panel: an old fuse box, or a few circuits feeding the electric shower, oven and washing machine, means rewiring belongs in your budget. Outside sewered areas the house drains to a septic tank, so ask where it is and walk the drain field looking for wet ground. For a room or floor added later, ask for the drawings, because the bank’s appraiser will look hard at it. And meet the owner named on the registry certificate and check it against their cédula; a sale run on a power of attorney for an owner abroad deserves extra care.

A house listed with its paperwork ready:

saves days of back-and-forth. Say which construction system it is, how many floors, roughly when it was built and what has been redone since. Say whether a mortgage is still registered and will be paid off from the sale, and whether you will wait for a buyer whose bank has to send its appraiser. Keep the registry certificate and any drawings to hand, and mention a past termite treatment. Photograph the breaker panel and, through the ceiling hatch, the roof structure: those two pictures answer what an engineer would otherwise come to ask. If the house began as prefabricated panels and was later extended in block, say so in the listing, because the buyer’s engineer will find the join on the first visit and it lands better coming from you.