Expats in Costa Rica – Real Estate Developer - Nosara, Costa Rica

josh is a resident of nosara costa rica and a partner in the real estate business viva tropical one of the best sources of real estate information for central and south america in this interview we talk about real estate investment in costa rica as well as a lot of general information about the country [Music] i didn't really ever plan on coming long term i planned on coming for some short stints and then that changed and turned into long term and i still look at it that way i still look at it about every six months i reevaluate see if it's good for me see if it's good for the family but that's passed for the last six years compared to the other areas in central america it's just very developed some of the other places like nicaragua panama guatemala are becoming more popular but it's been in the last 15 20 years where costa rica has been popular for probably 30 35. and so it has an extra 15 years of social development with expats coming down and that just you just see that in a huge way you notice that when you go to towns there's always some expat there pretty much there's usually some italian who has an italian restaurant there's and so you see it in the service industry and and when you compare that to the other places that you could go it's just head and shoulders above and what that means is easier living crime petty theft that's it's around all the time it can be on your mind it stinks for the most part you learn to deal with it and it's still worth it to live here in my opinion but it's not unsafe but you might get something stolen out of your car if you aren't careful sometimes every once in a while something happens i think you worry about crime because you don't trust law enforcement here law enforcement i mean in the sense of actually accomplishing a goal so sometimes occasionally you hear about some violent crime somewhere near you maybe and it's worrisome because you don't really feel like the police will will stop it on the other hand if you're comparing it to back home and just like when you watch the evening news it's just nothing compared to that i mean you're talking about a violent crime down here is maybe once every few years at least that i hear about in this town which we're in osara right now but back home it's just you just sort of desensitized to it the difference here i guess is back home in the us it's you get crime follows socioeconomic divide so some parts of town have a lot more crime than others in costa rica it's kind of all lumped together so it happens where people with money live still happens in those areas we have health insurance actually we do uh there's a there's cheaper plans for expats that are outside the country for 330 days and they cover major medical you can go back to the your home country and get work done if you want to they even cover you in the home in your home country when you visit as long as you're out a certain amount of days but then we deal with your kind of daily accidents i have kids things happen in the community here there's been broken arms and surprise surgeries and things like that most of that people all choose to do within costa rica and i think contrary to what you read about that the healthcare system's so wonderful here it's all right it's just that um it's different and i think that's that's the part you gotta navigate back home one of the big things is you listen to your doctor your doctor tells you something you say okay fine i'll do it here you really need to question everything you need to question it because the technique they may be using may be antiquated and it makes you a better patient because you start learning how to do that and being part of the process but let's say they were going to do open-heart surgery on your hair i would say definitely go somewhere else the healthcare here is very affordable it's and that's pro that's a great benefit that part is true you can go like i went went to the er with my daughter not too long ago and we were there for a night and they had to do they had to call in a blood person they had to call in an x-ray technician they had to call in um a surgeon and so you have all these people in the u.s you know your my mind was like oh god this is gonna cost like thousands of dollars and then we went and paid and it was uh seven hundred dollars so that same thing in the states is we also went to the er in the states we went to uh just a short procedure and in the states it was 18 000 and this in costa rica which was longer with more professionals involved with 700 so you definitely it's a better value here for sure costa rica has a simple program 90 days anytime you come here which covers most countries and then you can get residency somewhere a family can be around that's about a thousand dollars a person to fifteen hundred dollars a person depending on who you go through and then you don't have to leave the country as frequently these premium videos are available on amazon prime the links are in the description below they're they're expensive like anywhere there's different price points and you do end up needing attorney far more often than you do from back home here attorneys are involved in every transaction from real estate to residency to selling a car often people run things through a corporation here reducing liability as well as making it can make things a lot easier too and so that requires an attorney so you will need one if you live here i find ones that usually work with expats is where i'd focus and expensive doesn't mean better i'm a real estate investor i've been doing it for 20 years and lately an iteration of that has been vivatropical.com which is a website that educates people about moving down here as well as has a lot of real estate listings we do a bunch of free e-books for people who are looking to invest and now that's that's our main source of business i would want to know what their investment goals were there's a there's a lot of opportunity here i think it's about expectations and a common mistake you see a lot is people come down and they think it operates like their home their hometown or their home market or their home country and it doesn't operate that way you're dealing with different numbers people think well there's a new road coming which is a great way to possibly scout out an investment but it doesn't mean just because the road is going there that anything's going to change fast but people tend to think it does and the reason they tend to think it does is because their home markets move quicker money moves faster the market's more efficient is what it comes down to here there's no mls so the efficiency drops massively and how that helps you actually is that if you are willing to look around you can find a deal it's not uncommon to see like 10 houses for 500 000 and then one of one next to it it's the same for two hundred thousand uh but you wouldn't know that unless you put in put in the work and talk to all the people so you're rewarded here for putting in time so that's one thing the other thing too is just it's just smaller markets costa rica gets 2 million people a year grand canyon gets 3 million people a year so you don't get actually that many people and then those people depending on the country each one's different in this way but in costa rica that two million people is diffused around the entire pacific coast mostly so how many people are even going to a town most people buy and think this is cool so i think people are going to come and and that won't hurt you probably long term but short term that's not going to help you at all in nosara the best opportunities are probably long-term rentals right now short-term rentals can work if you can get a decent price on land but it's not necessarily a place it's really i mean first is price you need a good price second is your strategy you have to have a good strategy for for what you're going to do and then you have to know what do you want for return i mean investment it's about rate of return and return on investment so the way i invest is i'm looking for something specific that's the quickest possible way to return some people are just saying you know what i'm into land banking they call it i'm just going to buy something and wait 10 15 years and it will be worth more and i have i have the that's my investment strategy well and i'd point you in a totally different direction if that was your case you came to me and said i want to have a decent return in 12 months that's pretty fast for real estate down here but i still would where i'd point you then is an undervalued home that maybe could be renovated please visit our best travel gear page on the living overseas dot tv website the link is in the description below when you buy through our link we may receive a small affiliate commission there is no added cost for you and it helps support our channel so that we can keep bringing you free videos [Music] what happens here the normal cycle as people come down it's more expensive than they think so they think i need to start a business and that's usually their great business idea comes from i need money so what you see is a lot of people copying each other you see people who really have no understanding of costa rican law and they're always a little surprised by it's quite expensive in some ways to run a business here and labor law is not very helpful to the business owner compared to where most of us come from as expats north america and europe so there is definitely opportunity but as always you gotta kind of know the rules of the game to be successful so i would say get to know the rules before you go jumping in to your you know your pizza shop or whatever your four-wheeler rentals sometimes i buy sometimes i rent i still look at buying homes as an investment so if there's a good deal i'll buy it the markets changed when i got here six seven years ago it was just more economically prudent to rent because you could rent a million dollar home for like 1500 a month that's changed now it's now becoming probably a better idea to buy a house in in the town i'm in so i've i have begun looking again speaking spanish is it's not a must-do but it'll make your life better and you'll be it'll be much better for connecting to any local people local traditions but you don't have to a lot of people in costa rica speak english so you can get by without it a lot of people do cost frequent people are some of the nicest people that you'll ever meet very traditional ways of life that has been greatly influenced by expats moving so you see that more in the coastal areas where the local tico community has more influence by what expats are doing but you can always get away if you want to go to the traditional roots lifestyle and just get out of any beach area usually and get up 20 30 miles away and it's pretty amazing nice people what i miss the most is just there's convenience back home you can get anything you want whenever you want and here you never can the entire system is less efficient and you just can't get stuff sent to you reliably import export takes a long time often so i i don't think a business would change it as much as i mean you have to do a whole revamping of the regulations so you've decided hey i like costa rica where am i going to go i've read about this town and this town and this seems cool and that's a good place to start but what i what i always tell everybody is it's community based i mean we could live in hell if we had a great community but it's hard to live in a great place if you hate everybody so it's it's about meshing a community with your personality and what you want and you can't figure that out until you go somewhere like what's the difference between osara samara monteverde santa teresa dominical when you read about those places it's kind of hard to tell the difference and then there's micro communities within these these communities that may resonate with you and then there's different prices so you're kind of balancing prices uh and community and so the best way is to go and you can do it fast sometimes maybe it takes a week and you you realize that's the place for you sometimes it takes a day but i always tell everybody come down come down and check it out before and get a little look around rent a place if you really want to get into the research rent a few places check out some different places that way personally i think you can get paralysis by analysis if you don't if you if you if you just keep thinking about it and not moving forward i don't think you have to take too long but you definitely got to come down if you're going to move to a place and you don't have to come down forever i think another thing that's a big deal is that everybody thinks about moving down here if they're doing it as a permanent thing but there isn't it's not permanent it's not like getting married you can leave any time you want so i think that's also important is to approach it with the whimsy of travel not the permanence of a move and i think that leads to a lot being a lot happier you have to know the market a little bit there's definitely like things that we'll do is we'll point people to resources like on our website we have at this point the only costa rican uh numbers on the market total market uh median prices median prices and towns cost per bedroom you know some nice some nice analytics that give you a sense of like well how do i break this into pieces median price for an acre so that's one thing definitely check out vivatropical.com the other thing is you do have to know the market a little bit one thing i would just outright say is i would never listen to the realtor that it's a good deal um they may be perfectly honest but get more than one opinion for sure and and just plan on triangulating plan on going to look at property with one guy and then go with the other guy and go with the other guy and you'll be surprised at what you learned by doing that real estate sales in costa rica is different because in the states it's more regulated there's a board of people watching over the industry it has its own watchdog here does not and it doesn't take much you think you and in many cases that is all you need is a business card to start selling property uh also there's just the inherent motivation of a salesperson and that is that they can't make money unless they sell you something so even if they're the nicest person in the world of course that gets into the way when we're talking about ethics at least partially so you have to be that's why you go and talk to other people because you find somebody that you trust that's really what it comes down to and so you shop till you find someone you can believe in the right reasons to move here are that you want an adventure that you really think you'll like living there not because it's cheap if you're coming because you think it's cheap there's really better value in a lot of ways just overall lifestyle value in the southern us go to florida go to alabama georgia anywhere in there the rust belt has it's just less expensive in a lot of ways and you don't just when you factor in the move and you factor in some of the challenges of being down here but if you want an adventure and you want something different and you want more freedom and you want to more nature then those are all great reasons to come down if you're enjoying this video please remember to subscribe and click the bell so you'll be notified when the next video is up please give us a like and leave a comment it helps support our channel so we can keep bringing you videos like this

Channel: Living Overseas TV

Views: 16,095

Keywords: costa rica, playa guiones, real estate, expat interviews, international living, living abroad, living in costa rica, living overseas, move to costa rica, moving to costa rica, retirement in costa rica, retiring in costa rica, starting a business in costa rica, nosara costa rica, Nosara Costa Rica Real Estate, costa rica healthcare, Costa Rica crime, costa rica real estate for sale, costa rica real estate, how to move to costa rica, Expat Life, Expats in Costa Rica

Id: zijpbZ3e1IQ

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020