Moving to Costa Rica: A Buyer's Guide to Actually Making the Move

If you are thinking about moving to Costa Rica, or buying property here so you can move later, message me and I will help you think it through. I am Tiago Leao, an agent with KRAIN in Guanacaste, and my own family made this exact move 15 years ago. You do not need to be ready to buy, ready to move, or ready to do anything except ask a question. WhatsApp is the fastest way to reach me and I answer every message myself, in English, Spanish or Portuguese.

The rest of this guide is what I would tell you on that call, written down.

Moving to Costa Rica is really two decisions that people usually collapse into one: where you want your life to be, and what you want to own. Almost everything that goes wrong in a relocation comes from doing the second one before the first. So this walks the move in the order that actually works, from your first exploratory trip to the day you get the keys, with the costs, the timelines, and the mistakes I watch buyers make from the inside.

I grew up in these beach towns and went through the residency process myself as a dependent. Today I spend my days with American and Canadian families doing what my family did, and I have watched enough of these moves land well, and a few land badly, to know where the difference comes from.

Start by naming what kind of move this is

There are really only three versions of moving to Costa Rica, and each one points at a different property.

The full-time move. You are selling or renting out the house back home and living here. Your priorities are the boring ones: water supply, internet reliability, drive time to a good hospital, drive time to school, whether the road floods in October. Ocean view matters less than you think it will after month four.

The part-time move. You are here three to six months a year, usually escaping winter, and the house earns when you are not in it. Now rental performance, management, and location convenience become real financial variables. Start with what vacation rental income actually looks like in Guanacaste, because the gap between gross and net surprises almost everyone.

The investment-first move. You buy now, rent it out, and move later. This is the most flexible path and it has a genuine advantage: your property can double as your residency qualification if you structure it right from day one.

Say which one you are out loud before you look at a single listing. The answer changes the town, the price band, the property type, and how you take title.

Choose the region before the house

Costa Rica is small on a map and large in practice. The Caribbean side, the Central Valley, the Southern Zone, and Guanacaste are four different countries as far as your daily life is concerned. I work Guanacaste, so I will be straight about what that means: dry, sunny, beach-town living with a real dry season and a green season, the country's second international airport at Liberia, and the highest concentration of North American families on the coast.

Inside Guanacaste, the towns are not interchangeable either. Tamarindo is the town with everything, restaurants, schools, services, and the noise that comes with them. Playa Grande is quiet, surf-driven, protected. Flamingo, Potrero and Brasilito are the marina and residential corridor. Conchal is resort-anchored and manicured. Nosara is further out, wellness-focused, and a genuinely different drive.

The single most useful thing you can do here is read a comparison rather than a brochure:

• Guanacaste's beach towns, compared
• Tamarindo vs. Playa Grande
• Flamingo vs. Conchal vs. Potrero
• Tamarindo vs. Nosara

Or skip the reading and just ask me. Send me a message on WhatsApp with who is moving, roughly what the budget is, and whether there are kids, and I will tell you which two or three of these towns to spend your first trip in and which ones to skip. That is a fifteen-minute conversation and it has saved people entire trips.

Rent first. Costa Rica gives you 180 days to be sure

Americans and Canadians can enter as tourists and stay up to 180 days. That is half a year to live somewhere before you commit, and very few countries hand you that much runway.

Use it deliberately. Rent in two towns, not one. Be here in September or October, when the green season is at its wettest, not only in February when everything is postcard-perfect. Drive the school run at 7am. Sit in your prospective neighborhood at 9pm on a Saturday and listen. Get the internet speed test at the actual house.

Most of my best client relationships start a year or more before a purchase, with exactly this. I would rather help you rent, and be the person you call fourteen months later, than sell you the wrong house in week two.

The money picture: what living here actually costs

Two categories, and people usually get the first one right and the second one wrong.

Cost of living is genuinely lower than most of the US and Canada in the places that matter: healthcare, property taxes, help around the house, produce, eating locally. It is not lower in the places people forget: imported groceries, cars, electronics, appliances, air conditioning in April, private school tuition, and anything that arrives in a shipping container. Beach-town Guanacaste is also the most expensive part of Costa Rica. Budgets built from a blog post about Atenas or Grecia do not survive contact with Tamarindo.

Carrying costs on the property are the part I can be precise about, because they are structural:

• Property tax: 0.25 percent of registered value per year. On a $600,000 home that is $1,500. The full property tax breakdown, including the Luxury Home Tax that applies to higher-value homes, is here.
• HOA and community fees vary enormously and are the real number to interrogate, especially in gated and resort communities where they can dwarf the tax bill.
• Insurance, pool and garden service, pest control, and maintenance. Salt air, humidity and sun are hard on a house. Deferred maintenance here compounds faster than it does in a temperate climate.
• Closing costs: roughly 3.5 to 4.5 percent of the purchase price, one time, usually paid by the buyer. See the closing costs and taxes guide.

If you want the honest carrying-cost math on a specific property rather than a general range, send me the listing on WhatsApp, whether it is one of mine or not, and I will build the real number with you line by line. That exercise alone has changed which house a few of my clients bought.

Residency: pick your lane early

You do not need residency to buy property here. Foreigners own titled property outright, in their own name, with the same rights as citizens. But if you are moving, you will want residency eventually, and the category you qualify for should influence how you buy.

• Pensionado requires $1,000 a month in lifetime pension income. Social Security and CPP qualify; 401(k) withdrawals do not.
• Rentista requires $2,500 a month in guaranteed unearned income, or the cleaner route, a $60,000 deposit in a Costa Rican bank.
• Inversionista requires a $150,000 investment, and real estate counts. This is the path most of my clients take, because the purchase they already wanted to make does double duty.

The detail that costs people money: for Inversionista, the property generally needs to be registered in your personal name, not a corporation. Corporations are common here for other good reasons. If you decide on the structure after closing, you may be paying to fix it. Tell your attorney your residency plan at the start, not at signing.

The full breakdown, including CAJA, timelines and taxes, is in my residency guide for property buyers.

Healthcare, honestly

Residents enroll in CAJA, the public system, at roughly 9 to 11 percent of declared income, and it covers a spouse and children under 18 at no extra cost. Most expats I know use CAJA as their backbone and pay out of pocket or carry private insurance for speed and choice, because private care here costs a fraction of US prices.

The relocation-specific question is not "is healthcare good," it is "how far am I from it." In Guanacaste, routine care is local, the regional hospital is in Liberia, and the top private hospitals are in San José. For most families that is fine. If someone in your household has a condition that needs frequent specialist care, drive time to San José belongs in your town decision, not as an afterthought.

Families: solve school before you solve house

This is the one I feel strongest about. If you have school-age kids, the school decision constrains the house decision, not the other way around. Guanacaste has a real cluster of bilingual and international schools, but seats are finite, calendars differ, and admissions can run months ahead. Families who fall in love with a house 45 minutes from the school they end up choosing regret it every single morning.

Start with my guide to schools in Guanacaste and the school profiles, then draw your search radius around the school. If you tell me your kids' ages I can tell you which schools are realistically taking students this year, which is not always what the websites say.

The logistics nobody puts in the brochure

• Shipping a container. Common, taxable, and slower than quoted. Many people ship the sentimental and buy the rest here. Furniture that thrives in humidity is not the furniture in your living room right now.
• Cars. Import duties are high and used-car prices reflect it. A vehicle that is unremarkable in Denver is expensive here. Budget accordingly, and buy something with clearance if you are outside a paved development.
• Pets. Very doable, with health certificates and airline-specific rules. Start earlier than you think; summer heat embargoes catch people out.
• Banking. Opening a local account as a non-resident is possible but paperwork-heavy, and it gets much easier once you have a DIMEX. Most buyers close in dollars through escrow long before they have a local account.
• Internet. Fiber has reached most of the developed coast and is genuinely good where it exists. "Most" is doing work in that sentence. If you work remotely, test the speed at the specific house, and ask what the backup is.
• Driving. Your foreign license works while your tourist entry is valid. Waze is standard, addresses are descriptive rather than numeric, and one river crossing in October will teach you more about your route than any map.

Then, and only then, buy the property

Once you know the town, the school, and your residency lane, the purchase itself is refreshingly orderly. Costa Rica has a centralized national registry, closings run through a notary attorney, and funds move through a regulated escrow company.

The sequence:

1. Offer and negotiation. Your agent presents and negotiates terms.
2. Purchase and sale agreement, with a deposit, commonly around 10 percent, into escrow.
3. Due diligence, typically 15 to 30 days. Your attorney examines title and liens, the survey plan, the water letter, permits and use-of-land. My due-diligence checklist is what I hand clients.
4. Closing. The deed is signed before a notary and recorded in the registry.

Two Costa Rica-specific things to internalize before you shop. First, most transactions are cash, because local financing for foreigners is limited and expensive; many buyers use home equity or a securities-backed line from home when they want leverage. Second, beachfront is not what it looks like: the first 200 meters from the high tide line is the maritime zone, and most of it is concession land rather than title. Read titled vs. concession beachfront before you fall for anything on the sand.

If you are considering building instead of buying, the real constraints are water availability, the permit chain and construction timelines, not the land price. Start with what it costs to build in Guanacaste and the land buying checklist.

What actually surprises people in year one

Not the bugs, not the Spanish, not the roads. It is these:

• Everything takes longer. Permits, deliveries, repairs, bureaucracy. The people who thrive here stop treating this as a problem to solve and start treating it as the price of admission.
• The green season is real. May through November, with September and October the heaviest. It is green, lush and quiet, and it is also when things leak and roads wash. Owning here means budgeting for it.
• Maintenance is not optional. A house on this coast needs a person who watches it. If you are part-time, property management is a line item, not a luxury.
• Community is the whole thing. The families who stay are the ones who joined something in the first six months, the surf group, the school, the volunteer thing, the Tuesday soccer game. The ones who leave are usually the ones who bought a beautiful house and waited for a life to show up.

A realistic 18-month timeline

1. Months 1 to 3. Exploratory trip. Two towns minimum. Meet an agent and an immigration attorney, ask hard questions, buy nothing.
2. Months 3 to 6. Choose your residency category. Start gathering and apostilling documents at home, they are typically only valid for six months, so sequence them.
3. Months 4 to 9. Rent here for a stretch, ideally including part of the green season. If you have kids, apply to schools now.
4. Months 6 to 12. Shop seriously in one or two towns. Offer, escrow, due diligence, close. Structure title to match your residency plan.
5. Months 9 to 15. File the residency application. You can remain in the country legally while it processes once filed.
6. Months 12 to 18. Move in, ship or buy, enroll in CAJA, get your DIMEX, and start the part that no checklist covers.

Some people compress this to six months. Some take five years. Both are fine. The order is what matters.

Let's talk about your move

Most of my clients start talking to me long before they are ready to buy, and that is exactly how it should work. The useful conversations happen while you are still deciding, not after you have already fallen for a house.

I grew up here. I went through this process from the inside, with my own family, at an age where I watched every part of it. I live on this coast full time, I work in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and I represent buyers across Guanacaste with KRAIN, from Tamarindo through Playa Grande, Flamingo, Brasilito and Conchal.

What you get by reaching out, none of which costs anything and none of which requires you to be a client:

• A straight answer about which towns fit you. Not a list of all of them. Two or three, and the reasons, and which ones to skip.
• The people, not just the properties. Immigration attorneys, closing attorneys, escrow companies, inspectors, builders, property managers, school contacts. My clients tell me the vetted list is worth more than any listing.
• Honest carrying-cost math on any property you are considering, mine or someone else's, including the HOA fee that most listings gloss over.
• A read on timing. Whether what you want exists at your number right now, or whether you should wait, rent, or widen the search.
• Me telling you not to buy something. Regularly. I would rather lose a transaction than sell a family a house 45 minutes from their school or a beachfront lot that turns out to be concession rather than title.

The easiest way to start

Send me a WhatsApp message with these four things. It takes a minute to write and it is enough for me to give you something genuinely useful back:

1. Who is moving and roughly when.
2. Your budget range, even a wide one.
3. Kids, and their ages, if any.
4. What you would be doing here: retiring, working remotely, renting the place out, or still figuring that out.

I answer every message myself. Not an assistant, not a form, not a drip campaign.

Message me on WhatsApp. You can also find me on Instagram or email tiago@soldbytiago.com.

If you are somewhere between "we talk about this on Sunday nights" and "we fly down next month," that is the right time to reach out. And if you would rather read a while longer first, my Buyer's Guide covers the transaction mechanics and current listings will calibrate your budget faster than any price article.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Immigration categories, tax thresholds and municipal practice change, and every situation differs. Confirm current requirements with a licensed Costa Rican immigration attorney, real estate attorney and accountant before acting. References: Direccion General de Migracion, Ministerio de Hacienda, CCSS, Registro Nacional. Cost-of-living observations reflect the Guanacaste coast in 2026 and are my own, not survey data.

FAQ

How much money do you need to move to Costa Rica?

It depends on the residency path and the lifestyle. The formal minimums are $1,000 a month in lifetime pension income for Pensionado, $2,500 a month in unearned income or a $60,000 bank deposit for Rentista, and a $150,000 investment for Inversionista. Beach-town Guanacaste costs meaningfully more to live in than the Central Valley, so budgets built from national averages tend to run short.

Can I move to Costa Rica without residency?

You can live here on tourist entries of up to 180 days and buy property with full ownership rights, since foreigners have the same property rights as citizens. What you cannot do without residency is enroll in CAJA, work for a Costa Rican company, or stay indefinitely without leaving. Most people who move permanently start on a tourist entry and file for residency within the first year.

Should I rent or buy first when moving to Costa Rica?

Rent first, almost always. The 180-day tourist entry gives you enough time to live in two towns, experience the green season, and test the school run before committing. The most expensive mistakes I see come from buying in week two of a first visit.

Is Guanacaste a good place to move with kids?

It is one of the easier parts of Costa Rica for families, because this part of Guanacaste has a cluster of bilingual and international schools and a large established North American community. The practical rule is to choose the school first and then search for a house inside a sane drive of it, since seats are limited and commutes here are longer than the distance suggests.

What is the biggest mistake people make moving to Costa Rica?

Buying before they have lived here through a green season, and buying without matching the title structure to their residency plan. The first produces a house in the wrong town; the second produces legal work you pay for twice.

About the author

Tiago Leao is a real estate agent with KRAIN Luxury Real Estate in Guanacaste, working Tamarindo, Playa Grande, Flamingo, Brasilito and Conchal. His family moved to Costa Rica 15 years ago and he went through the residency process himself, which is why relocating buyers make up most of his business. He works in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and builds every signature listing its own dedicated marketing page at soldbytiago.com/signature/. Reach him on WhatsApp.