Buy, Sell With Online and Print Resources

Searching for real estate listings? If you sell a property through a given real estate company, your listing will be featured on its Web site, but many buyers and sellers forego the middleman and deal directly with each other.

At one time, print was the only way to go – that’s all that was available – but most print publications also have an accompanying Internet edition too. Sometimes the Web version is all that exists.

The Tico Times (ticotimes.net) offers extensive real estate listings in English, many from advertisers accustomed to dealing with the expatriate community here. The paper’s weekly print edition contains ads in standard classified format; the online edition, updated each weekday, offers an expansion of the standard abbreviated classified format into more elaborate descriptions with photos of listed properties.

The Spanish-language daily La Nación (www.nacion.com) contains a large selection of real estate classified ads, in both its print and online editions. Ads are in Spanish only, and you’ll probably need Spanish to deal with any contacts listed. Click on clasificados (classifieds) and then bienes raíces (real estate) to do an online search of the listings.

The online community Craigslist (costarica.craigslist.org) has come to Costa Rica with its free classified ads in English and Spanish. Its “Housing” section is particularly abundant with a list of links, each taking you to full descriptions of properties.

4 Sale by Owner (www.forsalebyownercostarica.com) is Costa Rica’s outpost on a U.S.-based network known by the abbreviation FSBO. Buyers and sellers match up without intermediaries, both in the site’s online listings and in a monthly magazine publication distributed around Costa Rica.

The Costa Rica Real Estate & Tourism Guide (www.thecostaricaguide.com) is a free magazine-size publication found at and containing merged listings of 38 real estate agencies around the country. It also contains ads for businesses of interest to those  considering relocating to Costa Rica. The publication itself can be viewed online at the Web site.

–Jeffrey Van Fleet