Building a House in Costa Rica - How much did it cost?

good morning everybody welcome to the joyful johnsons coming to you here from our patio our house in costa rica today's video i'm going to chat about something that many people have asked us and that is what did it cost to build your house in costa rica so thank you guys for watching um please like and subscribe if you would like more videos about living in and traveling to costa rica [Music] so as we begin this discussion the first thing to note is that the price of your house can vary widely how big are you going to make it how small are you going to make it are you going to make it a european style with european and american finishes are you going to make it a traditional costa rican style house with a tile kitchen countertop and no air conditioning and things not sealed up quite as well with more of an open air feel you can have a very vast difference in the pricing of your home depending on what finishes that you choose so we're just going to share uh regarding our home so that you can kind of get a feel um for what it's like so today is september 13th 2022 and we started the build of our house um the last week of december of 2021 and our house is in the last few weeks of final final touch-ups but we have been living here for six weeks seven weeks eight weeks don't really remember anymore but we moved into the house when it was not actually completed 100 because we could not find a long-term rental i'll make another video about that um but we live in junkial guanacaste which is just south of tamarindo and we are super super happy our neighbor's dog is clearly happy too costa rica is land of the dogs if you did not know this so in today's video i want to share a little bit about the size of our home the materials of our home and what it cost us to build our house here so our home is a three bedroom one office because i'm a music teacher had to have a music studio room with three full baths we have a covered patio the total um square meters of our home is 148.7 meters squared of total living space and that includes the patio that's roughly about 1600 square feet so it has enough space for my large family but it's definitely not a luxury home that's around 88 dollars per square meter of what we paid for the total cost of the house now again this does not include the appliances this that price does not include the lot or the land or these other things that you have to get your land prepared to build so let's talk a little bit about that when you go to buy land in costa rica you need to make sure that you have water connectivity you either have a well or you have the connectivity with the water asada which is like the little local public water provider you also need to make sure that you have electricity connectivity because let me tell you i know so many people who find land and i've heard stories of people who buy land and then oh no i just kidding i can't get electricity here it's kind of a big deal if you're buying fresh naked untamed land this is a big financial investment you have to get your transformer you have to have the electricity connectivity set up you have to pay for the water to come make the connectivity if it's not there so if you're early in the process and you're just starting to look at those things don't forget those items because they are going to be a cost for instance um we had to install a transformer because we were at the end of our road where there currently were no homes on this side and we had to pay around 4 000 us dollars to install a transformer so just kind of keep those things in mind those could be other costs in your process now to continue on um so the 88 dollars per square meter was about the um rough cost please keep in mind that in the last year and the year 2022 construction costs have shot through the roof that's because of all the the struggles with the shipping cargos the shipping containers lack of production around the world for various reasons we're not going to go into all that right now but the costs have changed a lot i mean for for basic building materials like rebar and concrete the prices have changed so again keeping in mind that our house started construction in december of 2021 and here we are september 2022 and we're just about wrapped up they give you a feel for the style of our house and and what we got roughly for that price um we use here i'll show you our flooring here this is the same flooring that we use for the inside and the outside this is a ceramic tile that looks like wood i really really like it because it covers the dirt it covers the dirt and everything here gets dirty because we live in beautiful costa rica so this is the same floor tile we have throughout the entire house for our kitchen countertops and bathroom countertops we used a quartz material all of the cabinets are wood that have been painted my favorite color turquoise teal we have air conditioning units in the bedrooms we have air conditioning units in the kitchen and the living room we don't use them all the time but sometimes it just gets really hot and and we prefer to use them when it gets uncomfortably hot also for the room my piano is in that is kept climate controlled with a dehumidifier other things to factor in um we do have screened windows and doors in the whole house to allow for that for that nice airflow um we have an insulation in our ceiling i highly recommend if you don't like the really incredibly loud sound of rain if you have a metal roof it will be deafening i mean deafeningly loud when it rains so loud that you cannot hear someone speaking sitting right next to you so because i teach music classes it's really important that i have a space where i can teach classes online and in person that's not super super loud so we do have insulation in the ceiling of our house and we have a composite material roof that's supposed to last a lifetime for my lifetime and so we can still enjoy the sound of the rain but not be like overpowered by this app other items that we had in our house just again to kind of give you a feel of our cost and what we got for that cost um we have a custom built front door made of metal and wood and glass that is really really cool the rest of the doors in the house are the traditional standard wooden wooden doors we also have rain gutters across the outside of the house and then i'll show you here in a moment the finishes that we have for the other tile in the bathroom and the sink and shower finishes as well again this price for the house the normal cost i did some research for the year 2022 can range between 76 and 128 us dollars per square meter um and so i don't i mean we moved from texas we had a 2600 square feet home that was very newly built and we paid was it five years ago we paid um 250 000 us dollars for that house and we paid so much less so much less than that for this house and we're 300 meters away from the pacific ocean so we were very happy with the price especially compared to where we we moved from our other finishes that we had for the house are this white subway tile kitchen backsplash my house is not clean i have three small children it's a very well lived in and loved home so that's the finish we had for the backsplash and then these are our cabinets again they're wooden and they have a teal paint finish that's identical to the exterior of the house it's really beautiful and then these are the white granite they have like a gray fleck and them uh quartz countertops fun fact for you granite is currently cheaper in costa rica than quartz is i know in some other places of the world it is backwards so be advised for that for all of the bathrooms these are the type of water faucets we got these are a really nice moen brand but it's just a very basic very simple um bathroom water faucet and then all of our sinks are drop in white ceramic the showers all have um the white subway tile really nice windows in the bathrooms and then our shower faucets again are moen so very very nice brand of the shower faucets the price per square meter also includes these high-powered ceiling fans and we have them in every single room and then most of our lighting is recessed led these are really good for energy efficiency they light up the room really well for instance they're off right now and i'm going to turn them on so it's really really nice of course this one still needs to be fixed we have a few more touch-ups and a few more walk-through things that our builder needs to do with us um before the build is officially and also to add um we did not do any other light fixtures except for we got this really cool bamboo pendant light to hang above the kitchen sink we haven't had that installed yet it's one of the last things to complete but all the other light fixtures are the recessed led lighting so the price we paid per square meter was for that type of lighting as well other things to factor in for your build usually the closets or shelving for our price that was not included so when you talk with your builder make sure that you communicate things like closets shelving storage space those are all really important things that sometimes are not um included in the price of the build so i hope that this video was helpful if you have any specific questions about building a house in costa rica or the pricing or what the process was like please drop a comment i would love to help you out and share our experience with you and if you're in the area of guanacaste we are in i would highly recommend our builder i will put his information in the comments below and be happy to refer him refer you to him so please make sure that you like and subscribe it really helps our family we're trying to grow our channel by providing really cool info to you about our journey in costa rica here for living and travel so have a great day guys we'll see you next time

Channel: the Joyful Johnsons

Views: 30,254

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Id: X6H3Gb4sqyI

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2022