It's official, 2010 saw more visitors and more sales on our Costa Rica property tours than any year in the past. We ran a total of 42 Discovery tours during the year and sales topped expectations and estimates on real estate sales at our developments in Costa Rica. Buyers came mainly from North America but sales were reported from a buyer from Australia, who bought 3 pieces of property in our developments. Housing starts rebounded after a slight downturn in 2008 and 2009. We expect to build 45 new homes in the coming year. Our rental market has been great and demand for rentals exceeds supply now for much of the year.
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Tags:
Real Estate Costa Rica,
Caldera Highway,
international living,
Costa Rica property tours,
real estate sales Costa Rica,
Ronan McMahon,
Dan Prescher,
Suzan Haskins
Costa Rica is busy installing traffic cameras to catch speeders on many of the local highways around the capital city of San Jose. MOPT and the transit police are busy installing these new cameras on major routes around the city including the General Cañas highway from San José to Alajuela, the Prospero Fernandez highway from San José to Santa Ana and the Florencio del Castillo highway from San José to Cartago. I suspect we will see them on the new Caldera highway in the future. Fortunately we don't travel over many of these routes on our Costa Rica property tours and we try to always stay under the speed limit. What's the hurry in Costa Rica?
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Tags:
Traffic Cameras in Costa Rica,
General Canas highway,
traffic fatalities in Costa Rica
Beginning this Sunday, MOPT (the department of transportation in Costa Rica) has announced that from noon to 5:00 pm each day the Caldera Highway will only be operating in one direction (from the coast to San Jose) to help with the flow of holiday vacationers returning to San Jose from the Christmas Holidays. This will not affect our Costa Rica property discovery tours since we head south each tour in the morning before the road closure. The Caldera Highway one way closure will begin Thursday, December 23, 2010 and cover the 39-kilometer stretch of highway between Puntarenas and San José. The one-way traffic is intended to better facilitate the influx of traffic that's expect to be brought on by travelers returning from Christmas vacation. The Caldera Highway will be open in only one direction in the week after Christmas.
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Tags:
Caldera Highway
Overview: A candid look at Nicaragua versus Costa Rica as a destination for expats. First I'll give some basic facts on each country including history, geography, people and economy. Then I'll give my assessment of what it means to expats considering either country for investment, living or retirement.
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Tags:
Nicaragua Sandanistas,
Nicaragua economy,
Costa Rica versus Nicaragua,
Dan Ortega,
Sandanista
If you’ve never visited an active volcano it’s certainly something you should put on your bucket list. To bear witness to our earth’s constant transition and what ancient Greeks believed was powered by the acts of gods is quite remarkable.
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Tags:
volcano,
volcanoes,
Arenal,
Poas,
Irazu,
Tabacan,
Hot springs,
La Paz Waterfall
Though the hurricane was nowhere near Costa Rica, the bands of rain spinning off this tropical low pelted Costa Rica for nearly 5 days. There was a significant landslide in Barrio El Carmen in San Antonio de Escazu that buried victims with a death toll now of 23. Most victims were buried as they slept. The storm caused record damage to many roads and bridges in Costa Rica with the most extensive damage along the Pacific Coast in the southern region. Nicoya Peninsula was not spared and the Cerro De La Muerte inland route from San Isidro and Perez Zeledon and down the Palmar was badly damaged and remains closed.
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Tags:
Dominical,
Manuel Antonio,
Costa Rica Flooding,
San Antonio de Escazu,
Terraba River,
Parrita,
Nicoya,
Escazu,
Flooding
Costa Rica is to receive 56 million dollars in direct aid and debt reduction dedicated to further efforts to protect it's tropical forests. This will be an increase of nearly 32,000 acres of protected forest in Costa Rica. Currently Costa Rica contains over 800,000 acres of protected forest, roughly 25% of the entire land area of the country. This additional protected acreage will bring the total area of protected tropical forest to 26% of the entire country.
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Tags:
Environment,
Corcovado,
Costa Rica Forest,
Playa Bellena,
Costa Rica National Park,
Osa Peninsula
If you happen to be in Costa Rica at the right time of year, a fun thing to do is going to the many rodeos, horse demonstrations or “bull fights”. Horses are almost a national symbol in Costa Rica and always a cause for a celebration. Rodeos are staged throughout the country and many small towns have their own rodeo or bull ring. There are also some portable ones and even a circuit of professional riders that tour around and appear at shows.
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Tags:
Panama,
Mexico,
Belize,
Ecuador,
adventure travel,
affordable healthcare,
Buenos Aires,
Colombia,
cotacachi,
Cuenca,
Doing Business in Panama,
easy retirement,
Ecuador Real estate,
Fortaleza,
Fortaleza real estate,
healthcare abroad,
international real estate,
investment,
investments,
invest overseas,
live in Colombia,
Live in Costa Rica,
live in Ecuador,
live in Mexico,
live in Panama,
live overseas,
low cost of living,
Mexico healthcare,
mexico real estate,
offshore banking,
Quality of Life Index,
real estate in Uruguay,
real estate investment,
retire overseas,
Travel travel writing,
Tulum,
Uruguay vacations,
wealth protection,
weird and wonderful,
Costa Rica
After years of looking at options for offshore living, we have come up with a list of factors to consider when thinking of moving abroad. Choosing a country and deciding where to live abroad has it's challenges. It also has many benefits. For many people change is difficult. No place will be exactly like where you moved from but in many cases that will be good news. Make a list of the things important to you as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the locations you are considering. Don't ignore your present and future needs when you make a decision to move to a foreign country. For most of us it will be the things we did not do in life that we come to regret, not the things we did.
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Tags:
Living Abroad,
living internationally,
what to consider when moving abroad,
retiring abroad
Last week Kristina and I headed to Vegas and not just for fun. Where else can you see Elvis in a pink Cadillac and meet over 500 people interested in international real estate? Just when I thought things couldn't get any hotter for our real estate project in Costa Rica, we also hit a major new milestone.
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Tags:
Costa Rica real estate,
international living,
AARP,
Discovery Tour,
Developer tours,
Red Rock Casino,
Costa Rica
