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Let me tell you a bit about our housing search. For a while, Ivo has been subtly steering me toward talking about our experiences buying and renovating our house here.
Until now, I have been trying to avoid it by talking about anything and everything else. But now I am suffering from a case of writer’s block. So, I guess I’ll have to start.
Before I begin, I have a confession. I advocated getting used to life here in Costa Rica; making certain you are compatible before jumping into a hard-to-reverse home purchase.
“Wait, at least, six months. Or, even better a year before buying a home in Costa Rica,” I said. Well, I have to admit, I violated my own rule big time. Thereby, I created a potentially serious knock on my credibility for my readers.
Not that I didn’t start out with good intentions about following my own advice.
Rent first
For my wife and me, deviation from my “rent for a while and don’t buy” started out as a desire just to see what the Costa Rica real estate market was like out there in our “affordability range” and “morphed” into a cross between necessity and common sense. My advice for successful integration into Costa Rican life and the lifestyle prefer is trying to remain flexible. Also, be prepared to adjust your plans. And sometimes even your expectations.
Our dog
Surprisingly, we had to look very hard to find a suitable rental unit that would also accept our large dog. It was at the end of the dry season. We found just two places in our area of interest. So we decided to sign a six-month lease on the house that fit us best.
When we asked the landlord about the possibility of staying longer. He said it was unlikely to extend the lease beyond the termination date at the end of September. Keep in mind, we were here only two months and “already” and “still” smitten with this country.
Another move?
Now we were facing the prospect of another difficult rental search. That meant another temporary move not far down the road. So we decided, “what the heck, we’ve got nowhere nearly a nice as Costa Rica to go back to. Let’s take a look at what’s out there in our price range to purchase”.
We would not advocate everyone jump right in as soon as we did. But this wasn’t our first rodeo. We’ve got enough worldly travel under our belts. And, we had done a great deal of online research to gain a pretty good idea of the size of the bite we were chewing.
Housing criteria
Our biggest housing criteria after our budget limitation was the climate. Therefore, finding an affordable house built to North American standards, or with the potential for bringing it up to our standards, located at a higher and cooler elevation really narrowed our options quickly. In addition to budget and climate priorities, we gave our realtors our list of “must-haves” and “would be nice” features and criteria.
No matter what you think you want in a residence. Going through the act of putting it down on paper really adds clarity to what is most important for you. For couples, it is likely that your spouse and you will not agree 100% on the order of priorities. So, a lively discussion and a bit of compromise are likely to influence your priority list.
House Hunters International
A bit like “House Hunters International,” our realtors used our list to narrow our initial housing search to three potential homes. We were actually surprised and a little disappointed that we wound up with just three initial prospects. However, at the time of our housing search, there was not a large inventory of homes in our price range in the area where we had decided to focus our search.
I mentioned, “realtors” (plural). That’s because we used GoDutch Realty and we initially met our lead realtor the year before while vacationing and now renting. The area where we were going to have our housing search was in another GoDutch agent’s territory. It was kind of nice getting two for the price of one. You can read all about our actual home search in another blog.
Getting our feet wet?
When you begin a housing search in Costa Rica, be aware that Costa Rica is a fairly popular destination for ex-pats. If you have limitations and criteria, you may discover that your choices may be substantially fewer than you anticipated. However, this first foray into the housing search was supposed to be just an exercise in getting our feet wet. So, it didn’t really matter that there were only three homes on the list. This part of our adventure was just for practice.
The Author
The author of this blog, Ticonuevo, is a US expat who moved to Costa Rica. He and his wife used the services of GoDutch Realty to purchase a property in Costa Rica. In his blogs, Ticonuevo describes his own experiences of taking the step of moving to Costa Rica and getting a new life started.
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I DO want to remind our readers that we appreciate any referrals you can send us. Also, please remember the GoDutch Realty agents when you talk about your home in Costa Rica, we appreciate it.
