Top 10 Costa Rica

As Costa Rica became one of the preferred destinations for vacation homes it has also witnessed a significant deterioration of its natural resources in exchange for economic growth.

If you are about to select an exotic real estate development in Costa Rica as the ideal vacation home, please double check the information you have, make sure you obtain a professional opinion from an expert in the field. Currently the Costa Rican Environmental Tribunal or TAA (acronym for its Spanish name Tribunal Administrativo Ambiental) has investigated 40 real estate developments located all across Costa Rica, the results were alarming: 8 closed, 19 paralized and 13 are currently under investigations.

Costa Rica Real Estate Law is almost a science, it requires multiple bureacratic procedures, extensive lobbying and inside collaboration, as the most common practice is that if the environmental permits are not prepared through the consultation of an officer of the environmental agency, the chances are that your project will never get them.

To add extra drama to the chaotic permit application process, now various projects that obtained construction permits will have to suffer of a new degree of uncertainty as their permits will be investigated, raising the question of the level of transparency of government decisions in Costa Rica.

So if you are planning to invest in Costa Rica, make sure that you are provided of a clear, binding agreement by a reputable developer and that your legal counsel approves it.

In our opinion, the implementation of the TAA should have been done 10 years ago, it is still not to late, the real estate development industry will suffer for a period of time but in the long term Costa Rica will move towards a better version of sustainable development that will contribute with our global environment.