As Pacific Lots of Costa Rica, we represent a firm with 20 years of experience, doing business as Window to the Pacific (Ventana Del Pacifico). They are one of the oldest developers in the country, selling improved land and building lots with spectacular ocean views as well as building custom homes for our clients. Currently employing over 400 workers, primarily in the building trades they have their own staff of engineers and architects as well as a rental and property management team. We offer fully improved lots and home sites complete with roads, water and electric to each site. Although you are welcome to build your own home or hire any builder of your choice, we also offer custom home building services to our clients. We only offer our construction services to customers within our own developments. We are located in the southern Pacific region of Costa Rica. We are devoted to the protection of the environment and we will never cut primary forest. All of our developments are on prior pasture or farm land and our area is greener now than when we started here. We've built over 50 miles of roads, water and electric lines within our community and are the largest employer in the whole region. The developer gives a percentage of all sales to help improve roads, schools and other aspect of our community.  We also contribute to a variety of charitable and philanthropic endeavors including local schools in our community and an orphanage in San Isidro En General that takes special needs children.  Our lots offer spectacular ocean, mountain, river and valley views. We are proud of our work in the community and welcome you to come and visit the developments.  Click here for more information about our philanthropic activities,  

Meet our Sales Team

About our town

The town of Ojochal is an easy walk at less than a mile from most of our phases.  The town is a village and does not have a center like you might picture but for example there are over 30 bars and restaurants within the village but they are scattered on various roads that run in town.  The issue therefore is that there is not really a center that you might walk to.  Well really there is but not everything is located there.  The grocery store is there, a few smaller stores but most of the restaurants are scattered.  Another issue is that we are not in a flat area and most of our developments are up the hill and between 400 and 1000 feet above sea level even though they are all within a mile or two of the beach.  So the issue is that although it is an easy walk down into the village, the walk back up will be like climbing up 50 or more stories in a mile or two.  Most people in town have ATV's or drive.  The next town over from us has a bunch of commercial plazas, supermarkets, farmers market, banks, furniture store, appliance store.  We have a large garden center and hardware supply in town but we are more a residential community and the commercial stuff is in the town of Uvita next to us.  We like it that way....   

Are there resales in town

Although we have hundreds of homes in town, there are only two homes on the secondary market in our developments (as of February 1, 2010) that I am aware of.  One is a 3/2  1500 square feet, no view or pool in phase 6 that was built as a rental by a woman who planned to hold it for 10 years and then sell it.  It is fully furnished, she has made her money back on the house and is now offering it at $189k. See details at this link (you may have to copy and paste the link into a browser  http://www.pacificlots.com/resale-3-bedroom-home/  It sits on an 1/8th acre lot.  There is a second house in phase 6, a bit over 2000 square feet, with pool and smaller ocean view offered at $595k. 

Resales typically sell for more than we could build the house for, we refer to it as the "supermarket" mentality, people who don't want to wait for a house to be built or don't have the vision.  We have seen many houses in our developments sell for more than twice what we could reproduce it for. 

We tend not to get many resales since the rental market is strong and people don't pay much in taxes on rental income so they prefer to keep the houses and rent them versus selling them.  You can see some rentals in our developments are http://www.vrbo.com/navigate to central America, choose Costa Rica, find the town of Ojochal and you can see both the rates and the calendar of availability to see how well they are doing.  We have a rental program that we run in house as well.  On VRBO you will see some that rent very well and others that have little activity.  It is a factor of how old the house is, where it is, what the view is like, how well the owners have "amenitized" the house (things like wheelie coolers, boogie boards, vonage phone, a PC with wireless internet) as well as how long the house has been renting and therefore developed a following.  Some houses are always rented, some (mostly houses we did not build or are in the village and not in our developments) have poor rental performance.  Location, location, location and quality.  

Carrying Costs of Homes in our developments - Charges depend on what phase you are in, some have none, the most expensive is probably less than $500 per year.  Taxes run less than 2% per thousand in value but it is "declared value" which is typically less than actual or market value.  A $300k home typically pays less than $600 per year in tax.   There is a new luxury tax on homes valued over $172k as of November 2009.

Is Financing Available?- We finance the land portion and won't let you build on the home site until the land is paid for.  We finance up to 5 years but typically offer three.  The interest rate goes down as the down payment goes up.  We also offer a 5% discount for cash payment (versus financing).  Once you own the land, we have a number of banks that will lend 100% of the cost of construction up to 15 years at fixed interest rates in the 5% to 6% range as long as you have decent credit.