Scott’s New Rustic Home – Building Your Own Home in Costa Rica is an Extreme Sport!

Building your own home in Costa Rica while you are living here can only be described as an ‘extreme sport’ he said, diplomatically.

Having your own home built in Costa Rica for you while you are “upstate New York” enjoying the snow and the blizzards (sorry!) would be more like financial suicide…

One of our VIP Members emailed this week saying that they have hired people in Costa Rica to build their vacation dream home near the beach and “we are looking forward to seeing it all finished when we return to Costa Rica in six months.”

Be still my heart!

Scott’s New Rustic Home

:

My lady and I live in Costa Rica full-time, we both live and work just outside San José and we were anxiously awaiting the day when we could spend long weekends in our new cypress wood home in the mountains and we have travelled there every week to check on the progress of the home building.

When we first found the land that we wanted to build on, I gave a copy of my book, How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa to the man that would help us build our new home in Costa Rica.

As you know, when someone does a good job for me, I am proud to recommend them to our VIP Members and do so because doing business is tough enough anywhere in the world never mind trying to find reliable people to build your own home in Costa Rica which is a very foreign country for most of our VIP Members.

My hope was to encourage this man to do a good job for me because if he did, I would happily recommend him to every one I know.

I remember when they first started building it and the small construction crew had just started working on the foundations.

Our First Disaster:

When we arrived on site one Friday afternoon in July 2005, I immediately started trembling and my face turned a rather unpleasant reddish grey colour and I could barely control myself.

“But, but, but this is not right! This is not right! What are you doing? This is not right.” I screeched!

What had happened was that we had purchased a triangular shaped plot of land and we had specifically designed the home to fit the land which would face North East.

It had a spectacular mountain valley view but, the construction crew had started to build the home facing the wrong direction – North West. Hmmm!

The good news was that this still meant that we had a breathtaking view however, the bad news was that if, in the very unlikely event that someone bought the plot of land to the left of us, we would be able to see the front of that house as we relaxed on our huge wraparound terrace…

We wanted total privacy and we had designed the house and the position of the home with that in mind…

I telephoned the Costa Rican man from whom we had purchased the land and it was his construction crew that was building our new home. This Costa Rican owns hundreds and hundreds of hectares of prime Costa Rica land and is a millionaire many times over.

Reddish Grey Faced Man (Me!): “But I don’t understand… Why is my home positioned at this angle when I specifically designed it to take advantage of the shape of my land?”

Costa Rica Real Estate Millionaire who always carries a machete and drives a brand new Merecedes SUV and also a new Mercedes sports car but not at the same time: “Because we had to build the retaining wall.”

Bright Red Faced Man (Me!): “But what does that have to do with the position of my home?”

Costa Rica Real Estate Millionaire: “After we built the wall, we used up an extra metre and a half of land at the back so therefore your house plans would not fit in the space anymore so we had to adjust the angle.”

Iridescent Red Faced Man (Me!): “But why didn’t you stop everything and tell me that wanted to start building MY home in the wrong place.”

Costa Rica Real Estate Millionaire: “Because I didn’t want the workers sitting around doing nothing. I still have to pay them.”

‘Nuclear Red’ Faced Man Complete With Nasal Flames (Me!): “But you’re paying them with my %!$?#* money!”

And we had been visiting the site every week. You can just imagine the ‘shock and awe’ someone living in the USA might have had planning to come back to Costa Rica in six months to their newly built home to discover that A: The home was built at the wrong angle and B: His new next door neighbours waved at him every time he walked out on his terrace…

What Happened in the End?

In the end, we still have a beautiful vacation home in the mountains with a great view with a protected forest on either side of us but, we were forced to make some minor changes to the design and it is now facing NW instead of NE.

Thankfully, we were able to arrange the purchase of the adjoining lot to protect our privacy but, that does mean that we spent twice as much money as we had anticipated on the land.

Thankfully the land in this fairly rugged area of the country is invariably less than $10 per square meter anyway. As usual, the more you buy, the less it costs…

There are always exceptions but when it comes to building your home in Costa Rica, we would strongly suggest that unless you have someone that you know intimately and trust implicitly who can visit your construction site every single day, it is probably NOT wise to build something from a distance.

Would I recommend this same machete wielding Mercedes driver

to help you build your own home?

Never in a billion years!

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.