Pathfinder’s (and International Living’s) Favorite Development in Costa Rica’s Southern Zone

If you are considering moving or investing abroad, I truly believe the single best use of your time moving forward would be to visit our developments along the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Our town is a small town, the roads are gravel and many of our developments are in steep terrain but the area is emerging very quickly.   With the completion of the new Caldera toll road and the Costanera Highway, travel time from San Jose to our developments is now a bit over 3 hours.  With the new hospital now open only a few minutes from our developments and the third international airport in Costa Rica slated to be built just to our south, the area is poised for rapid increases in property values.  We already have an amazing rental market and it is possible to pay for a home in around 8 years through rental income. 

Below are the dates of our upcoming tours but we can arrange for you to visit our property nearly any time you want.  We are one of the oldest residential projects in the southern Pacific region of Costa Rica and now in our twenty first year.  Our projects are located right off the new highway, close to the beach and in an area that is very beautiful and has a nice mix of expats and Costa Ricans.  We are also one of the most affordable.  We have no time limits to build, you can build your own home or hire any other builder of your choice.  We are located in an area of the country that has a three story height restriction prohibiting high rise construction.  The new highway is now completed and the area is buzzing with new construction.  The new hospital is now open just a few minutes from our developments, one of the big steps in getting the new International Airport up and running.  Our prices are still low since we are still a 3 hour drive from San Jose but things are changing very fast around here. 

We suggest you allow adequate time for a visit and also point out that if you contact us at the last minute for a tour, we may not be able to accommodate you.  The best ways to see the property are listed below.  Here's your chance to come and visit us before the rest of the world shows up....  Our Costa Rica property tour is one of the most popular tours offered by International Living and Pathfinder.

Here are the dates of our upcoming Discovery Tours:   $299 per person 4 days all inclusive.   

You can sign up for a tour here http://www.PacificLots.com/online-client-visit-application

Here are photos from our developments and some tour photos as well.

http://picasaweb.google.com/pacificlots

You can find additional information about us and our company at our website http://www.pacificlots.com/  and our blog is http://www.pacificlots.com/Costa-Rica-Blog/

We also have a free DVD about both Costa Rica and our developments that we can mail to you if you provide us with a mailing address.

Simply respond to this email, mention that you'd like a copy of the free DVD and provide us with a mailing address.  We'll get it out right away.

We're hosting a number of discovery weekends in the next 12 months.  We continue to sell out these visits and continue to add additional dates. 

We do not have any sales pitch during any of our tours since our property sells itself. Call or email if you have questions about Costa Rica or specific questions about visiting our developments.

We would love to have you come visit and see for yourself what a great opportunity this is. Here's the basic info:  We have an 8,000 square foot guest house that we use to host tours of our area and property. Fees are $250 per person and include lodging, adult beverages, great hearty meals including fresh fruits and vegetables and great local fish, chicken and pork. We cater to dietary requirements so if you have special dietary requirements, just let us know. On your visit you'll see some beautiful ocean view home sites as well as river, mountain and valley view home sites, all fully improved with water, electric and road frontage. Prices start at only $40,000 for a home site and we will build a custom home for you for $100 per square foot with a minimum build size of only 1000 square feet. To put that in plain English, we'll custom build you a 2 bedroom 2 bath 1000 square foot custom home on a 1/4 acre lot within a few miles of the beach in a great development for $140,000 including the land and home. Granted this lot won't have an ocean view it will be in a great development close to the beach.

The same house on a home site with a good ocean view can be had for $200,000 (100k for the home and 100k for the ocean view home site).  We do have some ocean view sites priced at less than $100k but you can get a really good one at the 100k price range.  Our prices are low for Costa Rica and we are in an area that should see significant appreciation in the not so distant future as the new highway and new international airport are completed. Real estate taxes in our area are incredibly low at less than 2% per $1000 in value (property tax of less than $400 per year on a $200k home). Let me know if you want to visit and see for yourself why the folks at International Living continue to recommend our project.  Most of our developments are located in the village of Ojochal, a growing international community with about 2000 year round residents as well as more than 30 bars and restaurants, 11 hotels and a variety of shops, icluding a French bakery, a gourmet food store, a supermarket, liquor store, etc.  Our newest developments are located in the village of Chontales, close to the new hospital and closer to the slated site of the new international airport.  

We offer Discovery visits to our development for those who want to see what we are all about.  The tour starts with great lodging on the day of your arrival into San Jose at the Resort Martino in Alejuala.  The following morning at 8:15 we head south.  We provide transportation to and from San Jose to the southern Pacific region, 7 meals, 3 nights lodging and adult beverages at only $250 per person.  Better yet, the visit fee is actually a deposit on a lot so your first $250 is already paid ($500 if you are visiting as a couple). We deduct the cost of the visit from any purchase and we also give a $1000 credit to offset travel expenses so if you end up purchasing, the cost of the entire trip is basically on us. These weekends are a great way to see our properties as well as meet new friends and see if Costa Rica is right for you.

Here is the scoop.

Being one of the largest residential developments in Costa Rica gives us a bit more selection than others yet we do not build houses to speculate, we only build custom homes for our clients. As most other markets in the world suffered from excess housing inventory, in our area the opposite has been true. We have not had enough inventory of finished homes which has continued to fuel our rental market and provide great returns for owners within our developments who have chosen to rent their homes. With very little inventory of homes on the secondary market, houses sell for a significant premium over the cost to build. Prices of home sites also continue to rise as more and more baby boomers seek less expensive retirement strategies to compensate for their losses in both retirement savings accounts and home equity, which many had planned on to fund their retirement.

We offer both community home sites that are smaller and closer together as well as estate sized sites. If you join us for one of our tours, we do not hard sell, in fact unless you ask about buying, no one will ask you. We realize you either like the area or don't and no amount of sales pitch will convince you otherwise. The international flight to Costa Rica is typically quite cheap since nearly every major airline flies there.

On our tour after lunch we spend the first day looking at custom homes we are currently building and other homes we have already built. We'll feed you a great hearty meal of mostly organic foods including fresh local fish, chicken or pork and home made bread. After dinner you are free to relax with others on the tour, play pool, watch TV or check your email through our wireless network. The guest house has a nice pool, satellite TV, pool table, etc.... The next morning we'll visit available home sites including both estate lots with phenomenal ocean views, community lots with great ocean views, lots with great mountain views as well as some inexpensive lots for the investor and bargain hunter. We'll have ample time to walk the sites, see the views and watch the local wildlife. After lunch on day two we tour the town visiting a beautiful local beach and check out some of our shopping offerings. There is not much free time other than after dinner each day, since it is hard to see all we have to offer in only a few days.

Being the largest residential development in Costa Rica means it takes some time to really see what we are about. With over 20 phases of development completed over the past 22 years, we don't need to show artists renditions of what our community is all about since it is quite a place already. We also have both commercial and residential properties for sale, all within our developments. We have over 1000 owners and many have already had us build a custom home for them. This is not a cookie cutter community, no two houses are alike and each one has been designed around the owner's needs and wishes. Keep in mind that custom homes of the quality we are building for $100 per square foot is pretty unheard of these days and if you check out the photos of actual homes on our website you will see that they are very nicely built with lots of custom features using innovative building products and impressive design and engineering skills. We can also build you things like custom pools, guest houses, fantasy landscaping or whatever else you can imagine.  You are not required to use our building services and have no time limit to build in our developments.

Our prices are exceptionally low when you also consider the quality of the infrastructure we have put into the lots. We pipe artesian well water to all our lots, have electricity at the lot and all of our home sites have frontage on gravel roads within the development. We zone all our properties as single family residential or commercial and title them that way which is much more expensive than agricultural title found in many other developments. We also meet all municipal standards for public roads developments. This is what we are used to in the US. Many developers in Costa Rica build private roads developments which makes all the home owners responsible for the care and upkeep of ALL utilities and roads within the development. This is less expensive for the developer but can saddle owners with big costs down the road. Also consider what happens when a developer doesn't end up completing the infrastructure that was promised, leaving the home owners footing the bill. Buy what you see in Costa Rica, not what you are told will happen in the future.

We have been in business 22 years now and have a great safe community. You get what you pay for in this world and I, speaking as an owner in our developments myself, visited and considered nearly every other area recommended by International Living before purchasing here. My wife and I toured Ecuador, Nicaragua, Belize, Mexico including Merida, San Miguel De Allende, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. We also looked in Panama at Boquette, El Valle, Boca Del Toros and Panama City. The lowest price is not necessarily what you are looking for as you consider moving offshore or good quality investments. Haiti is cheap but I wouldn't want to own property there. We value things like health care, accessibility, safety, cost of living, taxes, insurance, available activities, a welcoming population, a stable democratic government, etc.... Preservation of capital was a key point in our investment decisions and the value of my personal holdings in our developments has continued to increase.

Our home sites in Costa Rica are fee simple, you own them outright and do what you want with them but our sites are located in nicely planned expat developments. All of our sites are cleared and ready to build. The majority of our owners are North American but we have a fairly large European population as well.We are also located only a few miles from the newest hospital in Costa Rica, the Hospital De Osa, an 88 bed, 80,000 square foot facility that opened in February 2008. The hospital was built as part of the plan to build the new international airport. This area has been hard to get to, though we do have a commuter airport nearby and there are great paved roads from San Jose down to our part of the country. The great news is that we are also only about 20 miles from the site of the planned third international airport and the new highway from Quepos in now complete. We are located right in the path of progress and expect to see major price increases as this region continues to develop.  Real Estate Taxes in our area average less than $2 per thousand dollars in value.  So a house valued at $200,000 will pay less than $400 per year in real estate taxes!  

We offer complete financing on the lots we sell (3 year term) and we also offer a 5% discount off our prices for non financed purchases. We can also show you how to use some of your retirement savings, IRA, SEP 401k, Simple or Keogh to purchase in our developments even if you are no where near retirement age. If you plan on using self directed retirement savings to purchase, it is best to start the process before you arrive at our property since you can not mix personal money with self directed retirement investments. Call us for details about how to do so before your visit.

Click here to see photos of some of our custom homes

Click here to see photos of some of our interiors

Costa Rica was just ranked as the 7th safest place in the world based on the new economic conditions we are facing worldwide by the Economist Magazine. The US ranked significantly lower than Costa Rica at 54th place.

If you have any questions or are interested in visiting us please let me know right away so we can schedule you in. Our tours are nearly always a sell out so if you have specific dates in mind, Guest house availability tends to be limited and our tours sell out quickly, so let us know as soon as you can. We hate to disappoint people but we get a lot of inquiries from people who wait till the last minute only to find out our guest house is full, our tours are sold out or the time frame you had planned on is fully booked. Hope to see you soon in Costa Rica!