“The chance to have a second life in the same body.  A life immersed in nature, and immersed in culture.  This would be to get involved in what is here as opposed to what I had already lived”.

After reading my article in a new magazine here in the zone, Raven’s flagship Montañas al Mar, an old friend approached me and took exception to one of my comments.  He was able to quote the article - the part where I mention how early land buyers here in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone were able to convert $1.00 invested in land into $120.00 by selling that land.

My old friend, who is seated squarely in the middle of the “early investors” group, made the point to me that the so called “early investors”, hardly had “investing” in mind.  This wasn’t what they were doing.  For some reason, this sparked my question: “Why did you move here”? And hence his answer as noted above, which I find to be profoundly beautiful, and the wisdom of which caused me to pause, and it set off a chain link series of memories as to my own reasons for moving here, none of which had to do with investing.

In my conversation with Old Friend, he talked about the day when you would buy a large piece of land, partly because that was all that was available and because that was the life that you wanted.  There certainly weren’t the conveniences here that there are now, but there was the serenity and quiet, and a chance to live “a second life in the same body”.  Granted, the thought of parceling off a piece of piece of that land in the future to reduce, or fully compensate one’s initial investment was present, but was not the key motivator.

Working in real estate in Costa Rica, one tends to get the viewpoint of valuing the land we work with in terms of “asset appreciation” and “investment potential”.  This is indeed what a certain percentage of our buyers are concerned with. However, just like some of the early investors, a number of our buyers now are life-stylers, those who are looking to live life in a way that differs from the way they’ve lived it up till now, and that have placed “asset appreciation” low on the list of criteria that they are looking for.

“Why did you move here” is a great mental exercise for us expats and migrators.  I suppose that there will be some that answer the question with: “I came to invest in land and make a lot of money”, but I think that they’d be in a minority among those that live here.

The beauty of buying land in an area such as this is that you can perhaps optimize your dreams in the buying of that land.  The land itself becomes the means by which you can live in this beautiful area of planet earth.  There are so many ingenious ways that expats find to support themselves here: vacation rentals, B & B’s, spas and retreats are all in full bloom here for this very reason.  One couple I know have cabinas, a highly rated restaurant, a decorative iron works shop and a petting zoo on their property, even though the property is a little off the beaten path.  Its hard to know if it’s a money maker, but it clearly allows them to live happily in Costa Rica.

There seems to be an irresistible push to make Costa Rica just like any other desirable destination, with all the services and conveniences of a Florida or a southern California.  There are a couple of factors here which may affect this “push” from coming through to full fruition. One is the topography.

Costa Rica is a geologically young country.  Pressed up by colliding plates, the country was thrown up by erratic tectonic pressures in an anything but orderly manner.  After living here for over 10 years I still have to carry a compass with me to establish “north” in a given location, so abstract is the lay of the land. Even if pure lucre were given free reign to define development in the zone, it would be limited by the radical nature of the topography.

And then there is the matter of consciousness.  Costa Rica news headlines are rife with reports of catastrophes and subsequent damage control that rampant development has caused in the earlier developed areas of Costa Rica.  We here in the southern zone are benefitting from the mistakes made elsewhere.  There is a genuine interest on the part of foreigners and Ticos alike to preserve this gem-like portion of Costa Rica, a consciousness that transcends the turning of a buck.

Well, we’re hoping so.

So much of how we’re doing here as a species, living in the finite space of this planet, is defined by our use of land.  Just in the last week I’ve enjoyed the conversation mentioned in this article, and others with developers, house builders and residents alike that are focused on “green” and “sustainability”, in their truest sense.

There is a construction company taking shape in Dominical that is no less than visionary in its approach to the building materials that will be used to construct human habitat.  There is a company in Canada that is about to make solar homes with thatched roofing affordable to land buyers here in the zone.  There are efforts on the part of developers to employ ecological easements to definitively restrict the further subdividing of their lots, into perpetuity - all good.

We are about to see a major change here in the zone.  More people are going to find their way here with the paving of the bumpy road that links Quepos in the north to Dominical, the gateway to the zone.  Development and progress are going to happen.  It seems to be an irresistible force in human society.  More, bigger, better.

So, why are we here?

Perhaps it’s the differences as compared to where we come from.  Perhaps it’s the value of quieting the inner dialogue that ran so rampant in our minds “back home” - freedom from media saturation - a connecting with nature and the spiritual side of things - an opportunity to “get involved in what is here as opposed to what I had already lived”.

How we answer this question may define how things look around here in the coming years.

 If you would like to send us your answer to this question, please fill feel free to cut loose with your creative thoughts.

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Episode 3 features a discussion on the Pros and Cons of buying a house or building a house in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone.  Featured listings in the episode include–

Casa by The Pond - #319; a lovely house located in central Ojochal with a pond, swimming pool and extra sub-divided building parcel.

Uvita House - #83; a well-built, two-story house with a private, ocean view setting in upper Uvita.

Casa La Big Sur - #355; with construction almost complete, this large estate home promises to set the standard for luxury living in the southern Pacific zone of Costa Rica.

The Oasis - #319; enjoy ocean views, privacy and plenty of amenities in this artistic, modern architectural retreat in the well-established enclave of Lagunas.

Building materials, construction scenarios and land purchase trends fill out the topics covered in the episode.

The PRETOMA (Programa Restauracion de Tortugas Marinas) website

The US Department of State`s Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science imposed a trade embargo on all Costa Rican shrimp exports to the US, effective as of May 1.  The embargo is due to Costa Rica’s failure to enforce its laws that require commercial shrimp fishers to protect sea turtles from capture and death in trawl nets by using Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs).

And then a little commentary on the matter from Globalpost:

It’s not the first time that the United States, Costa Rica’s chief shrimp buyer (shrimp exports to the U.S. grossed $2.8 million in 2007), has put a trade embargo on Tico shrimp. The ban has been imposed four times since 1999, in an attempt to penalize this country’s shrimping habits.

Fishers are netting shrimp illegally near river heads and protected marine areas in the Pacific, and aren’t using technology designed to prevent turtles from drowning in trawl nets, according to PRETOMA.

The article included statements that the biggest hit here is to Costa Rica’s “Green” reputation.  Costa Rica is apparently allowing shrimp harvesting in such a way that endangers the marine turtles — the green sea turtle, the olive ridley, hawksbill and leatherback.  So the U.S. is wielding its influence, and for those of us that like the idea of preserving the earth’s natural resources, this is good news.

Yesterday I was talking with Chef Dave from La Cusinga.  He’s doing some pretty interesting things here, one of which is cooking up a culinary experience at the La Cusinga restaurant which is called The Gecko.  I haven’t tried it yet, but for those that have, they say that it is nothing short of divine.

Anyway, it turns out that Chef Dave is a bit of a writer, and that he is interested in a lot of the things that I like writing about as well.  He’s started his own blog over at Chef of the Jungle.  He is the one that had originally told me about the U. S. ban on Costa Rica shrimp imports to the U. S. (You can read his commentary on the matter by clicking here).  That is indicative of the topics found in his blog.  Here is a clip from his website:

I am here to offer my impressions, opinions and observations about not just my life here as a Chef, but more, about the state of the culinary nation in Costa Rica.  I will visit ferias (farmer’s markets), fincas (farms), and small independent growers; I will go to the beaches and (boats) and talk with the fishermen and  I will report on how Costa Rica’s food culture is being affected by tourism, the expat influx and by the modernity of food marketing.

Thanks to our shared interests, Chef Dave and I are talking about working together on a number of projects having to do with grass roots issues of living and working in Costa Rica.

Street Talk:
There has been a lot of talk around here lately about a recent raid done in Ojochal by the U. S.  IRS.  Its hard to know what exactly happened, but I will report what I have heard, and you can sift through it as I have had to do.

The first thing that I heard was that the U. S. IRS and Costa Rica Immigration teamed up to do a random raid of Ojochal and in the process located some expats that were in serious arrears with their US taxes.  These folks were then carted off to the states where they are sitting in jail. Immigration reportedly used the opportunity to check residency status on various ones and found a dozen or so that were working here illegally.  These folks were cited, or deported.  That was version one.

Version Two tempered version one a bit, and I suspect is a little bit closer to the truth.  Here’s how version two reads.  The IRS were on the trail of some particularly egregious tax evaders and their search led them to Ojochal where they then found the people, reportedly a couple, and took them back to the States where they are awaiting whatever such ones await for.  The Immigration details on version two run concurrent with version one.

Addtional detail possibilities:
The IRS was unable to walk onto the private property of the offending couple, and so they feigned a car breakdown at the edge of the couple’s property, who responded by assisting, and in so doing stepped off of the private land, where they were nabbed.

One of the variations claims that the couple has a child that was put into Costa Rican child custody care services.

The effect of all this is that some of the expats in the Ojochal area are concerned about working here without a work visa, and so are lying low for the time being.

Living as an expat in Costa Rica, and I would guess in any foreign land, has its share of interesting concerns that are totally avoided by staying put in one’s home land.  I feel like I spend a pretty good amount of my time trying to figure out if I’m really, as I think, up to date with my U.S. & Costa Rica taxes.

I feel like I need to put discalaimers all over this type of post.  I don’t in anyway represent myself as being an authority on Costa Rica law, nor taxes, nor nothing. Having said that: we expats have an $84,000 tax credit due to living in a foreign land. The U. S. allows us to make $84,000, foreign and domestic earned income without having to pay taxes.  We don’t use the roads, police, libraries and so on in the U. S. and so we don’t pay any taxes until we have an income of $84,001, where taxation begins at the rate of having earned exactly that much.  In other words, we start paying taxes on $84,001, not on just the first dollar above the credit limit.

We only get this credit if we file. So it is an extremely good practice to file U. S. taxes just like everybody else.  If we fail to, and the day arrives for one reason or another to have to pay the piper, we don’t get our expat credit.

This point, along with trying to understand how taxes work in Costa Rica, gets my head a’spinning.

I have heard some street talk that the Obama adminstration may be considering eliminating the expat tax credit.  I don’t have any idea if that’s true or not, but that’s what I heard. If this were to happen, we would be paying double taxation which I calculate to be somewhere around 60%.

A slight departure from the normal Costa Rica real estate fare, but these are issues that make up daily street talk around the zone.

Writing a blog about Costa Rica real estate has its perks. We’ve got readers out there who are doing some pretty creative projects and we don’t even know about them… until they get ready to go to market with their project. Such is the case with Sierpe Del Pacifico (SDP). Fred and his son Cassidy approached Rod & I about a month ago to tell us about their project in Sierpe. I think that this type of inquiry wouldn’t normally have much interest to us Guys, but Fred had written such an eloquent and well crafted introductory e-mail that we were intrigued.

Sierpe is a bit out of the way, on the fringe of “The Zone”. I’ve also heard that it is hot and buggy. I’m not much for hot and buggy, but in truth I couldn’t speak from personal experience regarding the place, so I kept an open mind. 

What Fred & Cassidy have done is they have formed a father & son team and are passionately developing a piece of property that offers what, I suspect, a lot of readers of this blog are looking for: a truly unplugged, solar powered, bio-digesting, boat access project, surrounded by some of the best fishing, both fresh water, brackish and deep sea, in the… country? World? I don’t know, but you always catch big, tasty fish when you go out with them.

After visiting Sierpe Del Pacifico, Rod and I have been touched, and are firmly decided on backing this project with our marketing and sales support. I’m playing around with a slogan along the lines of “Not for general consumption” or, “Not for everyone, which is a good thing”, something like that. I imagine you get the picture. 

We met in Sierpe where I parked my car and looked a little hesitant at Cassidy when he said to just leave it there as we started walking towards the boat. He saw my concern and said that Sierpe is one of the most crime free areas he’s ever seen. 

We walked past the Sierpe jail, which had no door on it. They said that on the rare occasion that there is a resident there, and he needs to use the nearby bathroom, he stands in the door and waves at whoever may be nearby, and they have the community responsibility to escort the “prisoner” to the baño and back. If the prisoner were to just go it alone, he’d get in some kind of trouble. 

This feel of community, safety, and security permeated our day along the Sierpe River. 

Guillermo is the man in charge of pretty much everything having to do with SDP. Lean and clear eyed, Guillermo was born and raised in Sierpe, and is one of the pillars in the local community. He works full time for Fred & Cassidy, and has nicely interfaced the necessary connections between the cultures there. Gringo’s and Ticos, working together with a common interest in preserving some of the most profoundly natural terrain on planet earth. 

We got in the boat and were expertly glided down the Sierpe about 10 minutes to the private dock that services SDP. All residents of SDP get their own slip included in the purchase of a property there. The prices in the project range from $40,000 to $225,000, depending largely on the river views. This compares nicely with a project up in Quepos where just the slip alone will run you $175,000.

The ocean tide is what affects the flow of the river. Sierpe has a constant floating bio-mass of what the locals call “lechuga” which translates to “lettuce”. It isn’t edible, but just looks a bit lettuce-like. There are some flowering lilies as well – gorgeous. The effect is that you can tell whether the tide is coming in or going out by what direction the lechuga is moving. When we got there in the morning, it was all moving inland. When we returned in the afternoon, it was all flowing towards the ocean. 

On the way there, we spotted a “lagarto” (crododile) in the water. I asked Guillermo if people swim in the river to which he replied “si”. “Isn’t that a little dangerous”? “No, the crocs are timid and you just use your head about where to swim”.

The fact is, that waters around Sierpe are teeming with fish of all kinds. Red Snapper, snook, sea bass, robalo (not sure what the translation is of that) and more. The crocs, birds, and people are all well fed thanks to the larder provided by the earth. 

To truly unplug, this is the place to do it. You can grow some of planet earth’s tastiest fruits and vegetables on your property. You can hop in your boat and catch your protein needs for the day. Pluck a couple of mandarin limes off of your tree, catch a red snapper, and concoct your own signature touch ceviche.

We visited the model home, a rustic, well built 800 square foot villa on one of the lots. We enjoyed the air motion provided by the ceiling fan, and marveled at the LED 60 watt light bulbs that generated a normal amount of lighting needs for the living space – all solar powered. The view off of the elevated patio was of a virgin primary stand of rain forest where monkeys, parrots, parakeets, and all other manner of wildlife can be seen. The cup of coffee made on the propane stove was the capper. We found ourselves delaying departure even though we still had a good amount of property to walk.

The properties were gorgeous, and well priced based on their inherent amenities: view, building pad, accessibility. Oh, there are no cars in SDP. You arrive by boat, and you walk, or use a quad-runner, (ATV) to get around. All internal roads are narrow and couldn’t accommodate the passing of a car. The real capper for Rod and I were the mangroves. We stopped and watched a family of about 25 pizotes cross our path up ahead. Toucans, woodpeckers and on and on it goes. 

To live off of the grid, in self sufficiency, must be a wonderfully secure feeling. I’ve never personally experienced it, but I have certainly experienced the draw of the lifestyle.

We’ll be posting more about SDP as we come to know the project better. In the meantime, please click here to view the photos and videos that we took on our initial visit to the project.

Click to Play

Episode Two, “Seller Options and How to Evaluate a Property”

All Listings mentioned by number can be referenced by going to www.HotCostaRicaRealEstate.com and inputting the number into the “Property ID” field.

• Costa Rica Vacation Rental Finca Solla Sollew
• $75,000 Ocean view in Lagunas near Dominical
• Waterfall Property
• 312 Acre Farm above Ojochal

We welcome your comments. Be brave and just do it. Click that “Comments” link below and jump in!

- Ben and Rod

Click here to browse all of our listings in the zone.

I have been a bit negative about exclusive listings in the past. My attitude towards these is now changing and, if anything, I’d say I’m a bit positive towards them now - with caveats.

The Exclusive Listing is a hybrid business model between the existing Costa Rica non-MLS model, and the Multiple Listing Service model that so many are accustomed to in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. I have recently learned that England does not have an MLS and, get this, that Mississippi doesn’t have an MLS. The point about England came from a reliable source. The one about Mississippi was chit-chat. I did a cursory study of the Mississippi matter on the internet and found a little bit of information but it’s still unconfirmed.

The exclusive listing attempts to provide buyer/seller representation in the Costa Rica market place.

The Way it Works
You approach your favorite real estate agent. You give that agent the listing for your property. That agent then takes the full responsibility of marketing your property so that it receives the broadest possible exposure. Sounds good right? Well, it is, but…

This reliable agent that you have selected to represent your property to the marketplace is now expected to get the other agencies in the area to:

1. List the property on their website
2. Present the listing to appropriate prospective buyers, be they walk-ins or referred clients, or e-mail inquiries.

The Commission:
Here in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone, 8% is normal for a raw land sale. Some remote properties and larger farms pay a 10% commission. Over $1,000,000 houses will sometimes offer a reduced commission in the 6% & 7% range.

In the exclusive listing model, the full commission is paid to the listing agency. The listing agency can decide how much of the commission to offer out to other agencies. The standard would be the 50% / 50% co-broke.

Seller Concerns:
One primary concern is related to the commission. As we consider this, please keep in mind that this is not an MLS system. Currently the majority of listings in the agency’s databases are open listings that pay the full commission to the selling agency. So, the concern to the seller is that the various agencies be motivated to present their property to prospective buyers. With an exclusive listing, only the listing agency will receive what is perceived here in Costa Rica as “full commission”, everyone else will view the commission as “shared”.

Human nature being what it is, we brokers are, at the very least, influenced by this point. Of course, the ideal is that we present the property that is best for the client, strictly based on what is most appropriate for them, and not what pays the highest commission to the agent. However, if we agents have 4 properties that could be appropriate to show a buyer, and of the 4, 3 pay full commission and one is shared, guess which 3 get shown first. Its just the way it is, and it is one of the downside components of our non-MLS model.

The commission split can be tweaked a bit by the listing agent to reduce this concern. Or, the seller and the listing agent can work together to tweak it up a bit. Here are some possible commission splits that have worked that differ from the straight 50/50 split between listing and buyers agents. I’ll use 8% as the base commission in these examples.

1. 5% flows to the selling agency and 3% to the listing agency. This slight difference from the straight up 50/50 can go a long way in making the difference.
2. The seller can kick in an extra 2% so that they are now paying out 10% commission. The selling agency gets the normal 6% and the listing agency receives 4%
3. I have heard of the above strategy going up to 12% so that the selling agency gets full commission and the listing agent is covered.
4. The seller offers a higher commission of examples 2 & 3 above if another agency sells the property so that the listing agency gets their cut, and the selling agency gets a good commission. If the listing agency also sells the property, then the commission would be 8% paid out to the listing agency.

Listing Agency’s Concerns
All of the time that we realtors currently spend in listing a property could very well be for naught. In the common “Open Listing”, we visit the property, learn where the boundary lines are, understand the water and electrical services, understand the road maintenance arrangement for the property, take photos, contract with the seller and then post everything to the web site. This can take half a day, sometimes an entire day. We are not sure our time will be compensated in the non-MLS Open Listing. This is yet another reason why the MLS model is superior to the non-MLS model. The listing agent is sure to be compensated for his/her time, effort, and expense.

However, there are some concerns to taking on an exclusive listing.

Does the agency have the necessary time to handle the responsibility of the exclusive agreement? Handling an exclusive listing correctly is an obligation not to be taken lightly by the listing agency. In my office, we have turned down more requests for exclusive representation than we have accepted for this very reason.

The sell ability of the property is also a concern to the listing agency. The agency might determine that the property is just not that desirable and hence difficult to sell, so they are not interested in the obligation as respects that particular property. Or it may be that the seller is in the “we know we’re high, but we’re not in a hurry to sell. The market will come up to our price someday. Meanwhile maybe the buyer will come along” group. Its highly unlikely that an agency will take such a listing on as an exclusive.

Obviously, if the property is a screamer, unique and well priced, we’ll all line up to get a crack at the exclusive listing. Shameless plug: we just got one of those. Click here to check it out, complete with video.

I stated out the outset of this article that things are changing around here. This change comes in the way of the forming Southern Pacific Association of Realtors or SPAR as we are calling ourselves. The support of SPAR has taken off beyond what we expected. The ultimate goal of SPAR is to have a Multiple Listing Service here in our corner of Costa Rica, but that is both an involved and expensive objective, and so it remains yet in the future.

In the meantime, the interest on the part of all the real estate professionals in the area is to improve the quality of the industry here in our zone. We have all recognized and discussed how it is imperative that we present the listings that other real estate agencies give us, even though the commission structure is “shared”. This is extremely good news for sellers of property in our area.

The exclusive listing answers a lot of the concerns of the open listing. Its still not perfect, but there is

movement in this topic now, which is a good thing. If SPAR continues to develop, there is basis for optimism about real estate as a profession here in Costa Rica.

Open Listing: this is the type of listing that is considered the norm here in the non MLS model. The seller walks into my office with a packet of information on their property. I ask a number of clarifying questions: access, water, electric, phone, Internet, view, privacy and of course, price. Provided the answers to these questions indicates that the property is sellable for what the seller has in mind price wise, we set up a time to go and view the property. We visit the property, take photos/videos and then the listing goes onto my website.

This generally pays 8% commission to my agency.

The seller then goes down the road to the next agency and does it again.

Pros of the Open Listing: The agencies are motivated by the full commission. Right now the inventories of the various agencies are ripe with great listings. When a prospective buyer comes into the office, or starts up a dialogue via e-mail about their search for property, the well-intentioned, but commission motivated agent is going to gravitate towards the full commission listings first. This is a weighty point that will not be fully dealt with until we have a fully functioning Multiple Listing Service here in Costa Rica.

If you think it through, the seller has no actual representation in the marketplace. For that matter, neither do the buyers. You’ve got seller, buyer, and a commissioned sales person in the middle trying to make a deal happen so that he/she gets paid. Not the best of business models, but it’s ours and somehow it works.

Cons of the Open Listing: Many of our sellers don’t live in Costa Rica and don’t spend a lot of time here. For them to take the time necessary to print out the necessary information, burn photos and scanned documents to disk, and then visit each agency is well beyond most people’s tolerance. The determined seller will likely find that they spend their entire time here in the simple act of promoting their property to the various agencies. Then, there is the follow up.

Keep in mind that in an MLS market place, the listing agent is assured of getting paid for their time and expense to market your property. The MLS model is set up so that the full commission is split into two usually equal parts, and the listing agent receives half of the commission no matter who sells it. This works to motivate the listing agent to put up a sign, do an open house, promote the property on the Internet - maybe even run an ad in an appropriate magazine or newspaper. With the Open Listing option, the time the agency spends to list a given property can easily go un-rewarded. Consequently, sellers receive cursory service. If the agency feels in any way that there is a problem with the property, or that the seller is asking too much for the property, or whatever, the listing is going to languish in the “To Do” pile on the agent’s desk, necessitating numerous follow up calls, e-mails, and visits until the seller sees their listing show up on the agency’s website.

Representation (or lack thereof): In the Open Listing, there is no representation available to the seller. I tell my sellers, “don’t tell me anything that you don’t want the prospective buyer to hear”. We are unregulated and can say anything we want, or conversely, not say anything we want (the latter frequently being the more important point). A full disclosure representation of a property to a prospective buyer is entirely up to the honesty of the agent showing the property. The discreet handling of seller information is also entirely up to the agent. Buyer/Seller representation is a huge hole in our non-MLS business model. The really good agents in our area fill the hole with the oh-so-hard to detect quality we like to call: integrity.

There is a current effort in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone to deal with the problems associated with exactly this point: the plight of the sellers. The effort is called SPAR, Southern Pacific Association of Realtors. This is a developing group of local real estate agencies who get together once a month to discuss how to improve our industry by working together. One of the top priorities for SPAR is going after the deficiencies of our market place caused by the absence of an MLS, as well as the “no certification required” status of the industry (anyone can be a real estate agent in Costa Rica). What the presence of SPAR does is gives the Exclusive Listing a bit more teeth. Not quite to MLS levels, but certainly an improvement.
This leads nicely into the next point which is to say, stay tuned for the coming consideration of the Exclusive Listing, and the option of For Sale By Owner.

In preparing this article, I went back through the last several years of articles in this blog. I have written a lot about these points. This article is somewhat repetitive. SPAR is hopefully changing the scene here and so the information is in a state of flux at the moment. If you are interested in some of the past seller related information, please use the tag cloud to the right and click on “Selling Information” or “exclusive listing”

Featured Listing:
We just got an “Exclusive Listing” for Guys In The Zone that we’re extremely, majorly and very excited about. Check out this video clip and then for more info click here.

Sean died Tuesday night, March 24th, 2009, in a car accident. He was 35 and is leaving behind his wife Jessica and 2 children. Living in a very small community here in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone, the feel of having just lost one that was known by so many is in the air - palpable.

Sean was one of four partners of Coldwell Banker Vesta Group here in Dominical, and he was a reader of this blog. He was also one of my competitors, and despite this unsavory handle, we enjoyed the opportunities that we had to work together with various clients, and on various projects. We also shared a definite interest in improving the overall quality of our currently un-certified industry. Sean was a student of the real estate business and on occasion was a help to me in understanding certain aspects of Costa Rica real estate law.

Living and working in Costa Rica’s southern zone is like living in old time, small town USA of a long time ago. You can’t go to the store, walk down the street, or even poke your head out of the office without the potential of bumping into someone you know and engaging in a brief “how ya doing?” session. Very few of these in these past few days have not mentioned Sean and the shock of his passing.

The word that pops into my mind every time that I think of Sean is “vital”. The man was very much this - full of life. Sparkling eyes and an ever present smile.

He is going to be missed.

Click the “Play” button (upper left) to listen to the show.

The newest feature on GuysInTheZone.com, our “Talk Show” is your audio source for news and information about real estate in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific zone. Hosted by Ben and Rod, these conversational shorts can be listened to online (just hit the Play button below) or download them to your iPod and listen to us at your leisure.

Episode One, “Under 100K Ocean View Properties” offers a quick overview of the evolution of local real estate, followed by short descriptions of the current ocean view properties we have in this under $100k category–

• Property #1 in Lagunas
• Property #2 in San Buenaventura
• Property #3 in Tres Rios

We welcome you to post comments on the blog and, if you like what you hear, sign up for future Talk Show episodes and blog posts.

- Ben and Rod

“Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.” — Alex Noble