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You can ship vehicles in a shipping container (20- or 40-feet long) or use a “roll on/ roll off” service.
The two critical questions you must resolve, regardless how your vehicles get here, are whether Costa Rica will permit their importation and nationalization and what the costs of Customs duty and other governmental fees will be.
A couple of years ago, Costa Rica was talking about not permitting the importation of older vehicles. I don’t know how that may have been resolved, but you would do well to find out. And the import duties may be a serious obstacle.
You’ll face both those issues regardless how the vehicle arrives in Costa Rica.
[quote=”VictoriaLST”]What, David, never been to a spa and had a mud bath?[/quote]
Yup, an’ that’s the way it’s gonna stay.
I know someone who just made the trip, alone, from North Dakota and had no problems save for bureaucratic delays in Honduras. That said, I wouldn’t do it for reasons of security, time and cost.
If all you’re looking for is a new tourist visa, you need only cross the border out of Costa Rica and then return. The 72 hour rule has to do with renewing your Customs duty exemption privilege. The two are unrelated.
In one of my many (many, many) post-retirement jobs, I worked for a company that gunshot fiberglass on the interiors of concrete pools to waterproof them. My understanding is that, while a concrete block or gunite pool may be less expensive (I don’t know if that’s true) and can be built to be very sturdy, the ongoing maintenance of keeping it watertight can be substantial. Waterproof paint and plaster coatings have a definite lifespan, and they’re not cheap.
Were it mine to do, I’d go with a fiberglass pool IF it could be installed in a way that would protect it from all but the worst earthquakes.
[quote=”jmcbuilder”]I think that you can find smaller bridge loans, say $40,000 and possibly less. [/quote]
Uh, lemme see if I can make this clear . . . If a $40k loan would bridge a used mobile home, I’d be in the gerbil cage market. If I had $40,000, I’d think I had died and gone to heaven (and we all know the likelihood of that happening).
The only bridge loan I could float would be if someone were upgrading their dog house. We’re not talking a whole lot of money here.
Where can you get 8.25% after tax? I’m guessing it’s a Costa Rican financial institution, right? Davivienda’s 8.5% is after Costa Rican taxes are withheld, too.
The service platform guy at Davivienda told me that if we could pull together a larger amount (say $200,000US), they could up the rate. And it wouldn’t have to be all from the same investor. That is, a group could make their deposits at the same time while maintaining their independence.
There are two “categories” of banks in Costa Rica, publicly-chartered ones and private ones. The publicly-chartered ones do have government protection for their depositors similar to the protection afforded to depositors in the U.S. by the FDIC. The private banks have no such protection.
The publicly-chartered banks include at least Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, Banco de Costa Rica, Banco Popular, Banco de San Jose, and a couple of others. Private banks include ScotiaBank, Davivienda (formerly HSBC), Citi, and some others.
No bank has failed since the mid-1990s when the government saw to all the depositors’ interests. Whether the government could pay depositors in a future failure is an open question.
We’re about to jump into a CD denominated in colones at around 8.5% for a year. I’ve heard that there’s a cooperative in San Ramon paying 12.5% but I have no personal knowledge of that.
[quote=”VictoriaLST”]Lets not forget – there is no law against rolling back the odometer in CR; the seller doesn’t have to disclose that the car was in a flood in the US and that’s why its here; cars are cut into pieces in the US and shipped as scrap to CR then welded back together and sold; a new car in CR may not have all the features that it should have (might be missing airbags). Anyone have other pitfalls to avoid?[/quote]
It’s important to understand, too, that a car purchased in Costa Rica, whether new or used, will be no cheaper than a car that someone (anyone) imports. Aside from those “reconstituted” from scrap, all cars imported to Costa Rica are charged the same import duties and other expenses regardless who imports them. No car importer is going to give money away, so in the end, it’s the final owner who pays all the costs. And those costs are passed on when the vehicle is resold.
If you shop for a car in the U.S., you’ll have a far greater selection to choose among, and you can know the car’s history including true mileage, wreck or flood status, etc.
The class act in U.S. TV service providers in Costa Rica is Dr. Dish (Don Paul) who can provide the dish you need, the Dish Network receiver, installation and account set-up. You can contact Don by e-mail at:
and
His service has been excellent for the past seven years. The same can hardly be said for the competition.
