Properties in Costa Rica Blog

The sun is shining, you might live to be 80 years old, your forest is protected, and your government is one of the least corrupt in Latin America – whats not to be happy about?! Well now there is one more thing on the list to be happy about and that is that Costa Rica has topped the UK-based happy people index for the second straight year.

The Costa Rican people are arguably the happiest people in the world according to the Happy Person index which weighs the value of happiness not on economic wealth and foreign investment but rather looks to ecological footprint and life expectancy. Following the belief that money does not make you happy this is an index that has some value.

With more and more studies showing that being in tune with the natural world around us is becoming what many doctors are prescribing for many disorders e.g. anxiety, stress, ADHD, and the list goes on. The idea is to get out and get yourself a dosage of Vitamin-N (Nature). Costa Rica is a country that has 30% of its land protected and no matter where you stand in the country you probably can see a protected area in the birds-eye view.

Along with the idea of life expectancy you can apply that a less stressed person and happy person will live longer. The Costa Rican people are all of these in most part due to their location on the planet with two beautiful coasts, spectacular mountain ranges, and many more marvelous natural wonders. It is what they have chose to do with these areas that has kept them happy. It is only natural that if you start destroying your very own life support system, a feeling of sadness will follow. Here in Costa Rica vibrant life is all around us. Some of the most biodiverse places on the planet can be found in Costa Rica. It is where life has fine tuned evolution to become a perfect balance. It seems even the Costa Rican people have found that balance as they are living among the natural world and feeling the benefits from it.

Estate-Size Lots and Land in the Central Valley

Let’s face it: in Costa Rica, there are a lot of cookie-cutter developments with row upon row of identical houses.  Even in some larger developments, home styles vary, but lots are small and houses are closely spaced.

If you long for more elbow room, great views, privacy, and perhaps a place for horses or other furry friends, choices can be limited.  Often buyers coming from North America are surprised at the small size of many building lots in the Central Valley.

If you are used to having a few acres to stretch you legs, but don’t want to drive an hour to get to schools or work, then it can be challenging to find larger parcels that are still convenient to all the services and amenities that the city offers.

Luckily there are some properties that cater to a select clientele who are interested in building a refined country retreat where peace and quiet prevail, yet still close to all the goods and services that are necessary for a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

United Country Properties in Costa Rica specializes in filling this niche market of estate-size building lots.

We have larger view lots in Salitral de Santa Ana inside a gated community of only 16 estate-style lots.

We also have a panoramic view property of 10 acres located in Piedades, only 3 km from the Ciudad Colon tollbooth on the Caldera highway.

Or take advantage of a special price on a 6.5 acre view parcel in the hills of Escazu.

Whether you are looking to build a family compound, private horse stables, or just have room to enjoy a relaxed country lifestyle, these properties have it all: views, privacy, wildlife, and room to spread your wings.

1) The weather. NASA says CR has the best weather of any country in the world, however there are great variances in weather over the country. We examined various places in CR to find what we thought was the most perfect weather in the country. We ruled out the coasts as they are too hot, requiring air-conditioning most of the year. We ruled out the very high elevations due to cold/rainy conditions. The city of Turrialba is in a valley and is too hot much of the year but the lower mountains above Turrialba are perfect. The all time record high for here is 85F. However, were we live when it gets around 80F we get a strong cooling breeze. We never need heat or air conditioning. In the 7 years we have lived here the only times we have had bad weather has been a week or so in Oct/Nov when will be cloudy with light rain. Also, as you know CR is immune from Hurricanes.

2) Tranquil life of a farming community. We wanted all of the benefits of living in a large city but none of the liabilities. We have high speed internet, good grocery markets, open air fruit and vegetable markets, but no traffic congestion or air pollution from too many vehicles.

3) Location. We are also perfectly positioned in the middle of the country and can be to the Caribbean Coast in 3-4 hours and the Pacific in 5 hours. We are a 1.5 hours from San Jose by car or bus. We have excellent Directo Bus from Turrialba to San Jose that costs less than $6 round trip.

4) Health Care. We have the William Allen Hospital in Turrialba about 15 minutes from the property. CATIE has donated land for the construction of a new public hospital with projected completion date of 2 years. This hospital will be located about 10 minutes from the property. We also have an excellent private clinic in Turrialba and can highly recommend a physician there who was trained in London. Our pharmacist in Turrialba also speaks perfect English and is always available for minor emergencies 7 days a week.

5) Water. We have abundant municipal water which is unmetered. Just to be safe, we installed state of the art water purification and filtration systems consisting of reverses osmosis, UV light and ceramic filters.

6) CATIE. CATIE is the premiere tropical agricultural research institution in Latin America. Scholars from the world over come here to complete their doctor’s degrees and are involved in tropical agricultural research. The CATIE contributes much to the community and hosts and annual International Fair, and has one of the finest English language schools in Costa Rica. They also have a kindergarten through high school program in Spanish/English that is a world class educational facility.

7) Fine dining & hotels. We have some excellent resturantes & hotels in the area. Hotel Casa Turrie is about 10 minutes from the property and has a Swiss Chef. This 5 star hotel and restaurant is as good as it gets anywhere in the world. We also have Hotel TurrialTico with a fine restaurant and Angustura is only a few minutes from the property.

8) Neighbors. Our neighbors are our friends. We could not ask for better neighbors. They are constantly looking out for us and grateful that we moved to their community.

9) La Suiza. The small town of La Suiza is only a few minutes from the property and has an excellent bakery, 2 grocery stores and most of your basic needs.

10) Pura Vida Lifestyle!

The town of Turrialba is surrounded by beautiful mountains, volcanoes, and large tracks of land that run as far as the eye can see leaving you a horizon day after day of marvelous sunsets.

Turrialba still has the small town feeling and many people call it the port without a sea because of its relax vibe, astonishing scenery, and pura vida feeling. It is a town that is home to some of Costa Rica’s most miraculous natural wonders with the Turrialba Volcano, Tapanti National Park, and the world famous Pacuare River. Travel to Turrialba on a Saturday or Sunday and you will see the true meaning of family time. All of the crystal clear nearby rivers are visited by families enjoying a day in the sun and fun. It is a Costa Rica that many foreigners imagine when they visit. It is also home to some great country style restaurants and a few very small but high end boutique hotels for those of you that like a bit of luxury and gourmet meal every now and then.

The town of Turrialba is located just 2 hours east of the capital city of San Jose. There’s not much need to leave Turrialba now because of the larger super markets and everyday amenities that can be found in the center of town. The Municipal office has plans of building a new hospital in the coming years as it prepares for a more developed future of Turrialba.

Turrialba is the area of Costa Rica where you see no barb-wire. It is the area of Costa Rica where you leave your house door open and rarely worry about petty theft. It is also a part of Costa Rica that can allow the investor to purchase large tracks of land that have been used for agriculture or even more have been untouched primary rainforest for as many years as our simple human minds can imagine.

A visit to Turrialba will leave your mind and body in a state of peace and the feeling to never want to leave. The chance to purchase large pieces of land that you might not be able to afford in other parts of Costa Rica is appealing. You can have a house on many acres, close to town, and still plenty of primary rainforest. The idea of owning primary rainforest in Costa Rica is not only bragging rights for your urban friends to hear but it is also a business as the government of Costa Rica is now offering yearly payments to landowners of untouched rainforest. This idea of preserving land is a business that our planet can not afford to give up. and countries all over the world will be staying committed to projects like this becoming more of the norm as Costa Rica is setting the path for conservation and a better future for our children and grandchildren.

United Country Properties in Costa Rica is a proud sponsor of the 2nd Annual SASY! Charity Golf Tournament to be held this Friday, May 4, 2012 at Valle del Sol in Santa Ana.  United Country believes in giving back to the community by supporting local charities like SASY.  SASY is a non-profit volunteer group dedicated to the prevention of animal abuse which funds nationwide spay/neuter campaigns.

The event will kick off with a Continental Breakfast beginning at 6:30 AM, followed by a shotgun start for golfers at 7:00 AM.  After the tournament there will be an awards luncheon with recognition for the winners, micro-brewed beer, and loads of fabulous prizes.  United Country will have a tent set up at the18th hole, where we will be promoting our excellent golf properties in Valle del Sol, as well as other premier homes for sale all over Costa Rica.

Field is limited to 108 golfers and limited spots for golfers are still available. (Call Marjan 2203-1803 if you are interested in signing up). Just a few of the prizes available for participants:

• Round-trip United Airlines tickets
• Salon 202 spa packages
• Golf Rounds from Hacienda Pinilla, Cariari, and Valle del Sol
• Restaurant gift certificates  from Product C, Cowtown, Maya Lounge, and more!
• Hotel gift certificates from Hotel Indigo, Los Suenos, Pura Vida Hotel, CocoMar Beach Resort and more!
• Massage from  Karen Medicina Integral & Estètica
• and much more!

The tournament always attracts a great group of friends and competitors and United Country Properties in Costa Rica is thrilled to  support SASY! and its mission to end animal suffering.  Stop by the 18th Hole to meet the Properties in Costa Rica team!

The New Yorker
by James Surowiecki

This year, a few hundred thousand intrepid American travellers will head to places like Thailand and Costa Rica, in search of something that they can’t find in the United States. They won’t be looking for Mayan ruins or ancient Buddhist temples, but something a bit more practical: affordable medical care. These medical tourists will be getting root canals, knee surgeries, and hip replacements at foreign hospitals. If health-care costs in the U.S. keep rising—and especially if Obamacare is overturned by the Supreme Court—more of us may soon be joining them.

For decades, wealthy people from developing countries have come here for care, but these days medical tourists travel all over the world. And while it’s hard to disentangle the stats from the hype—a number of countries portray themselves as favored destinations—it’s clear that millions of people are now doing this. The Bumrungrad hospital, in Bangkok, treats four hundred thousand foreign patients annually. Malaysia had almost six hundred thousand medical tourists last year. And South Korea had more than a hundred thousand, nearly a third of them American.

For Americans, the attraction is obvious: medical care is a lot cheaper abroad. At CIMA Hospital, in Costa Rica, for instance, hip-replacement surgery costs around fifteen thousand dollars, roughly a sixth of the average here. So far, though, various factors have kept a lid on demand. Logistics can be challenging, and insurance companies have been leery about reimbursements for care overseas: they already get big discounts with U.S. hospitals, and they risk a public-relations disaster anytime something goes wrong abroad. Above all, patients have been wary. We trust the quality of foreign-made televisions and cars, but we haven’t taken that leap when it comes to foreign doctors. People worry about the lack of legal recourse, and the sheer unfamiliarity of medical tourism makes people hesitant to try it. A few years ago, the grocery-store chain Hannaford set up a partnership for the benefit of its employees with a well-accredited Singaporean hospital. Singapore is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, but medical care there is still significantly cheaper than in the U.S., so the arrangement looked like a model for how medical tourism might work. But none of Hannaford’s workers were interested in going to Singapore.

There are a host of forces that could change this. The quality of medical facilities in developing countries has risen dramatically, and the private hospitals that cater to tourists often feature technologies similar to those in American hospitals. (This has its problematic side: many of these high-end hospitals are in countries where citizens struggle to get basic care.) Furthermore, new companies are making treatment abroad easier and more attractive. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has started a company called Companion Global Healthcare, which connects patients with hospitals around the world. Political events could also quickly make medical tourism considerably more attractive. If Obamacare is overturned, forty million Americans without insurance will stay that way. If Medicaid and Medicare are cut sharply, the cost of American health care will eventually become prohibitive to many senior citizens. And if health-care costs keep soaring fewer employers will offer health insurance. That doesn’t mean that Americans are soon going to jet halfway around the world for an ingrown toenail, but it’s easy to envisage regional systems becoming common, with Americans heading to places like Costa Rica and Mexico, and Western Europeans going to places like Hungary and Turkey.

If more Americans sought care abroad, it wouldn’t just save them money; it could also help control medical costs at home. Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product. More medical tourism would increase free trade in medical services, something there has not been much of in the past. The U.S. has been religious about breaking down barriers to free trade, especially in manufacturing and service industries, exposing ordinary workers to foreign competition. But health care has been insulated from the forces of globalization. This has been great for hospitals and doctors, but less good for consumers. It’s one reason that the cost of health care has risen so much faster than that of almost everything else.

It has been generally assumed that medicine is inherently a local business. But that would change if we allowed Medicare and Medicaid funds to be spent in foreign hospitals, or if insurers cut consumers in on the savings from treatment abroad. And if domestic hospitals actually had to compete with places like Bumrungrad or CIMA, the way American car companies have to compete with Toyota and Honda, they might be forced to become more efficient. Even an increase in domestic medical tourism—people journeying to lower-cost U.S. hospitals, like the Cleveland Clinic—would help. There are other ways to bring free trade to medicine, too. As the economist Dean Baker has argued, making it easier for foreign doctors who met standardized requirements to practice in the U.S. would hold down costs and improve service. In addition to exporting patients, we could import doctors. Politically speaking, of course, this all seems improbable, because the medical industry is a powerful lobby and uninterested in competition. But the reality is that, unless we find some other way to rein in health-care costs, the logic of free trade in medicine is going to become harder to resist. ♦

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2012/04/16/120416ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz1t0LtYpVg

The western suburb of Ciudad Colon is fast becoming the new hot spot in the Central Valley of Costa Rica.  In Colon, you can enjoy a relaxed lifestyle surrounded by nature, yet still be only 15 minutes from all services and amenities, including Multiplaza Mall, The Forum office park, and Hospital CIMA.  Ciudad Colon is a quiet country town where residents can walk to the weekly farmer’s market, skateboard or enjoy a game of volleyball the newly remodeled park in the town’s center, or jog or bike on the winding road that leads to the U.N.-sponsored Universidad Para La Paz in El Rodeo.  In Colon, it’s easy to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of life and enjoy ”comida tipica” at local restaurants like Sabor a Pueblo or Zompopas, birdwatch from your back porch, or go for a weekend trail ride at one of several local riding facilities.  Ciudad Colon also is home to several annual festivals, including the ever-popular Gran Tope (parade of horses).

Ciudad Colon is located only a few kilometers from the Caldera Highway, allowing residents to make the 1.5 trip to the beach with ease.  Colon also benefits from its location alongside the impressive Virilla Canyon, which provides spectacular views and an abundance of wildlife.  Fresh breezes from the canyon keep the weather in Colon pleasant year-round and make it an ideal location to relax and enjoy time outdoors.  For families with school age children, Colon is an excellent choice, because private schools such as Country Day, Colegio Blue Valley, St. Jude’s and the Panamerican School are all within easy travel distance and offer daily bus service.

If you are looking for a place that strikes the right balance between convenience and tranquility, look no farther than Ciudad Colon.

By Arturo Guzman

Company’s Sales Volume Up 23%, Expansion of Affiliate Network in U.S., Abroad

April 9, 2012 – (KANSAS CITY, Mo.) –United Country Real Estate, the nation’s largest seller of lifestyle real estate, has continued its expansion with the opening of 12 new offices in the United States and six new affiliates in foreign markets. On top of this first quarter 2012 growth, the company has shown a 23-percent increase in real estate transactions during same period.

“Six years ago, United Country recommitted to its 87-year-old roots with major across-the-board investments in new services, new technology, new thinking and a strengthened property marketing program to better serve our buying and selling clients,” said Dan Duffy, chief executive officer for United Country Real Estate. “The results we are seeing now from our affiliated offices are a direct result of these targeted investments. We, in close collaboration with our professional local office owners, agents and brokers, are outperforming the current market and are really enjoying the byproduct of a great deal of hard work by the dedicated professionals that are proud to be part of what is proving to be an extremely bright future for the company. We expect a continuation of expansion in the network and our affiliated offices sales volumes in the coming months.”

Just in the first quarter of this year, United Country has opened offices in Mena, Ark.; Eagle, Colo.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Lincoln, Maine.; Moriarty, N.M.; Beaufort, N.C.; Camden, TN.; Aledo, Texas.; Mt. Pleasant, Texas; Independence, Va.; Midlothian, Va.; and Penhook, Va. In addition to new U.S. affiliates, United Country has opened offices in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Pavones, Costa Rica; and Dominical, Costa Rica. The company has further plans in place to expand into six more areas of Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico by year’s end.

Growth was realized across many of the market segments United Country specializes in including land up 52 percent, recreational properties up 36 percent and given the incredible demand for farmland, farms more than doubled versus the first quarter of 2011. Another sign of an improving real estate market can be seen in home sales in the small cities and towns the company serves with sales of residential properties up 12 percent.

“With the real estate market conditions significantly improving, we expect to see this strong growth continue throughout 2012,” said Mike Duffy, president of United Country Real Estate. “Americans still hold dear the dream of homeownership and owning lifestyle real estate, and at United Country, we specialize in helping buyers achieve those dreams.”

About United Country

United Country Real Estate is the largest fully integrated network of conventional and auction real estate professionals in the United States. The company has been an innovator in real estate marketing since 1925. United Country supports nearly 550 offices across the U.S., Costa Rica, Panama and resort areas of Mexico, with a unique, comprehensive marketing program that includes one of the largest portfolios of property marketing websites (more than 3,000 separate sites and traffic of approximately 3 million visitors per month), multiple United Country real estate catalogs with national distribution , an extensive buyer database and national advertising of local properties that reaches more than 90 million homes per week. United Country has recently been recognized by Franchise Business Review,  AllBusiness.com, The Land Report, Entrepreneur and The Wall Street Journal as one of the top U.S. real estate companies.

According to a new study by Columbia University and Yale University Costa Rica has ranked the 5th greenest country on the planet. The study revealed almost all countries on Earth and Costa Rica was the only country in the America’s to rank in the top 10. The other countries that made up the first 5 were Austria, France, Sweden, and Norway.

It seems like everytime we stop and look Costa Rica is coming out in a new study ranked as the happiest, the greenest, and who knows what is next. Being the happiest and the greenest country can be related if you take a deeper look at the equation and the studies. The more time you spend in nature and the more attention you give to protecting your surroundings the happier of a place you will have created for your society.

If you are looking to invest in Real Estate it seems like a no-brainer as Costa Rica is becoming more and more of a spot to live a happy and environmentally friendly life-style.

When you think of Costa Rica the first things that come to mind might be ziplines, beaches, and monkeys. If you decide to stay in San Jose for a night or two you might enjoy some of the ammenities of the city. This gives you a chance to explore the areas of downtown San Jose or visit the many activites in Escazu.

Jaco beach is turning into the combination of both. You can find the beaches, monkeys, and ziplines but also enjoy the lifestyle of the city. The Jaco Theater which was startred by Darren Lee Cole who is the co-owner of the SoHo Playhouse in NYC is in its first season and has been a great success having starting with the Christmas Carol it will not be running its second show.

The show of the season is called 17 Borders Crossings and has traveled from Madrid to make to perform at the theatre in Jaco from Jan. 19th – Jan. 29th. Tickets are on sale now and go treat yourself to a weekend in Jaco or find yourself a weekend vacation home in Jaco with beautiful beaches and some of the ammenities of the city.