Can Foreigners Own Land in Costa Rica? Yes, With Two Real Exceptions

The first house I bought here was outside Atenas in 2015. I paid $178,000 to a Canadian seller, closed with a notary I'd met that same week, and my name went onto the title at the Registro Nacional exactly the way a Costa Rican's would. No residency. No local partner. No special permit. I was on a tourist stamp.

So yes, foreigners can own land in Costa Rica, outright and in fee simple. That's the straight answer. The constitution gives foreigners the same property rights as citizens for titled land, and the system actually works. But there are two real exceptions and about a dozen ways people get burned anyway. After twelve years of buying, selling, and cleaning up other people's messes here, I'd rather you hear the unglamorous version.

Do foreigners really get the same rights as Costa Ricans?

For titled property, yes. Full stop.

Titled land (propiedad titulada) is registered at the Registro Nacional under a folio real number. Anyone of any nationality can hold it, sell it, rent it out, mortgage it, and leave it to their kids. You don't need to be a resident. You don't even need to be in the country. I've closed purchases by power of attorney for buyers who didn't set foot here until move-in day.

The vast majority of what foreigners buy is this kind of land. If that's what you're buying, the ownership question is boring. Boring is exactly what you want.

What's the catch with beachfront property?

Here's exception number one, and it's a big one. The Maritime Terrestrial Zone law (Ley 6043, from 1977) covers the first 200 meters inland from the mean high tide line on both coasts.

The first 50 meters is public. Nobody owns it, ever. The next 150 meters is concession land, leased from the local municipality, usually for 20 years at a time, renewable. You don't own concession land. You hold a right to use it.

And here's where foreigners hit a wall. If you've lived in Costa Rica less than five years, you can't control more than 49% of a concession. A corporation holding one has to be majority Costa Rican owned. The workaround you'll hear about is putting 51% in a Tico partner's name. I've watched two of those arrangements end in lawsuits. Don't.

Not everything near the beach is concession, though. Plenty of coastal property was titled before 1977 or sits in excluded areas like downtown Jacó and parts of Puntarenas city, and condos a few hundred meters back are usually fully titled. This condominium in Playa Tamarindo at US$819,900 is the category most foreign buyers actually end up in: close to the sand, fee simple, no concession involved. But verify. Ask for the folio real number before you fall in love, and look it up yourself.

Exception number two is smaller and rarely bites anyone. A 2-kilometer strip along the Nicaragua and Panama borders is state land and can't be privately titled by anyone, foreign or not.

Should I buy in my own name or in a corporation?

Most of my clients use an SRL (Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada). Setup runs $1,000 to $1,500 with a decent lawyer. The old reason, anonymity, is dead, because every corporation now files a beneficial ownership declaration through the Central Bank's registry. The reasons that still hold up are estate planning, separating the property from personal liability, and easier handling if you later sell the company instead of the property.

The tradeoff is annual upkeep. An inactive holding company pays corporate tax of roughly ₡69,000 a year, plus a resident agent fee and the shareholder filing. Call it $350 to $500 a year in carrying cost. For a single modest property, buying in your own name is completely fine. I own one property personally and one through an SRL, and honestly the personal one has been less paperwork.

How do I know a title is actually clean?

Pull the folio real at the Registro Nacional. It's online and costs almost nothing. You're looking for liens (gravámenes), annotations, and whether the person selling actually appears as owner. Then check that the registered survey (plano catastrado) matches what's physically on the ground, because in rural Costa Rica the fence line and the survey line disagree more often than you'd think.

Hire your own lawyer. Not the seller's, not the developer's. Budget 1% to 1.5% of the price for legal and notary work. Cheap here is expensive later.

And avoid untitled land sold as "derechos de posesión" (possession rights) unless you really know what you're doing. It trades at a discount for a reason. Titling it can take years and sometimes fails.

The title is clean. What does nobody tell you?

That a clean title doesn't mean you can build, or even get water.

The document that makes raw land buildable is the water availability letter (carta de disponibilidad de agua) from AyA or the local ASADA, the community water association. In parts of Guanacaste, ASADAs have flatly stopped issuing new letters because the aquifer is spoken for. I watched a buyer in 2023 close on a beautiful 2-hectare lot near Playa Negra, titled, surveyed, clean as a whistle, then spend two years unable to pull a building permit because the ASADA had no water to commit. The lot was worth maybe 60% of what he paid the day he learned that.

So before you sign anything on raw land: water letter, uso de suelo certificate from the municipality, and a check on whether the district even has an INVU-approved zoning plan. Many coastal districts don't. Make the purchase contingent on all of it. Sellers who refuse are telling you something.

What does buying actually cost beyond the price?

Closing costs run about 3.5% to 4% of the purchase price all in. That's the 1.5% transfer tax, roughly 0.8% in registry and documentary stamps, and the legal fees above. Buyer and seller often split it, but everything is negotiable.

After closing, property tax is 0.25% per year to the municipality. On a $400,000 house that's $1,000, or a bit over ₡500,000 at the BCCR reference rate, which sits around ₡508 to the dollar as I write this in July 2026. If the construction value passes roughly ₡155 million (about $305,000), the luxury home tax (impuesto solidario) kicks in at 0.25% to 0.55%. When you eventually sell, capital gains tax is 15% on the profit, with a one-time 2.25%-of-gross option for property owned before mid-2019.

None of that is scary. It's just real, and a surprising number of agents won't walk you through it.

Where do foreigners actually buy?

Guanacaste takes the biggest share of foreign money: Tamarindo, Nosara, Playa Flamingo, the hills around Santa Cruz. Prices reflect that. Something like Paraiso Suizo near Santa Cruz at US$1,490,000 shows where the titled acreage market sits in that corridor now, and you can get a feel for the full range by browsing homes for sale in Guanacaste. Puntarenas province, from the Uvita and Ojochal stretch down through the southern zone, generally gives you more land per dollar, more rain, and fewer direct flights. Start with homes for sale in Puntarenas and compare honestly.

My standing advice hasn't changed since 2014: rent in the actual town for six months before you buy. Rents make that cheap research. Even commercial space is knowable. A strip center unit in Brasil de Santa Ana rents for $3,000 a month, so you can test a business idea without buying the building. Guanacaste in October is a different country than Guanacaste in February. Find out which one you're marrying.

Frequently asked questions

Can I buy property in Costa Rica on a tourist visa?

Yes. There is no residency or visa requirement to hold titled property, and you can close by power of attorney without entering the country at all. I still wouldn't buy anywhere I haven't slept.

Does buying property give me residency?

Not automatically. A property investment of US$150,000 or more qualifies you to apply for temporary residency under the investor (inversionista) category, per Law 9996. It's an application, not a purchase perk, and processing commonly takes 8 to 14 months.

Can the government or squatters take my land?

Expropriation is rare and requires compensation. The practical risk is squatters (precaristas) on unattended rural land. Removal is straightforward within the first three months of an invasion and gets progressively harder after that. If you own raw land, fence it, hire a caretaker, and visit. Absentee ownership is how the horror stories start.