MLS

Understanding Costa Rica Real Estate

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Costa Rica Real Estate 101 Book

Back in 2004 I found myself running a small real estate company in Dominical called Horizon Properties. At that time, the concept of a property listing having a value within the agency, and amongst the various agencies, was non-existent. As the chief cook and bottle washer of the company, I pretty much expected to procure … Read more

How to Sell a Property in Costa Rica

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It is common to think that you know all about how to sell because of your experience in real estate in another land. In Costa Rica real estate, this type of thinking can be a real hindrance.[/caption]

We have posted quite a bit on this blog about seller’s options in Costa Rica and in particular, The Zone. In this article I will list the pros and cons of the various Seller’s Options and hopefully help to unravel some of the perplexing issues presented by the lack of representation for the seller.

How to sell real estate in Costa Rica

Options:

  1. Open listing
  2. Exclusive listing

How to do an effective Open Listing:

For a raw land listing, here is a list of what you’ll need:

  1. The survey (plano) of the property.
  2. Information on the various fees associated with the property, ie. taxes, road dues, water, monthly maintenance.
  3. Current photos of the property and its view.
  4. Creative write-up

For a house listing you’ll also need, in addition to the above:

  1. A description of the house – number of bedrooms, baths, square footage, if there is a pool, garage etc…
  2. Who built it and when.
  3. Disclose any details about the house that the buyer has the right to know.

What you do with all this:

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Sellers Options in Costa Rica

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Ben Vaughn, co-owner of Guys In The Zone Real Estate, explains the three listing options available to Costa Rican property owners. There is no Multiple Listing Service in the southern Pacific zone of Costa Rica, which expands the listing possibilities– the Open Listing, the Exclusive Listing, and the (new) Modified Exclusive Listing. Please visit Ben … Read more

Exclusive Listings Revisited Part 3 of 3

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Negotiate a fee for a marketing service.

Disclaimer: This program is no longer offered by Guys In The Zone Real Estate. We have closed our doors and are working in tandem now with another company that does not recognize this method of listing properties.

This series of articles is all about options for selling a property in Costa Rica.

Negotiate a fee for a marketing service.
Decide what the marketing fee will be.

Now here, in Part 3, we are going to discuss an un-orthodox approach to selling a property in Costa Rica’s non-MLS marketplace. The incentive for doing this is the weaknesses, or flaws that were reviewed in Part 2 of our attempts to imitate the MLS of other countries.
I have been working in real estate here in Costa Rica’s southern pacific zone for years, and have always felt that the exclusive listing was a nearly sacred thing. It puts a tremendous responsibility on the agency that has the exclusive, but is also demanding on all of the agencies in that they must ignore the fact that the commission on this property is shared, when the majority of properties in their inventory are not.

I have been scratching and thinking about this topic and here is what I’ve come up with.

The Real Estate Agency’s Objective:
What we want to do is offer to sellers a better service, and in the process improve the professionalism of our industry. This is particularly appropriate when

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Exclusive Listings Re-visited Part 2 of 3

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If you haven’t read Part 1 of this topic yet, you might want to. You can do so by clicking here.  You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  This article stands up fine all by itself.  However, to get a good understanding of the open listing, which is the most common type of listing here in Costa Rica, you’ll probably want to.  All right?

Sell a property in Costa Rica
The quandary of how to best sell a property in Costa Rica

When we last visited, we were left with the cliff hanger – “what is a seller to do if they don’t live in Costa Rica?”  The absentee owners don’t have time to go to each real estate agency and distribute photos, write-up, survey and contract with every real estate agency.  This could really mess up a family vacation.  Not to mention the follow-up-regular-visits to see how it’s going with showings of the listing.

Before going into that and satisfying the “edge of your seat” drama that I have created here with this compelling topic, I’d like to give you a glimpse inside the mind of this Costa Rica real estate agent and share with you an alternate option to what has been the standard practice in Costa Rica for the exclusive listing of a property.

We have always known that the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) market place of the US is superior to the Costa Rica open listing model.  In our (Zone real estate agencies) efforts to improve our market, and to offer a better service to both buyer and seller, we have defaulted to imitating the MLS market place, without having an actual MLS.  The reasoning is simple: the MLS is a superior model that has evolved over time in response to gazillions of problems and concerns and has resulted in what we see there now: a mature business model that offers representation to both buyer and seller of a given piece of property.  So, we try and come as close to working like and MLS without having the actual infrastructure of an MLS.

For various reasons, I’m starting to think that this premise might be flawed.  AND it may be that, if we think outside of this box we’re in here, we might even come up with a solution that rivals, or perhaps (could it be?!?) even exceeds the MLS model of other countries.  Bear with me here.

How Costa Rica imitates the MLS model…

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Costa Rica Real Estate Chit Chat

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Training for Costa Rica real estate certification.

The Guys just got themselves certified! Rod & I are now card carrying Costa Rica real estate agents. Imagine that.

I know – you’re saying: “I didn’t know that there was such a thing”. Well, in fact there isn’t, yet, but there is about to be, and so we have joined a number of our peers in anticipating the coming change to the U. S. (and elsewhere) model of licensing for real estate agents.

Training for Costa Rica real estate certification.
Rod being attentive at the Camara de Bienes Raices course in San Jose Costa Rica.

The organization is called CBR or “Camara de Bienes Raices” (Chamber of Real Estate).  Perhaps you’ve seen the CBR logo around on various websites. You’ll be seeing it on ours as well now.  It is a 4 day course of 8 hours a day.  We did it, enjoyed it (for the most part – butts are a little sore.), met & networked with lots of people and now feel just that much more entrenched with our chosen industry in Costa Rica.

CBR has proposed a law that they feel will become adopted this year of required licensing of Costa Rica real estate agents.  Our position is that this will be

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