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Hi Lotus, if I get up that way I will check it out for you. We actually have several real good rains this month, so the plants might be doing ok. We had a good rain last night.
To follow up on Scott’s comment, all paperwork on any purchase, establishment of a corporation, etc. is handled and processed in San Jose. A good attorney is going to do all of the due dilegence neccessary for you and that does not require them to live or have an office in the area you are buying. Many San Jose attorneys have a satellite office in other areas of the country but primarily work out of San Jose.
There are still accomodations in that price range. As RF says, they are on the lower end. Not in the backpacker hostel catagory, but smaller, older places with not all of the bells and whistles. There are a couple of smaller hotels where we live in Esterillos Oeste which is just 15 minutes south of Jaco. They are in the $40 to $60 range and are clean and secure and right at the beach.
I did say, almost every case. There are always exceptions to the rule, but it should definitely be a red flag to buyers to make sure as you said they get full disclosure from everyone. The problem is the buyer is not always privy to information between the seller, and the agent listing the property and representing the buyer. The agents I know of personally here that take a commission from the buyer are not ones that I would recommend to anyone.
One thing to consider also when using an honest, qualified real estate agent is that you will have someone on the ground in the area to follow up for you after the sale. In most cases the buyer is only in the country for a short period of time up to the time of purchase and may not be planning on moving to the area for some time. Most buyers are not in the area during the bulk of the construction of their home, condo, or development of the infastructure of a community. A good agent will keep you updated on a regular basis with pictures and information as the project progresses. A good agent will spend as much if not more time working for you after the sale as they do before the sale.
On the note of the seller paying the commission, as Scott said, that is the case nearly all the time. I do know of agents or brokers that require a commission from the buyer and I would question this type of practice because in most cases I believe these agents would also be getting a commission from the seller in almost every case.
You must have never been there when traffic is on the bridge. That bridge is the main route for overland cargo coming up from Panama on the east coast. Tractor trailer rigs come across that bridge daily. Yes it looks a little scary, but it’s been that way for years and does hold traffic. In fact, that last time we were there trucks were backed up all the way across the bridge.
I have not been to Bocas since Feb. of last year so I’m not sure about the bridge there. We have never driven across the bridge at Sixiola if that is the one you are talking about. I don’t know if that one is ever not crossable by foot.
Dos Palmas does not have a website. Their e-mail though is dospalmas@bocasmail.com Their phone number is 507-757-9906
We love Bocas and have been there 5 or 6 times in the last year and a half. It is not real practical though to drive to. There really is no need to have a car in Bocas as it is a very small town and it’s only about .50 cents for a cab from one end of town to the other. Bocas is on the island of Colon, so getting your own car there is a hassle. You have to take the slow moving ferry from Almarante. The other option is leaving your car in Almarante or somewhere near the border town of Sixiola. I would not suggest leaving your car in any of these towns. We always take the bus and it is a relaxing trip. It’s best to go to San Jose the day before so you can catch the 6:00 am bus to Sixiola. You catch that bus at the Caribbean bus terminal, not the Coca Cola terminal. We always stay in Bocas at Dos Palmes a great little hotel with a back deck built out over the water. The owner Lavinia has a big pot of coffee every morning waiting for guest out on the deck. It’s a great place to sit and watch the town come to life in the morning over a warm cup of coffee.
We brought two cats in with us and all we needed was the health certificates from the vet. In fact, when we got to customs in CR we could have just walked right on through, but we went and actually looked for the person we were supposed to give the form to.
Skype is awesome, but the only draw back is it will not work with dial up. If you don’t have a highspeed connection, don’t waste your money. We just got cable and cable Internet here in Esterillos Oeste and it works fantastic.
The secondary market is actually quite well depending on the product. The well established and well financed projects are selling good because they have a good product and good reputation. That reflects on the good resale market in their projects, especially on finished units. Many of the luxury condo projects in Jaco have an excellent resale record. There is good resale also in the private sector of single family homes when the asking price is a reasonable. That is the key to the misconception that a lot of people make when they say “the market is down”. The market isn’t neccesarily coming down, the asking prices are coming down to a reasonable level. The homes that are being sold though, in almost every instance are selling for a nice profit over what the seller originally purchased it for. The seller may have had to lower their expectation of tripling or quadrupling thier investment. So in reality its the asking price that is down, not the market it’self. The market has slowed somewhat, but it is not really down in my opinion.
Some of the developers of the large tracts of gated community type projects are still selling quite well I think because they still incorporate a fairly high pressure sales approach and in the cases of the large tract developers are still over promising and under delivering. I have heard stories of great profits of 2 and 3 times the original purchase price on resale of lots in these big unfinished developments, but I have yet to actually meet someone that has realized this windfall. I know of at least 5 or 6 lots for sale in the Costa Esterillos project that have been on the market for a year now with no seious inquiries. Of course many of those lots were purchased site unseen, or purchased before anything was done other than dirt roads, so people bought based on the promises of the developers. I think one of the biggest factors that effects the resale market in these types of developments is the lack of progress. It’s a big red flag to people when they drive up and see a beautiful gated entrance, with fountains and nice landscaping that has been there for a year, and walk through the other side of that gate to see mud, gravel, huge rocks, and weeds 3 feet tall growing in the middle of what was once a dirt road. It’s not real promising to potential buyers on the resale market when they know the development has bragged about selling 80% already, or their boast of “sold out in just 4 months”, and then to see the only progress is a beautiful gate and no other progress in a full year. To be somewhat fair, they have finally moved some equipment to the Costa Esterillos site and are moving some dirt around. Someone told me CD told them they could start building their home the first week in January. I do not see that happening, but I do hope for the sake of all of the people that have invested in those types of developments that the company does eventually follow through on all of their promises. I think resale is going to continue to be slow in those types of developments for some time.
I will disagree on several points you make David. First of all, I would disagree that church affiliated charities tend to take care of their own sects first. My experience being involved in church affiliated charities is just the opposite. The vast majority of charities reach out to the community at large and do not descriminate based on religion, race, or anything else. Food banks, clothing exchanges, housing assitance, etc. are all offered through organizations like this and are run much more efficiently and less expensive than any similiar program run by a local, state or federal government.
You seem to want line item details laid out in a business plan format before you will except that cutting government waste is realistic. I have offered plenty of details or suggestions on cutting waste. They are generalizations, but all are glaring examples of wasteful spending. I consider that detail enough for the sake of this conversation. Now if someone wanted to get serious about implementing some of the cuts then we can get down to brass tax about the details of handling each individual situation. To do so simply because you demand it for the sake of trying to win an argument here is a waste of our time. You make the statement “And you have yet to offer us a single detail of what it is you would like to cut”. Perhaps you need to re-read what I wrote. It’s pretty clear the several suggestions I made pointing out waste in our education system, waste in our public service sector, etc. I made just a few suggestions, but I gaurentee you that if people wanted to start jumping in here and listing wasteful spending it would not take long before we had a list of 100’s of things that with careful evaluation, most could be cut in one manner or another and in a lot of cases completely eliminated. It would take hard work and an honest effort from the leadership of anyone that is in office at the time. I do not except your pessimistic view that “It’s not as easy as you think”. No, it really is as easy as just doing it. I will admit the complicated part is in the details of implementing cuts, but that isn’t rocket science either. it just takes getting started and making the effort.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to compare government waste with that in the private sector. The two are completely seperate issues and have absolutely nothing to do with the other. You seem to think that we aren’t allowed to complain about government waste because there is waste in private business. As I previously stated, you have enough waste in private business and it will fail. If we are not a share holder, member of the board or even work for one of those companies, we have no say in how that business is run. The glaring difference here is that when it comes to government wastefull spending we do have a say. I do think a lot of excutive salaries are rediculous, and there is plenty of wasteful spending especially the larger the company becomes, but you have the option to not do business with that company if you feel that strongly about how they run their business. You have the option to not work for that company if you feel that strongly about how they run their business. We dont’ have the option to not have government. Unfortunately it is a neccessary evil. We do have a responsibility to make sure our money is being spent wisely and that no more of our personal income is siphoned from us than should be neccessary for government to provide essential services.
David, by offering only sarcastic suggestions it seems you think it would be difficult in identifying government waste. I do not take such a cynical view. While I agree, one of the challenges is in defining what is waste and what is not, that is where real leadership in government is lacking. All of the essential services you mention are already funded, and have been for years by taxes already being collected. Property taxes, gasoline taxes, sales taxes, and taxes on businesses are typically adequate to fund those services. I would not describe any of the areas you mention as government waste. However, there is no doubt waste within those departments that real leadership could define and stream line.
You mention education. Education of course is not a government waste. I would argue though that education is one department that has some of the biggest abuses of wasteful spending. It’s a travesty that teachers are paid as little as they are and as little money that does gets down to the classroom. I will use the example of California. I believe it was 10 years ago that a study showed that there were eight administrators and staff for every one teacher. Each of those administrators were paid more than the average teacher, had better benefits, including much more lucrative retirement packages. People made the mistake of throwing money at the symptoms in the way of voting for higher taxes supposedly designated for education, or voting for school bond issues supposedly designated for education. What typically has happened is all of that new tax revenue simply goes to new supposedly great ideas that add more administrative and staff that are supposed to cause the problems of no money for the classroom and teachers pay. The new revenue never even makes it down to the teachers pay or the classroom in general. The education department within the State government in California has become a government in it’s self and that just breeds more and more waste. Of course those administrators typically consider themselves more important than anyone in the system below them. That was never more apparent than in the incident a few years back in a northern California district where when the district was given a check for $80,000 for their portion of the revenue from the California Lottery, the school board used the entire $80,000 to remodel a lounge for them selves. Not one dollar went to books, supplies, or anything having to do with the education of their students.
Another huge area of waste is in many of the social programs offered by Federal, State and local governments. Many programs replaced more efficient programs that were run by volunteers, churches, and other non-profit organizations. When you allow government to take over programs, they typically spend more in administrative cost than they do on the actual end results that are supposed to be met. Take the homeless issue. While there is no doubt those that have mental issues and drug and alcohol problems, the more money government throws at the issue of homelessness, the easier it makes it for people to stay in that system. I can speak first hand with having involvement in Santa Cruz, California a mecca of homeless and the programs that support them.
We could discuss endlessly the waste within governments themselves. I never understood why many city, county and state employees where we lived were allowed to take their government car home for the weekend. They technically were supposed to pay for gas they used for personal use, but what most did was fill up on Friday afternoon before leaving for home for the weekend. That is just one of numerous examples of waste that true leadership could address.
Sure there is going to be a lot of toes you have to step on, but tough! The beauty of a society that rewards entrepreneurial efforts is, if there is a need, someone will find a way to fill it and typically more efficiently and cheaper than any government agency is able to.
I don’t buy the argument comparing government waste to waste in the private sector. The glaring difference is that the waste can and will eventually bring down a company that does not address the issue. While that is tragic, at least temporarily for the employees of that company, a more efficient company will step in to fill the gap and in turn bring jobs to replace some that were lost. That is not the case with waste within government. When something isn’t working in government, they never eliminate what isn’t working, they simply raise taxes so they can throw more money at the problem. It really comes down to the basic problem of treating the symptom instead of treating the source of the problem.
While I do not think you could eliminate the personal income tax in one swift move, I do believe if there was honest leadership and massive cutting of the waste in every area, you could not only eliminate the personal income tax completely, but you could also cut other taxes substantially and not effect the essential services that we have to rely on government for. In my humble opinion, it is only the essential services that we should rely on government for anyway.
First of all I would argue that if you eleminated government waste you could eleminate personal income tax completely. As to the issue of a city imposing their own income tax seperate from State and Federal, my argument against that is that when you come into a city that you do not live in, almost everything you do within that city is already taxed. If you are driving a car, you have paid taxes on the gasoline you are using. If you buy any products in that city, eat out at restaurants, go to a show, etc. you are paying taxes on each of those items. So the non-resident wage earner is already paying a good portion of their earned income in different forms of taxes to the city they work in. So it is not an issue of them benefiting without contributing. They are paying for the benefits they receive within that community. The company you might be working for in the city that you do not live in is already paying an enormous amount of taxes for having that business within that city. I just do not buy the argument that a city needs to tax personal income. The optimal word there is “need”. Again, with most cities as it is with States and Federal government, cut the waste and you would have a suplus of funds.
David, businesses themselves within a city and county pay enormous amounts in taxes that supposedly go towards the infrastructure and services provided in that city or county for the supposed priveledge of having a business in that town. The sales tax, property taxes, etc. in those cities or counties the same. To scold someone for complaining about a city collecting an income tax in my opinion is just wrong. Why intelligent people ever allowed their government to start collecting an income tax is beyond me. All that allows governments to do is expand their size and the more that happens the less control the people have. That is a simplistic view of course, but it’s not rocket science either.
