What Do We Have In Costa Rica Now?

At present, there at two international airports in Costa Rica. There is the Daniel Oduber Quiros airport in Liberia in the northwest and the Juan Santamaria airport, just outside the capital city San Jose.

There are 120 authorized landing strips in total in Costa Rica with 26 of them administered by the state and the rest of them are private. You can see the entire list of all other Costa Rica Airports.

In 1999 a company an Alterra led consortium
was awarded a 20 year concession for the management, maintenance and
major rehabilitation of Juan Santamaria, just outside San Jose, Costa
Rica. The busiest airport in Central America.

You can see from their ‘Portfolio’ of projects listed on their website that Alterra planned “to invest US$200 million in capital improvements to the airport” which is a substantial sum of money.

Since that time, there have been all sorts of legal wranglings Alterra Partners over projected cost overruns and debates as to where Costa Rica would find the money to finish the major renovations to the existing international airport.

Show Me The Money!



Makes one wonder how Costa Rica would dig up the money or make other arrangements to build a brand new international airport since they having so many problems renovating the existing airport in San Jose and trying to expand the other airport in Liberia.

In San Jose, we still have the second, third and fourth phase of construction to go through and according to the local Minister of Transportation, this construction is due for completion between 2011 and 2015.

I would therefore suggest that if they have not finished remodeling the #1 most important international airport in Costa Rica, the chances of them starting a new international airport very, very, very slim.

Zero Proof:



I have no problems with professional salespeople, partly because I have been involved with sales and marketing in various forms for the past 25 years. But, as you will have gathered from my articles, I have a problem with sales people using unsubstantiated information to persuade people to buy their piece of Costa Rica real estate.

One of the popular ‘pitches’ goes along the lines of; “Buy now! Get
in on the ground floor before everybody realizes that they are building
a new international airport in [insert-the-town-name-here] and you will
be able to sell your land for ten times the price you paid for it!”

Unfortunately, the Costa Ricans that I know that have been involved
in the real estate business tell me that Costa Rica has been talking
about the “new international airport” for 30 years! Nearly as long as
they have been talking about the new highway to the beach!

It Ain’t Happening Soon!

The real estate ‘developers’ in Costa Rica that we see making these unsubstantiated claims are:

A: Americans doing business in Costa Rica.

B: People who can not or will not verify if they have any previous real estate development experience and …

C: Offer zero proof that a “The government is also building (note the present tense) an additional airport in the city of Orotina…” (this page www.paragonpropertiesofcr.com/dialup/page6.htm has since been taken down) or, New airport: coming to the town of Orotina.”

So Where Is The Proof!



1. I first tried contacting seven different people at the Direccion General de Aviacion Civil.
Unfortunately I was not able to speak to anybody with authority on the
telephone and those seven people did not respond to two separate email
requests for information.

This is not unusual, Ticos are not generally as efficient as they
could be (he said politely) when it comes to returning phone call or
emails.

2. I then took a look at Banco Nacional de Costa Rica which is the largest state bank in Costa Rica and looked through their Banco Nacional de Costa Rica
website where I did find a page devoted to an “international airport”
for the southern zone. There is nothing mentioned anywhere for any
airport in Orotina.

On their Banco Nacional de Costa Rica website, if you click on the ‘Aeropuerto Internacional de la Zona Sur’ you’ll see that:

Costo: Sin datos

Cost: No information



Estudios Preliminares: Si existen

Preliminary Studies: Yes. They exist

Sector: Aeroportuario

Sector: Airport

Comentarios: Se requiere realizar los estudios de prefactibilidad del aeropuerto.

Comments: Airport pre-feasibility studies are required.

Bottom line? Even the international airport in the southern zone is still just an idea at this stage, with no budgets allocated.

3. Since that left me with few reliable sources, I emailed my friend Sr. Federico Carrillo Zurcher who at the time, was the Costa Rica Minister Of Finance. Federico has been good to me and was kind enough to write the introductions to both of my books: How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa as well as my first book, Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore in Bull and Bear Markets.

Apart from being the Minister of Finance at the time, Sr. Federico Carrillo is a trained private pilot, who has been involved in the negotiations
regarding the San Jose airport renovations with Alterra Partners and is
on the board of the Consejo Tecnico de Aviacion so he has a very good idea of what’s going on this country when it comes to aviation matters.

This is what Federico said to me in his email of 1st September 2005:

“An additional international airport in Costa Rica is not a priority at this time.
Our first priority is upgrading the San Jose airport and the Liberia
airport. We then plan to develop a new airport in the south west
(around Golfito) and after that, if the studies show that the demand is
there and the budgets are available, we could look at another airport
around the Orotina area – maybe in 15-20 years.” Sr. Federico Carrillo Zurcher, Costa Rica – Ministro de Hacienda.

This article was first written in September 2005 and as far as we can see, there is no concrete evidence that this situation has changed and nothing has been approved so, if you really feel comfortable basing your real estate investment decisions on something that the Costa Ricans have been talking about for 30 years which still hasn’t happened.., something that the Costa Rican Minister of Finance says might happen if “the demand is there and the budgets are available” in another 15-20 years – go for it!

But be warned!

You would NOT be investing in Costa Rica real estate, you would be speculating!

Written by Scott Oliver, author of How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa and Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.