Building Your Own Home:

You want a home of your own in Costa Rica. You've looked around but found nothing that suits your fancy. You ask yourself: why don't we just build a house, save ourselves all this grief?

Be advised: building a home in Costa Rica is not a grief-saver. The undertaking demands great patience and extraordinary courage. It helps if you have an engineer working for you who knows how to slice through the red tape and slip between the gaps in the building laws.

It can be difficult to find contractors capable of working up to American or European standards. Most local builders have a distressing habit of missing deadlines, running over budget, producing shabby work and refusing to take responsibility for their mistakes.

Should you decide to go ahead and build a home, the first thing you will need to do is Research the Property.

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A Few Words of Wisdom:

Good contractors do exist. Check around. Look for an experienced construction firm that can assist you with permits as well as building. Interview several companies; ask lots of questions.

Make sure that the attorney has done the proper title research confirming that the property is suitable for construction.

Spend as much time as you can on the site; get involved in the building process. This is as near as you'll get to guarantee that your house doesn't break the bonds of its blue print and become a huge, money eating monster, devouring your bank account, your credit rating and what remains of your sanity.

Hint: To keep control: dole out the cash to the contractor. Give him what he needs to buy materials. Pay him a bit at a time as the job progresses so the workers will be inspired to do quality work and to finish on time.

Read 2007's Construction Statistics