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Insoxicated
Good for you man! If you're comfortable, I'd love to see a link to the place ya got / location. If you are more comfortable with DM that works too. If you'd rather not at all, I totally understand!Sorry for the slow response GB, but I'm trying to slow my real-life pace down to Costa Rica speed... (right, I wish that was my excuse).
Here’s our experience so far with purchasing a home in Costa Rica:
(1) Interest rates in Costa Rica are floating around 13-15% so that immediately turned us away from that option, never mind the idea of trying to deal with a foreign bank, in foreign language, so planning on a “cash” purchase is the easiest option.
(2) The Costa Rican government is fairly strict about providing documentation and paperwork that proves where your cash to purchase your house came from, whether it was a previous house sale, a retirement account, a line of credit, etc. This includes a request for an “Apostille” (something we had never heard of), which required us to send our deed of trust (from sale of our previous home) to the Secretary of State of Colorado where they certify, stamp and seal it and send it back to us. Which has been a very tedious process because the employees in the state of Colorado are still working from home and this process requires hardcopies be sent through slow mail.
(3) Real Estate agent commissions are about the same (about 3% both sides) and are paid for by the Seller.
(4) The “attorneys” down there do more than your typical attorney, they obviously write up the real estate contracts, but they also help you formulate your Costa Rican Corporation (which is the easiest way to buy a house down there), they obtain and review the title, prepare closing statements, and coordinate directly with the escrow company.
(5) The attorneys basically manage all of the closing processes, which is equivalent to the closing costs we pay in the States, which seems to be in the range of about 5% of purchase price, paid for the Buyer.
(6) We also found out that if we own (buy) a property for at least $200,000 we qualify for residency in Costa Rica which was an unexpected bonus considering we are planning on this as a retirement spot.
(7) All homes sales are processed through the federal government, and with the country’s recent spike in COVID cases over the last month many of their offices have been closed down (off and on) which has caused quite a backlog.
So the process has been fairly tedious, which we were warned about upfront by our real estate agent, but we will hopefully still close in about 60 days, which isn’t that much different than the States.
Well, we better be closed within 60 days… we fly back to Samara on June 6th.
Didn't know about some of that stuff... thanks for sharing!