Real Estate in Costa Rica – Helpful Websites & Resources

By Brandon Cornett | 7/22/09
© 2011, All rights reserved

Every few years, a new country becomes the hottest trend for American expatriates buying abroad. Costa Rica has held that title for a couple years now. Today, it is one of the most popular foreign destinations for American home buyers.

Some are buying real estate in Costa Rica for investment and/or vacation homes. Others are relocating themselves permanently. Either way, there are plenty of good reasons to support such a decision.

But I’m not going to motivate you into buying a home in Costa Rica. Chances are, if you’re reading this article, you’ve already made that decision. Instead, I’m going to give you a list of websites and other resources that can help you learn about your Costa Rica real estate options.

Cost Rica Real Estate Resources

This list comes from hours of research. Believe it or not, there aren’t that many quality websites with Cost Rica real estate info. So I’ve saved you a lot of time by filtering out the most useful websites. You’re welcome.

• www.century21cr.com — I put this site at the top of the list because it offers two things that are important to me. It’s well designed and easy to use. And, more importantly, it has plenty of property listings. This website is owned by a Century 21 outfit that operates out of Costa Rica.
• www.propertiesincostarica.com – What this website lacks in polish, it makes up for with the sheer quantity of data. You can find plenty of Costa Rican properties for sale through this site, and you can search price range as well as region. They recently added a special category for luxury estates (i.e., properties that cost more than $1 million USD).
• www.tropisphere.com — This highly functional website offers plenty of property listings. You can search for Costa Rica real estate by price range, area and property type (condos, beachfront, luxury properties, etc.).
• www.costaricaera.com — ERA is a real estate franchise based in New Jersey. They also have an international branch, with offices all over the world. This is the website for their Costa Rica operation. It’s a typical corporate real estate website, so you’ll only have access to properties listed by ERA agents. But it’s still useful and worth a visit.
• www.buysafecostarica.com — As the name of this website implies, they offer a “safe” angle to buying properties in Costa Rica. I can only assume that means they go the extra mile to help you make a smart investment. It’s a slick website from a design standpoint, but at the time of publication it lacked data. Most of the searches I performed only pulled up one or two properties, or none at all.

If you’re serious about buying real estate in Costa Rica, I recommend that you print out this page for future reference. These websites will help you find a property that suits your needs.