State of the Market – Midway 2013

Should I buy or buy and build a house in Costa Rica?

I don’t know the exact percentage but I’d guess at around 90% of the visitors to our offices here start the conversation stating that they would like to buy a house. They are not interested in building. Until recently, this desire went unfulfilled. After looking at the meager house options, the actual base-line interest of the buyer would be exposed: they wanted to own property in The Zone. A house would be the first pick, but barring that, a raw piece of land that they could then build on would be an acceptable fall-back position to fulfill the fundamental interest that they had in owning something here in The Zone.

Most prospective buyers wanted to buy a house. Most prospective buyers bought raw land.

Now things have changed.