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you’re really funny dwayne. i actually could renounce my citizenship because i have another passport. the people who usually go running back to the safety net are the ones who refuse to assimilate in another culture, they don’t want to learn to speak spanish, and they don’t want to give up the junk food they’re so used to living on. i’ve seen that 2 year stat on other sites, and in fact, there was a woman who, after two years, threw in the towel and went “home” — her reasons for leaving were:
1. there are bugs
2. they speak spanish
3. it rains a lot.
Thankfully, she left. there are some gringos who should never leave the safety of their little enclave because they are not equipped to deal with anything other than what they’ve been brainwashed to do and believe.
yep, we’ve done all those figures, and of course i’d rather have the capital working for me in costa rica than having it tied up in a house i don’t want to live in. the real estate agent will be here in an hour so maybe all of this will be a moot point by then — i hope so. i do have plans to build another house down there, so it would be good to have the money to do that, but now it seems that we have more work here now than we’ve ever had, so both hubby and i will have to commute back and forth for the next year or so, so that’s where keeping the house here just as a base seems like a good idea, regardless of the cost, which, luckily, is far less than two grand a month. still. . .it’s been a frustrating process in a difficult market. thanks for your input. i appreciate that.
But I’ve lived in mexico and the yucatan and I never ever wanted to leave those places. that’s how i feel about costa rica. frankly, i never ever really liked living in the u.s. — i was always happier in a foreign country, so i can’t imagine what would take place in costa rica to make me want to come back here. as i said, if costa rica became intolerable, we’d look at other south american countries before even considering a move back to the states.
At least Costa Rica puts there corrupt officials in jail. We do nothing but give them cushy jobs and a fat book deal when they leave office. And that moron in the white house doesn’t scare you? He’s reading your e-mails, listening to your phone conversation, opening your mail, all with impunity. Now the North American Union is happening without approval from Congress — god only knows what’s in the pipeline that we won’t find out about until it’s too late. I don’t think CR is a paradise, and it does have its blemishes, but I like life down there so I won’t be one of the ones to come crawling back to the US. If things get bad in CR, there’s always Argentina or Paraguay!
twice or three times the price would be a joke! And right now we don’t even have it listed, except that there is one realtor who is interested in buying it for herself who called me and asked to see it again and who would work with us for a summer closing date. If she does, my problems are solved, if she doesn’t we re-list it in April at the same price we had it at last year, which is the going market value in my area where building costs are $242+ per square foot. The replacement cost on my house actually works out to more than we would sell it for, so I think w’re still in the ballpark. Then there are other considerations about hanging on to it just for the tax deduction, etc., especially with all the big projects we have to do this year. Arrrrggggggh, this has been frustrating but not unmanageable.
It was our realtor who set the asking price when we first talked about listing it 3 years ago. It was appraised at our original asking price 3 years ago, and the appraised price was still holding when we did put it on the market 18 months later. However, within 3 months of listing it the market started to slide and didn’t stop for the next year, at the end of which we took it off the market after coming down $40,000. We waited 4 months, then relisted it, and reduced the price again to where we are now. I certainly didn’t overpay for the house considering I bought it in 1989 at the bottom of the oil slump in Colorado. Our original asking price when we listed it was 5 x’s what I paid. The 20% of the rental costs that I would have to carry would amount to less than $200 mostly because I don’t have a huge mortgage in relationship to the value of the house. And given the rental market in my area, I could ask for enough to cover all the costs but would risk not getting a longterm renter. It’s not so much a financial burden as it is a physical burden having to divide my time between two places. There were so many factors in play in our area — the price of gas was one of them. I’m 7 miles from the nearest town, and 40 miles from Denver, and when gas was $3.25 a gallon, it made commuting problematic to a buyer in this price range. The other problem is that I have a small house in an exclusive area where the average house is 5,000 – 10,000 sq ft. so it wouldn’t surprise me if a developer bought it and scraped it just for the lot.
I only do original anything! And I’m looking for a source of organic flours now. I’ve already had a high-end bakery here in the States, so I just need to practice throwing that dough around. I’ve never used a wood burning oven though, so I hope I don’t burn down the campo!
It ain’t cheap to ship UPS — they wanted $1500 to ship the three boxes we’ve hauling down as luggage. We still come out ahead doing it that way than paying to ship.
Koty that is too funny! Maybe that’s why the picture looked for familiar — my husband reads that magazine. So tell us Lotus, is that REALLY you??????
Hola Keith- that is very good advice and yes, i’ve crunched those numbers and we’ve decided if this RE agent who’s coming to look at it tomorrow doesn’t buy it now, then we will list it when we get back from Costa Rica in April at what we believe is the current market value, which also reflects all discounts, etc. If it doesn’t sell by September, then we’ll try to rent it or just carry it through the winter and maybe keep it on the market during that time too. More than a financial burden, it’s a physical burden of having to maintain two homes and flying back and forth all the time, which gets to be stressful given the new tactics of TSA. The housing market up here is completely flat. Homes that were listed last summer and didn’t sell and were then taken off the market, were re-listed in December. Good luck trying to sell a house with one blizzard after another. There’s lots of buzz about the news jobs coming into Colorado so that always gives the RE market a little kick. I have no crystal ball but my ear is to the ground all the time and daily I talk to people about the economic market here. Everyone says it will get better in the spring, but then nobody ever saw this crash coming. As for foreclosures that someone else talked about — we rank #1 in the country (at least as of a month ago). Luckily I have a fixed rate mortgage and never fell for those clever rip-off mortgages. Yes, we are going to be doing a lot of cooking at our house when we get down there — bread included. Hubby’s a chef, one of the best, so he is enthralled with all the fresh food available down there to play with!!
Luckily, I don’t have to sell my house, which puts me in a better position than a lot of people. I can afford to sit on it until there is an upswing in the market. It would be nuts for me to go lower than I already have just to sell it, unless my circumstances change and I’m forced to sell. If I rented it, I would generate 80% of my fixed expenses on the house, so I guess I’ll just wait and see what this realtor says on Friday. She’s already told me that it’s priced right for the market today, which is $80,000 lower than we would’ve priced it two years ago. It’s not emotional with me at all. It’s about the bottomline.
If my Italian husband gets my oven built, I’ll make you some REAL bread, the recipe for which I got from the baker for the White House, who spoke only Italian and not a word of English! It’s the real deal. Hmmmmm — Pane di Como, with a thick crust and lots of holes!
Yes, it was Willi’s Pan — I thought that was such a great story. Just shows that you can survive anywhere if you have some ingenuity and manufacture a product to fill a niche.
There’s a guy named Willi who lives in Arenal who did just what you want to do — become the local baker — and he’s quite successful for having done so. Haven’t tried his bread tho, but he has a lot of customers. I’ve thought about doing a similar thing when I get down there permanently because I used to have a bakery that specialized in real Italian bread (26 different kinds) and I was a pastry chef in our restaurants. My big disappointment about Costa Rica is that there is no decent bread to be found anywhered that I’ve been. It’s usually loaded with chemicals and sugar and bears no resemblance to what I consider real bread, so I’m sure there are other people who feel the same way. the pastries I’ve seen all have transfats in them and other things that a human body should never consume. My husband is going to build me an outdoor bread oven (from a 14th century design) so I can at least bake bread for us and friends.
I’ve made a lot of friends in Costa Rica during my two year odyssey of building a house. Funny thing is, most of them are Ticos. Of course, I’ve made some gringo friends who live in my community, but I really don’t have all that much in common with a lot of the gringos moving to Costa Rica whereas I have more common ground with the locals. It was this way when I lived in Europe, Mexico, and the Bahamas, too.
You crack me up, mec. I know they’re Chinese children because I know the parents who adopted them. And how does that make me a racist? I’m not going to deign to respond to the rest of your vitriol and manic diatribe except to say that I find it troubling that there are people like you who think they know everything. Now where exactly in Costa Rica are you moving? I’ll be on the look-out for all bald men now!
