Costa Rica Blog

When we'd settled on Costa Rica the destination we planned to retire to the first thing we did was set a strategy to find a piece of property that met our requirements in terms of size, location and budget.  We were pretty savvy shoppers having bought and sold close to a dozen properties in the states so we thought we knew what we were doing.  We first looked for foreclosed property in Costa Rica.  We quickly realized there wasn't much in the way of foreclosed homes in Costa Rica since most homes have no mortgage, with most being purchased in the past for cash.  The mortgage market in Costa Rica is still in it's infancy.  Typically you can't get a mortgage on land, only developer financing.  In this type of financing, the developer holds the note.  Mortgages for finished homes or construction mortgages typically require large down payments in Costa Rica.  Banks in Costa Rica want a minimum of 20% of the value of the mortgage as collateral.  Fortunately you can typically pledge land you own as collateral for a construction loan which is what many owners in our developments end up doing.

How to get there

Real estate for Expats - A Comparison

Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama,  Belize and Nicaragua

Boston Scientific, based in Natick Massachusetts, recently announced plans to double the size of their manufacturing systems in Costa Rica. The company is closing its facility in Doral, Florida eliminating 1400 jobs.  The firm is investing over $30 million dollars in the new facility in Alejuela, just outside of San Jose.  The company cited the availability of skilled labor and lower labor costs as the primary reasons for the move.   Boston Scientific began manufacturing in Costa Rica in 2004, currently employing over 1700 people in the country with plans to double that number in the next two years.  The company makes medical devices including a variety of medical delivery systems, stents, catheters, graft materials, suture devices, implantable cardiac remote monitoring units and gastrointestinal related devices.  The firm produces nearly 26,000 different items from 17 plants worldwide. The company is publicly traded on the NYSE with sales in 2008 of over $8 billion USD and 24,800 employees worldwide.

We spent Thanksgiving this year with friends from Key West.  There were 8 of us all together.  We had a crab stuffed Mutton Snapper as our main course and we also had a Turkey.  Kristina insisted I buy a "Happy Turkey" one that lived it's life as a vegetarian and free ranged.  Happy Turkeys (read expensive Turkey) aren't sold as loss leaders at Publix, Winn Dixie or Stop and Shop.  They come from Specialty stores and typically cost as much as a Day at Disneyworld.  They don't seem to taste different to me and since Kristina is a vegetarian, I suppose they don't taste different to her.  I don't really think the Turkey was any happier once he was in the oven but who knows.   

One of my favorite restaurants in the southern Pacific area of Costa Rica is La Fogata in Uvita.  Their specialty is rotisserie chicken on a wood fired oven but they also serve pizza, pasta dishes and salads.  The rotisserie chicken is about the best chicken I have ever had, a combination of great cooking as well as the fact that the chickens are all free range.  Unlike chickens in the US produced in some factory farm on a diet of corn, these chickens live outdoors and eat things chickens naturally eat.  You can bring your own beer and wine.  The seating area is rustic on a deck covered by a roof but no walls.  They doubled the size of the seating area last year since there was always a line to get a table.  Even with the extra seating, if you show up after 7:00 pm on a busy day, the chicken may be all gone.  Take the first right after the big bridge on the Coastal highway (heading south) and La Fogata is on your left about 200 meters down the road.  If you find yourself in Uvita at a time you are feeling hungry, it is worth searching a bit to find La Fogata.  Expect a half chicken dinner here with sides to set you back about $5 dollars.  

Bull Riding Basics

Although President Oscar Arias signed the order to build the new international airport in the Southern Zone almost two years ago, not much has happened since.  We keep checking around Palmar Sur, stopping at the airport there now and asking questions about when to expect the new airport.  Recently the staff at the existing airport seemed excited when I asked again.