Real Estate Agents
There is a lot of fear mongering on the web about less than ethical real estate agents in Costa Rica and that will indeed occur when there is not the monitoring system of real estate licenses and a board to oversee regulations with the power of penalty or discharge. Simply put, if there is no penalty for a crime, there is a greater likelihood crime will be committed.
That having been said, there are also very good people in Costa Rica and listening to your own judgment, asking around independently and a little due diligence will never hurt you. If it looks like a “carney”, acts like a carney, sounds like a carney, perhaps you should read the “Duck Story” and it might save you thousands. Many of us have been to time share real estate meetings where they put a pen in one hand while twisting the other arm until you cried “Uncle”. Many of us have been tortured by these people and we survived or we found ourselves owning “real estate” we probably don’t use very much. In either case, the lesson was the same; listen to yourself as you are usually your best protector. When I say to ask around independently I think back to my Human Resource days when I got personal references from the applicant and I would always get the favorite uncle, best friend, and next door neighbor. The moral to this story is to independently seek references as the very worst real estate agent has at least a few clients he or she has made happy, if even by accident and those will be his referrals. At CostaRicaLandToday, Cheryl and I have both practiced the States’ standards, regulations, and real estate etiquette and ethics in the buying and selling of properties for many, many years. These are the same business standards we bring to our clients in Costa Rica as a real estate business without integrity is not business; it is called something else altogether. This kind of experience might be a good standard by which you measure with whom you do business with in Costa Rica. If you meet someone and you probably would not do business with in the States because they have not practiced real estate under guidelines and ethics in the States, then that is what I would call your early warning signal and why do business with them in Costa Rica? Listen to yourself and remember the “Duck Story”.
One last flag is to look at is the company itself. Is it designed for throughput or input? A larger firm that has many employees has to move a lot of real estate just to cover the overhead and therein the degradation of input quality occurs. Not enough time to research the building codes, the neighbors well, etc. CostaRicaLandToday is not the “mover and the shaker”, nor do we sell more than all others combined as we are staffed only enough to serve a small number of clients, but we serve them well. Our measurement of quota is satisfaction, not profit.
Some townships have strict adherence to the building codes of Grecia, while others might look the other way from time to time. Some of those codes that come quickly to mind are the distances one can build from a flowing river or a neighbor’s fresh water well. The obvious concern from a real estate standpoint is the mistake someone made in purchasing a manzana (1.73 acres) near a bubbling river only to discover that codes of the municipality state that he cannot build within 50 meters of the water. Then they find themselves without enough distance from the bubbling stream to build their home on the property. Or the guy who purchases, again for example, a manzana, and later discovers that the neighbor has a water well on his property which prevents the construction on the upper portion of that same property, again municipality codes. Well, this poor sucker of a person in both stories happens to be the same guy—me. I say this not to strike fear in one’s heart, but a story to learn from. We are officially retired and our goal is not to conquer the “Real Estate Lords” of Costa Rica, but to save the few we can from the innocence of trusting the wrong person. We have the time and desire to perform the due diligence and ask the right questions in hopes of preventing the trials and unnecessary grief of purchasing property, homes, or lots in Costa Rica. Nothing replaces your own due diligence, but you will hopefully have a real estate agent who is also standing in your corner and our hope is that it will be CostaRicaLandToday that helps you have a good experience!
