For Buyers

Talk Show 15 – Income Generating Property

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“Houses that produce rental income” has become an increasingly popular Costa Rica real estate strategy in The Zone. In this video, The Guys explain WHY this investment strategy is smart and how it can be achieved in a fertile rental market.  We moved out of the office and shot the video “on location” at such … Read more

Pura Vida Poll, August 2011

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August begins a new Guys In The Zone tradition, the poll question. As some of you know, we have been increasingly active with the social marketing and networking lately. LinkedIn, in particular, has inspired many new connections and ideas. The Poll will be a regular addition to our Talk Show and articles, and who knows? … Read more

Talk Show, Episode 13

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This is our mid-year review of real estate in the Southern Pacific Zone of Costa Rica. With tourism numbers up 11% in Central America, Ben and Rod discuss how this trend points to a brighter future for The Zone. Costa Rica Real Estate – Talk Show 13 by GuysInTheZone

Think Outside The Box (Property in Costa Rica)

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“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”  – Steve Jobs

I bet your wondering how that idea relates to real estate in Costa Rica?  Well, simply put… if there was ever a time for property owners and real estate agents in this marketplace to be “innovative,” it’s now.

LISTING IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP

Here’s how listing a property usually unfolds in The Zone—

  • Step One: Call up The Guys and set up an appointment to preview the property.
  • Step Two: Determine if an Open Listing or a Modified Exclusive Listing is appropriate for you.
  • Step Three: Wait for The Guys to bring you a buyer.
We all need to think outside the box...

The problem is that Step Three is taking much longer than most Sellers anticipated.

LOOKING BEYOND PRICE

We all know reducing the list price is the easiest way to increase property showings, offers, and sales.  However, if your property is in the ballpark of current market value and it is being shown but not selling, there could be other reasons limiting the sale.

Here at the Guys office, we continue to ask ourselves what can we do to speed up the sales process?  At the risk of sounding trite, one answer is: “think outside the box.”  Here’s an example of how The Guys have applied this idea.

Ben started his Costa Rica blog in 2003 (before many of us knew what a blog was)

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Costa Rica Real Estate Closing Costs

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“Four percent of the sale price on top of your commission?!” exclaimed our client, a long time resident in The Zone. (In keeping with an old Guys’ tradition, I’ll refer to him as Mr. Zellbren throughout this article.) Ben and I first explained that we are currently dealing with a severely down market (approximately 50% off the peak value of three years ago) and an excellent time to wait for the market to rebound. Mr. Zellbren wasn’t interested in waiting, so we continued to explain the standard closing costs of a Costa Rica real estate deal. Some of the data he was familiar with; some of the finer points had to be clarified.

Traditional Closing Costs

Closing costs, when you add up the transfer tax, stamps, and legal fees, usually equate to approximately 4% of the sale price. Mr. Zellbren told us he would accept a $550,000 offer for his house equaling $22,000 in closing costs. In 99% of the deals we are part of, Buyers and Sellers split closing costs 50-50. It’s what we do here in Costa Rica. Additional costs—re-surveys, title insurance, new corporations—are typically paid by the Buyer.

Interestingly, there are a variety of stamps required to transfer a property in Costa Rica. They are– the Legal Bar Association Stamp (Timbre del Colegio de Abogados), the Municipal Stamp (Timbre Municipal), the Fiscal Stamp (Especie Fiscal), the National Archives Stamp (Timbe del Archivo Nacional) and the Agriculture Stamp (Timbre Agrario). Like everything else, your lawyer will take care of the licking and sticking of these stamps, which equate to roughly .05% of the sale price.

Legal fees, also known as notary fees here in Costa Rica, are calculated at 1.5% of the sale price. This is what is paid to the lawyer/notary for setting up the Sales and Purchase Agreement, as well as, researching and filing all of the necessary documents in the sale. These standard legal fees do not include any additional legal work (e.g., a new corporations, establishing an easement, etc.). One last point regarding lawyers that I would like to add is… you often get what you pay for.

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Exclusive Listings Revisited Part 3 of 3

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Negotiate a fee for a marketing service.

Disclaimer: This program is no longer offered by Guys In The Zone Real Estate. We have closed our doors and are working in tandem now with another company that does not recognize this method of listing properties.

This series of articles is all about options for selling a property in Costa Rica.

Negotiate a fee for a marketing service.
Decide what the marketing fee will be.

Now here, in Part 3, we are going to discuss an un-orthodox approach to selling a property in Costa Rica’s non-MLS marketplace. The incentive for doing this is the weaknesses, or flaws that were reviewed in Part 2 of our attempts to imitate the MLS of other countries.
I have been working in real estate here in Costa Rica’s southern pacific zone for years, and have always felt that the exclusive listing was a nearly sacred thing. It puts a tremendous responsibility on the agency that has the exclusive, but is also demanding on all of the agencies in that they must ignore the fact that the commission on this property is shared, when the majority of properties in their inventory are not.

I have been scratching and thinking about this topic and here is what I’ve come up with.

The Real Estate Agency’s Objective:
What we want to do is offer to sellers a better service, and in the process improve the professionalism of our industry. This is particularly appropriate when

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