STR investment in Costa Rica ?

[Jeremy Marquez]

Hi guys,

My wife and are are thinking about buying property on the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica (Ballena Area). As I'm doing my research and due diligence, it occurred to me that I should ask if anyone here has had experience with this. Specifically, we like the idea of running the property as an STR.

My wife is a citizen of Costa Rica, although we live in the US. I’m not sure if that opens any doors for us doing business there. One of my concerns is finding a competent and affordable PM to turn over the property each time a guest leaves.

The other thing is financing. I don’t want to tie up all my capital there and I understand it’s difficult to get a traditional mortgage from a local bank there. Does anyone have experience with “alternative financing” in Costa Rica?

Thanks in advance.

[Julio R Gonzalez]

@Jeremy Marquez

Hi Jeremy, 

I can not help you but I am interested in what you end up doing, I am also a US city with a Tica wife and we are planning on moving to CR in about 2 years. My goal is to start with REI in the USA to get experience and then continue investing from CR and in CR. We bought a land that is currently under development in the town we are going to be living (Santo Domingo de Heredia) and we have the builder already but have not done the loan yet (I heard the interest rates over there are crazy high) so I was even considering getting a loan here in the States to fund the project over there (don't know if that's even possible).

BTW I met an Investor that had some Airbnb in one of the beaches and said it was a nightmare (the PM) but maybe he didn't do a good job screening the PM? don't know. 

Anyways I would like to hear more from your project.  Good luck!

JRG