Costa Rica-Real Estate Condos for sale in Guanacaste

Today is one of those days I feel a little nostalgic living in Costa Rica. In this country, since the main religion is Catholic, Halloween is not such a big celebration as it is back home, especially in Guanacaste where people just don’t to celebrate it all, all there is are a couple of Halloween parties in some bars and that is it: no decorations, no trick or treating, nothing.

In Costa Rica, San Jose does have a few more celebrations going on, just this past week I received pictures of the decorations set on a friends neighborhood, so I am guessing that the do have more of the Halloween spirit in the Capital city of Costa Rica. As I informed to you in another entry there will be quite a few celebrations tonight: the Halloween fund raiser, DJ Max Graham in Heredia, a band that only appears in Halloween called the Goat Killers and even and Irish Celebration for Halloween is scheduled! Adults seem to be a lot more into Halloween than youngsters in this country.

However, Costa Rica Halloween celebrations seem to be some sort of different tradition: Mascarade Day! In Costa Rica carnivals there are always these special costumes, completely hand made that resemble people and in some cases the character of the Costa Rica urban legends such as La Segua or el Cadejos and these are called Mascaradas. So today there will be a few parades celebrating this lovely art form.

The Mascarada in Costa Rica was originally celebrated in the City of Cartago, where along with Escazu in San Jose, are two cities with the most horror stories in the country. The Mascarada was celebrated in tribute to the Virgin Mary. So there you go in Costa Rica traditions there is also something that can be related to the Halloween we know.

Just like very useful and fun Tren Urbano in San Jose, Costa Rica will now implement the use of a new train, this time from the Costa Rica Capital to Heredia city the entire re-instatement project ended up costing near to $1 074 000. This awesome news was released this past October 25^th by Incofer.

After all the hard, long work of the first step to get the Heredia train up and running, the first trips will take place during the third week of December as recreational trips, so people can get used to the route, check the official stops and see how long it will take the potential regular travelers to get to their destinations. Costa Rica government did manage to go around a long series of issues before being able to get train route working. The new Costa Rica train to Heredia will begin normal operations in January.

It is amazing how Costa Rica, a country that has so many transportation problems has managed to find solutions in methods that were already taken as obsolete and forgotten. This new route will make the trip to Heredia a los faster and easier for many people in Costa Rica, given the fact that the work force in Heredia is one of the largest in the country due to the several Free Trade Zones. Costa Rica has also opened up for business to new world renowned companies such as Amazon and Experian this year.

The implementation of this train route is expected to help with the collapsed traffic during rush hours along the highway between Heredia and San Jose. Costa Rica traffic problems are worse and worse everyday; a regular trip on this highway during rush hour can hold one up to 2-3 hours, therefore extreme measures had to be taken.

Formerly known as CCN Systems, Experian is a global credit information group, with operations in 36 countries. Their largest operation is Experian North America, a consumer credit reporting agency that is considered one of the three largest American credit agencies. Right now Experian has open up their Costa Rica branch with a total of 80 employees and plans to add at least 20 more by the end of the year and a total of 120 for the beginning of 2009. The main lines of business of Experian are credit services, marketing solutions, decision analytics and interactive services; in Costa Rica, Experian require data management and process specialists and software development engineers.

Along with Amazon Costa Rica, their offices will be located at Zona Franca Ultralag, in Lagunilla de Heredia. Costa Rica has been providing great work force to many different international companies over the years: IBM, HP, Alienware and Sykes are probably the biggest call centers right now providing jobs for thousands of young professionals in many different areas, not necessarily related to inbound and outbound calls.

Costa Rica education does have enough professionals to comply with the work force requirements these companies need to hire and for over 10 years they have established themselves are part of the most reliable companies in Costa Rica. These companies provide a whole lot of benefits to their workers and since most of them still attend school they also give them scholarships or provide them with constant trainings in related matters. Business in Costa Rica is definitely getting bigger and the addition of Experian to the list of serious companies in Costa Rica is certainly good news.

The beautiful Costa Rica girls have again the opportunity to represent their country in one of the most important beauty pageants nowadays: Miss Hawaiian Tropic. The selection of the 12 finalists to represent Costa Rica will take place on November 15^th between 12 m. a 6 p. m. at Mall San Pedro, in down town San Jose, Costa Rica.

In Costa Rica, women are definitely beautiful and very educated, so far it has been really hard to find a woman in their 20’s without college education and most of them also work, don’t have children too young and don’t seem to be in any rush about getting married. Costa Rica high rates in education are definitely real, since I have to admit that most Costa Ricans: women and men are very well educated.

Regarding the Miss Hawaiian Tropic Pageant, the 12 finalists that will be chosen on November 15^th will compete against each other in Playa Flamingo in January and the winner will travel to Las Vegas, Nevada in May, 2009 to represent Costa Rica among the most gorgeous girls in the world. This year, during the Miss Hawaiian Tropic pageant 2008, the girl participating for Costa Rica, Kimberly Zúñiga actually won the pageant and hopefully this next year will be just as successful.

It is actually not uncommon that girls from Costa Rica are somehow recognize in the pageants they participate, most of the times they come back with recognitions and not empty handed. I certainly wish them all good luck and we can just sit and enjoy watching beautiful Costa Rica girls in the meantime.

To anyone interested the exact location for the casting at Mall San Pedro will be announced in the next few days, so just be patient and keep looking, so far the only confirmed info is the date (November 15^th). Good luck!

There is definitely something very colorful about Costa Rica buildings: some may be one of the most fashionable buildings with impressive taste and modern architecture while a small room built on cardboard and old pieces of wood will be standing right behind it. Unfortunately, like in many other countries this is the reality, Costa Rica is being bought by big companies and enterprises that built amazing structures without giving one moment of consideration about the surroundings. 

It is not uncommon to see old wooden houses almost falling apart in one block, and a huge luxury home in the next property. Costa Rica is still feeling the huge changes of crazy real estate all over the place and the local families can’t seem to be able to keep up with these building developments so their small homes become the awful side of an area full of luxury. Costa Rica is showing its two faces and given the fact the prices in the real estate listings in Costa Rica have gone way up high and are completely not affordable for a regular middle class Costa Rica family, foreigners with higher access to dollars and euros are buying the country in small pieces.

Huge examples are the apartment buildings that are being developed in the Sabana surroundings, these tall, luxury buildings were created to be sold for over $100 000 or rented for over $1500 a month. In Costa Rica, a middle class professional hardly makes $1000 in the best case scenario, meaning that all those apartments are just not accessible unless you are a foreigner. Real estate in Costa Rica needs to be regulated as soon as possible, maybe all these prices are low for us, but this country also has locals, who work hard and dream of owning a home. In my opinion is just not fair.

Every six months the Ticos receive a salary raised according to the Costa Rica law. The cost of life increased in 11% last September in Costa Rica, one of the highest increases in 10 years, so the Costa Rica people were expecting a big raise, unfortunately the salary raise approved was only a 7%, meaning that this so called raised won’t even cover transportation costs daily.

The Costa Rica government supports this claiming that a higher raise may cause the jobs of some people since they will have to be lay off to afford paying a higher salary raise. This news are very sad and a huge problem for Costa Rica workers. In this graphic, you will be able to see how low salaries already are in Costa Rica compared to what we Americans are used to see, most of the raises are only a few dollars:

Profession                   Actual Salary              Raised Salary

Construction worker     $11.73*                       $12.55*

Store Clerk                  $11.73*                       $12.55 *

Security Guard  $346.47                       $370.72

Superintendent  $321.64                       $344.15

* Daily wages

As you can see salaries in Costa Rica per month are not even close to what we are used to get weekly in the United States, yet these people are supposed to buy groceries, clothing, pay for school uniforms and supplies, services and rent with those salaries. Now this example you can see why the real estate market is just an impossible dream for Costa Ricans since the requirements banks have to give home loans in Costa Rica, are basically the same and as high as in the United Estates. It really doesn’t make any sense at all, if you think about it.

It just amazing how the ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) thinks they are still the kings in electricity and telecommunications. The monopoly they have in Costa Rica is about to be over and still, they just push things more and more. Recently they released a notice of upcoming blackouts during the summer if their requests to increase the rates for electricity are not approved. They currently have two petitions: one added on August 19^th for a 15% increase and another one added a couple of weeks after that for 30% increase.

In Costa Rica, companies and residential customers are actually very disappointed with the service provided by the ICE and the ARESEP feels that the people are right and ICE pushes things too far, given the fact that they services may no longer be a monopoly very soon and it may be possible that people in Costa Rica will want to get their power and telecommunication services from one of the new companies that will begin operations in Costa Rica very soon. Their platforms are in some cases old an obsolete, not to mention their tradition of going on strike every now and then (but at least 5 times a year) to demand more than the Costa Rica people can afford.

Properties in Costa Rica that are still under construction may want to wait a little before acquiring services from ICE since better choices are just around the corner. ICE actually claims that they will require a raise on their rate of about 50% so they perform properly and purchase enough prime matter such as gasoline and other combustibles for next year. The threat of having the black outs feels a bit of a tantrum if you ask me. Costa Rica is a country where people are very conscious on saving electricity and water and for what I have seen, ICE likes to act a little too much like a “Big Spender”.

At this moment there are great changes happening in the Nicoya, Guanacaste area: two new bridges that pass by two of the main roads of Nicoya are being re-built. Although this is actually great news since both bridges were pretty much un-usable, the construction work over the Grande and Perico rivers, are causing terrible traffic congestion for drivers. The Perico river bridge has already been demolished and the construction is quite advanced, yet the old bridge has already been taken down, meaning that traffic in the area is hectic due to these constructions.

As I have stated on previous entries, Costa Rica properties have different values depending on the area, like anywhere else; yet, Guanacaste is experiencing a huge increase in the real estate market, Guanacaste and San Jose especially, given the fact that all these development projects are making the area a lot more fancy and services have become a lot easier to access from there.

The good thing is that now that the access to the Nicoya area is going to be renewed, all those development projects planned will move faster than expected. Real estate in Guanacaste was kind of in a stand by situation for a while, not only because of the governments concerns about threats to the environment, but also because the construction processes were a bit slow in some of the locations, such as Nicoya. Hopefully the construction of the thee bridges will be done soon, maybe the beginning of 2009, that way new properties in Guanacaste can be put on the market sooner than later, also the development projects will be able to begin operations and the Nicoya hotels and villas can take advantage of them a lot faster than they used to.

So far, I am happy with I am seeing and although the traffic issue is of concern, people will just have to be patient about it to enjoy the new upcoming bridges.

Reading the news this morning I came across an article that claims that the hovels in Costa Rica are far from being removed and that all the money destined to provide all these families with a real home has been put away for the past 2 years. A very alarming total of $39 355 993 was put on hold by the previous Costa Rica Housing Minister Fernando Zumbado and the new Minister, Clara Zomer has only been able to move $16 815 743 who are already assigned to different hovel families.

She seems to be in trouble since her position as the housing minister in Costa Rica will be over sooner than the time needed to provide a home for all these people. Costa Rica government has been creating problems over and over again and the process has been slower everyday. In my opinion it is ridiculous how the current president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sanchez, has left aside very important issues, such as housing instead of making the best of his re-election, proving that he is still the president Costa Rica remembered. Right now the former winner of the Peace Novel Price is basically a joke for Costa Rica, given the fact that he has used his time as a re-elected president traveling and making appearances.

Right now all these low income families will have to continue living in terrible conditions until further notice. The only way out was apparently a newly proposed tax rate for houses in Costa Rica that cost more than $178.000 to finance housing for the low income families, which has been put on hold as well. If you think about it, most of the homes for sale in Costa Rica cost way more than that, meaning that the issue can easily be resolved if only they stopped traveling around and just sit and get things done. I honestly hate burocracy….

Hovel in Costa Rica (Image from La Nacion)

While doing my daily research yesterday, I came across a blog very similar to this one where a woman who has apparently traveled the world her whole life writes about Costa Rica. I often read those articles since the blog shows up every time I look for news about Costa Rica in Google but yesterday I was beyond surprised with her article.

 This woman, who claims to have lived here in Costa Rica for over 16 years claims that Ticos do not have artistic talent and that probably it is not part of the Costa Rica education to be artistic. I was talking to a Tica friend of mine and she felt insulted for the article, given the fact that she is a photographer and painter herself. Also, I may have only been living here for a few months but I have to admit: Costa Rica arts are quite impressive. Almost half the people I meet play at least one instrument, I have also read 2 books that were simply wonderful, written by Costa Rica writers and I have bought paintings made by locals as well.

There are a least 6 concerts advertised every week for local bands that play anything from Cumbia to Heavy Metal, all with original material, not to mention Maria Jose Castillo who got 2^nd place in the Latin American Idol competition just last week. So I wonder how is it that someone who has lived here for so long hasn’t been able to check how creative people are in Costa Rica. Tourism itself is also embraced on culture: ocarinas, glass figurines, accessories paintings and all sorts of hand made sculptures are displayed and on sale everywhere.

Actually every time I go to San Jose, I always notice a small fair with local artists on some park, where they paint; right on the street, circus shows are presented as well and musicians are always part of those little celebrations. I think this woman is definitely seeing a different side of Costa Rica; arts are everywhere, so I wonder where exactly she hasn’t seen creativity in the people for 16 years.