Of course, there are innumerable ways that people could take advantage of you during the construction process, and you should be extra careful to make your own independent audits of what’s going on. The most common fraud takes place during the purchase of raw materials. Perhaps the contractor bills you for extra material, then keeps

Building a home in Costa Rica usually takes anywhere from a year to two years. During this time, if you’re taking an active hand in supervising the construction, you should be renting a place nearby and make frequent visits to the site. It’s difficult to tell exactly how long any construction will take. A simple

Now comes the hard part. You have your design. Time to get things moving. The first step of building is permitting, a topic addressed in depth in Chapter 9, so here we’ll concentrate on the actual process of constructing. The next step is the biggest: Who do you hire to build your house? There are

How much you end up paying for your construction depends mainly on two factors: the kind of materials you’re using and on the location of the construction. Representatives of Zürcher Arquitectos said that, for example, construction in Guanacaste these days is about 25% to 30% more expensive than construction in the Central Valley. As a

By Tom Rosenberger Living and building in Costa Rica, within 10 degrees of the equator, where the sun’s ultraviolet rays are very powerful, present’s new and unpredictable challenges. From over 15 years of constructing housing here, I have witnessed numerous building products fail for a variety of different reasons. Some problems are a result of

During the design phase of your project, you’ll have to make some decisions on what kind of materials to use in constructing your house. The real estate and housing industry here has evolved to the point that pretty much everything (within reason) is available. However, to a certain extent you’ll need to adapt to local

One of your very first challenges after deciding to build your own home will be design. Here you’ll have several different options. If you’re like most people, you have no degree in architecture and have probably never built a house in your life. Maybe you’ll want to dive in and learn how to draft blueprints.