Use tools like the VA loan for house hacking and your Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) to cover living costs while building equity.

This just covers the basics: how many people, do they have pets, what is their timeline for moving?

We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

$6000 is a large mortgage to cover for a vacancy. 

We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

This is because they're much more expensive than other countries in the region and, unlike in some other countries in the region Costa Rica doesn't have the mass tourism needed to get you the rental income that would justify those prices.This being said, it shouldn't be hard for you to break even though since all you'd need to do for that is cover your costs.

A fair entry point seems closer to $225,000-$250,000, but the terms of financing could justify going slightly higher if cash flow can cover the payments.

.)- All in Cost = Cost to build * Square foot  - Sales Price = All in Cost + (All in cost * 20%)* Covers contractor and soft cost on either fee based or cost+- Profit = (Sales price - (Sales Price * 7%))* - All in Cost   accounts for agent fees and closing cost- Initial List Price = Sales price + 10%      A buffer to test market absorption- Break Even being All in cost, point where everyone is paid except me. - List price is to test the market absorption at "x" price. 250k land + build.

@Chris Kay finding a quality, cost-effective contractor is extremely difficult:(There are thousands of contractors that are great talkers, but rarely perform within budget.Standard bait & switch is to lowball a bid, then once they get started all sorts of things "pop up" that somehow their bid didn't cover.

The City of Detroit is block-by-block in many Class B & C areas.In our opinion, zip codes cover too large an area.We use Detroit Neighborhoods, which are much smaller than zip codes.