Where you are looking to live will make a great deal of difference in your rental options, both in terms of cost and availability. The rental market, like the real estate market in general, can be uneven, nontransparent, and prone to exaggerations of price. There are plenty of deals, but also a good amount of rip-offs. Beach communities can occupy the extremes of both cost and availability. Well-developed beach communities like Jacó and Tamarindo, for example, usually have a lot of rental properties available, but they’re targeted toward vacationers and go for hundreds or thousands of dollars a week. Other more rural beach communities, meanwhile, are cheap. However, they might not have much product available because few people are looking to rent. It’s a bit of a catch-22. In the case of beach communities popular with foreigners, expect to shell out between $500 and $1,000 a month for a nice, furnished apartment or condo in a gated community. Cheaper digs can often be had outside of town.

You might have a different experience with small rural communities inland, like Atenas or Ciudad Colón. These communities are more mature – and therefore have more buildings on the market – and less popular with transient tourists, so their prices remain reasonable. Small, tico-style houses in these communities can often be had for as little as $300 a month, though the sky is the limit for the larger and more luxurious accommodations found in gated communities and specifically targeted toward foreigners. Once again, $500 to $1,000 is a reasonable range for a small place, but that depends on the size and quality of the property you’re seeking.

Urban areas also typically have quite a bit of product on the market. Upper-class San José neighborhoods like Barrio Escalante, Barrio Amon, and Barrio Dent have very active rental markets. The increasingly-urban Escazú area also has a lot of product, mostly in the form of gated communities and condos. Certain parts of Heredia – Belén, Santo Domingo, San Rafael – are also taking on an increasingly populated, suburban identity, and more lodging can be found in those semi-rural spots than was previously available. In these urban parts of the Central Valley, however, prices tend to be high, even by developed world standards. A three-bedroom house, fully furnished, will cost upwards of $1,000 to $1,500 a month – and possibly more depending on the furnishings. Apartments in Amon and Escalante go for more than $500 a month, unfurnished, and the buildings are often rather run down.

As with real estate prices, rental rates also sometimes carry a gringo premium, but it’s more a function of location (Escazú, Tamarindo) and quality of the housing (new condominiums with granite counter tops). If you choose to go cheaper, reasonable middle-class tico housing can be had for between $300 and $500 in neighborhoods like San Pedro, Sabanilla, Sabana Sur, and Rohrmoser.

If you’re looking for a rural rental, they’re a little more difficult to find, but these days the market for renting rural houses to foreigners has grown substantially. Mountainous areas like Heredia, Cartago, Orosi, and the outer fringes of Atenas and Grecia offer quite a few houses for rent in the countryside, many of them with great views and lots of fresh air. Rates vary according to the size and quality of house.