Deal with local bureaucracy when purchasing a home or building. Retirees or anyone else who plans to live in Costa Rica and purchase a property has to jump through a lot of hoops when dealing with the local bureaucracy. Property taxes, building permits, and zoning are all handled by local municipalities. The country is divided up into 81 municipalities, each one representing a cantón (like a county) with a seat, a mayor, a council, and all the attendant elements of bureaucracy. Some municipalities are easier to work with than others. The municipality in your canton of choice is where you’ll do part of your due diligence, and it’s also where you’ll eventually apply for your building permits if you plan to construct anything. For the purposes of due diligence, the first thing retirees or anyone else needs to check is whether previous owners have paid all their taxes. The easy way to do this (other than checking the National Registry for tax liens) is obtaining property tax receipts from the owner for last few years of taxes. These receipts have the double benefit of helping to confirm ownership. Your attorney can also look up property tax records at the Municipality, though it shouldn’t be necessary. The municipality is also the place where you or your attorney would go to get information on uso de suelo, or land-use restrictions. How the property is zoned according to the municipality’s plan maestro (often translated “master plan” but more properly meaning “zoning plan”) will determine what you can and can’t build on it, or if you can convert a house into a hotel. Property zoned forest can be built on only with difficulty, while property zoned agricultural has density restrictions (though there are often plenty of loopholes). Each zoning plan is different, so restrictions must be approached on a case-by-case basis. Only a handful of municipalities have comprehensive zoning plans, though some of them maintain a patchwork system of do’s and dont’s. The lack of thorough zoning restrictions has caused quite a serious logjam in some parts of the country, as developers with bulging pocket books have swamped back-water municipalities with projects previously unimagined. The central government recently took action in Guanacaste, issuing a four-year decree to restrict the heights of new buildings within five kilometers of the coast. New zoning plans would replace that decree, and a few municipalities – like Santa Cruz, home of development-heavy Tamarindo – are creeping their way toward finalizing zoning plans. All that to say, you probably won’t encounter many restrictions in the municipality on what you can build. That cuts both ways, since neither can you be sure that your next-door neighbor won’t be allowed to build a soccer stadium or a brothel, but for the moment there’s not much you can do. One of the few things you can do is have your attorney or some other well-connected acquaintance ask around at the municipality about what kind of permits your future neighbors have been granted. Be careful, however, to take rumored projects with a grain of salt: Everyone is planning to build 20-story condominium developments in Costa Rica, but very few people have the financing and political clout to follow through. Until permits are approved, it’s just a pipe dream. Utilities Especially if you’re buying a piece of land for construction, you’ll also need to do some due diligence on utilities: Their availability, their quality, and their cost. In most cases, documentation provided by the seller is sufficient. However, in the event it is not available, you or your attorney must do this locally as well, though not at the Municipality. Electricity: Depends on the canton. You will need to stop by the local headquarters of either the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Costa Rican Electricity Institute, ICE) or whatever local company or co-op provides power on behalf of ICE in that area. Be sure to bring the proper documentation for the property (number of the finca, copy of the cadastre registration, etc.). You’ll be looking to confirm that the property has a power hook-up available, and if not, how much it would cost to install one. Telephone: This will be with ICE, which, in addition to electricity, holds a monopoly on landline service. Only check this if you’re building in remote area. In most of the rest of the country, you would set this up while building or after moving in. Internet: There are three places you can check for Internet availability: The local ICE office; Radiografía Costarricense S.A. (RACSA), a wholly-owed ICE subsidiary of ICE that provides different kinds of Internet service depending on the part of the country; and your local cable provider (either Cabletica or Amnet), which distributes high-speed RACSA connections. Basically you’ll be checking to see if Internet service is available, and if so what kind. Connection speeds are always a quite a bit slower than what the Costa Rican ISPs say they’re selling, so if your work depends on Internet access, be cautions. Water: Again, where you go will depend on where your property is located. Acuaductos y Alcanterillados (Water and Sewer, AyA) runs much of the country’s water supply, but in rural areas, local organizations called ASADAS take over. You’ll want to check with whoever’s in charge to see if the property you’re looking at has water access. If it doesn’t, you would need to drill a well, which requires a concession from the Ministerio de Energia, Ambiente, y Telecomunicaciones (Ministry of Energy, Environment, and Telecommunications, MINAET).