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Hi all. I’m a newbie, and just discovered this site. I live in New York, and came to Cost Rica a few years ago. I still can’t get it out of my mind. I felt so at home. Everything from the people’s mindset to natures graces captivated my entire being.
Ever since then, I’ve been kicking around the idea of just moving to CR permanently. I know it sounds drastic. Overall, I’m happy with living in NY, as I have a nice job and lifestyle. If I could only figure out to make a nice buck in CR…..What do people in CR do besides retire and sell real estate?
My impression is that Americans who live in CR fall into a few categories:
1) Retirees – this group does not need to work.
2) Real estate agents – Easy to get into, hard to “make it” is my impression.
3) Other – ??? What do these people do??? Ex-pats? Business owners?I am in my early 30’s and do well for my age. But am I not close to retirement, so need to earn a good living. I work in the insurance industry, which is socialized in CR, so I cannot leverage my current experience.
I also read on the forum that you cannot apply for jobs that would take jobs away from CR nationals. Hence the need for a “unique” skill set. Earning even 2,000/month is fine if you can stay in CR your whole life. But what happens if 30 years from now the something happens (politics, personal circumstances, etc.), and I need to move back to the US? I will have no savings….
Perhaps I’m overthinking things.
What other issues are important? Can one stay in CR indefinately (by leaving and reentering every ?90? days?).
Thanks for your help!
Dave, I am sure you love CR like many of us. How ever you might want to search this site, you will find many postings regarding living and working in CR.
Unfortunalty or fortunalty which ever way you look at it CR protects the job industry and you can’t work as a employee unless you fall under a very certain situations.( you can look at the Embassy web site).
They have changed the rules and for residency and you have to put a lot more money into a bank account than you used too. How ever no matter what you can not work legally in CR under a Residencia or as a retiree. If you choose to own a biz you must also employee at least one Tico as well.
This doesn’t mean people don’t work here illegally as a tourist visa, but you are taking your chances and I belive it was two weeks ago where they deported some Americans for working while a tourist.
What Scott Benson said and more . . .
My attorney, who is well connected at Immigracion, tells me that they (Immigracion) are clamping down on perpetual tourists. If they see an ongoing pattern of ninety-day presences here with three-day interruptions, they may deny you re-entry for up to five years. The point is that if you want to live here you need to abide by the residency requirements.
Thanks guys.
This all makes a lot of sense. Sounds like relocating and working in CR is not a straightforward process.
What then fuels the real estate market in CR? Is it mostly baby boomers looking to retire? For whatever reason, it seems like the demand for vacation homes/investment properties would be limited for Americans?
For example, as a white collar NY professional, it would take me about 10 hours to get from NYC to Manuel Antonio (for example). So, for me (and probably many others), a weekend getaway is not realistic due to time. Perhaps I could spend 1 week a year on vacation. 2 max.
For me, investing in CR real estate for me would be 98% an investment play since I would only be there 2% of the time. But if most of the other people in the market are like me, the only thing that can drive RE prices up would be increase in demand from retirees and increase amount of tourist looking to rent out homes/condos.
Is there any analysis that shows these drivers and how they effect the RE market in CR?
Things like a new marina in Quepos are nice, but the average Costa Rican does not make enough money to afford RE in the in the hot spots. That makes the markets driven almost entirely by foreign investment, correct?
Forgive me daveJ but Americans are not the only people that occupy this planet, there are others.
In February, our VIP Members bought about a dozen condos just in one project in Santa Ana and there’s probably more purchases that we don’t know of…
Out of those ten people (one person bought three) we had buyers from the USA, Canada, a lovely couple from the Czech Republic, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Britain and Costa Rica.
You might also want to see ‘Costa Rica Real Estate Prices – Why Europeans are buying.’ at
Bottom line? Costa Rica is attractive to North Americans, Europeans and on a continent famous for political & financial instability – to most of Central and Latin America.
Scott Oliver – Founder
Founder – WeLoveCostaRica.comThanks Scott. I didn’t mean to come across offensive. Forgive me. I just thought the most likely countries would be the US and Canada given the location. I was not aware of the European and Latin American influence. The Europeans certainly do have better retirement and vacation options than us Americans! 🙂
But look at the prices they must pay ….
My parents who live in Scotland, at least two hours away from a major city, bought a small new home a couple of years back for the equivalent of about US$300K
I’m buying one for about the same price but there’s a difference, our new home is about three times as large and built with far superior materials.
So when Brits and other Europeans see that their money can buy 2-3 times as much real estate in comparison with ‘back home’ PLUS far lower property taxes, PLUS minimal expenses on utilities, they tend to forget that it’s a long trip here…
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comScott B.,
Please point me to the regulation which backs up your statement “If you choose to own a biz you must also employee at least one Tico as well”. There are probably 10’s of thousands of Costa Rica S.A.’s that have no employees, and I don’t believe there is anything illegal about this.
Dear all,
I live and work in Italy and I’m 47 years old.
Many times I have tought about quality of life in Costa Rica and thinking one day to live there (in Europe we have a lot of stress as we spend hours stopped in the traffic and for other reasons).
Last months with my wife finally we decided to visit CR and two weeks ago we jumped on the plane and after more or less 24 hours we were there and spent 12 days going round with a car (tyres are not very good).
Wonderful country, good people -international and Tico- …with some problems with roads in some part of the country.
For sure in next three/four years I cannot full move for three reasons:
1) I have to wait three years that my daughter will go to university and leave my home (for her the re-location is not an option)
2) I have my high professional work and I’m not ready to leave it at the moment
3) I have to “taste” a country before I will leave for ever.
First option:
keep it as a dream and visit CR time by time for a week and then when it will be the time (in three-four years) coming back on this option)
Second option (on which I’m working with some friends in Italy):
Buy a lot and build up an eco-lodge of about 30 rooms with a very nice restaurant with Italian food (one of my frind is a chef).
The idea is to manage the business 3/4 months each of us with our presence in CR.
We (with my friends and shareholders) will come back to CR during the wet season to complete the tour of Costa Rica as I have not seen yet the North Pacific -Guanacaste- and the south area of Manual Antonio.
At the moment I like South Limon.
I read the very interesting Scott’s book.
Please let me have your open idea as I like to have the spirit of people that leave there.
In Internet I cannot find some statistics about tourist and I would like the trends of tourists in the last 5 years for each touristic area (I can like one area but at the end the business has some rules; even if at the end I can take a different decision I need to look at the pictures).
Thanks to all in advance for any idea, suggestion, warning and any thing you want share with me…..and I hope to meet some of you in the near future to drink a glass(cost of wine is very expensive in CR . Why? Is there a import tax ?- Probably I will start to import Italian wine!! I’m in the food business).
SalvatoreThe best thing we could have done (and did) is to come down for four months to try things before deciding to move here. Our eyes have been opened on many things. We love it here, but after four months we’ve decided we’ll split our time between our home in the states and CR instead of staying here all the time.
Try it out for a couple of months. It will iron out all the wrinkles in your plan.
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