Inheriting property in Costa Rica sounds like good news until you try to do something with it. You cannot sell it, and often cannot legally act for it at all, until probate is finished. Meanwhile the taxes keep falling due, the grass keeps growing, and an empty property in a country with active possession laws is a problem that compounds.
Here is what to do, roughly in the order you need to do it.
First, the good news
Costa Rica does not levy inheritance or estate tax. Whatever the property is worth, the country does not take a share of it simply because it changed hands through death. That does not mean the transfer is free. Legal fees, registration costs and documentary stamps still apply, and every ongoing tax on the property continues to accrue throughout probate. But the single largest worry most foreign heirs arrive with does not exist here.
Hire a Costa Rican attorney before you do anything else
Not an attorney at home. One here, licensed to practise in Costa Rica, whom you can talk to in a language you both speak comfortably. Until probate concludes, you probably have no authority to sell, and may have none to manage the property either. Any effort to list it, negotiate with a buyer or sign anything is wasted until that is resolved. Start with the lawyer and let the sequence follow.
If the deceased left a Costa Rican will, probate is shorter but still necessary. If there is no will, it is longer. Either way it happens.
Probate does not always mean court
Where all heirs agree and all are adults, probate can often be handled by a notary rather than through the courts. It is considerably faster and usually cheaper. Where there is disagreement, a minor heir, or a contested claim, it goes judicial. Ask your attorney which route your situation allows. The difference can be months.
Secure the documents
If you know where the title documents are, put them somewhere safe. Do not hand originals to anyone unless your attorney asks for them, and when you do, get a set of copies authenticated by a notary as true copies. If a corporation owns the property, find the corporate books and the share certificates. They matter as much as the title.
Then have your attorney pull a current National Registry study on the property. Mortgages, liens and annotations you knew nothing about are far better discovered now than during a sale.
Find the property, then take possession of it
This is less obvious than it sounds. We regularly hear from heirs who do not know where the property they inherited actually is. If you have the title documents, the survey plan will locate it, and the deceased’s attorney may know. A real estate agent working from the plano catastrado can find it on the ground.
Once you know where it is, take visible possession quickly. Costa Rican law protects people in established possession, and while acquiring ownership through possession takes ten years, the practical problem arrives much sooner. Someone occupying land for more than a year can no longer be removed through a simple administrative process — at that point you are in a legal dispute rather than making a phone call. An unoccupied, overgrown property with nobody evidently in charge is an invitation.
If it is raw land, clear it, fence it, and make sure the neighbours can see someone has taken charge. If it is a house, put a caretaker in it, rent it, or at minimum have someone maintaining it. Bear in mind that residential leases here run for a minimum of three years, so renting during probate commits the property well beyond it.
A condominium is the easiest case. It can sit empty safely. The fees still have to be paid, and unpaid fees become a lien on the unit.
The employees are a real liability, and not the one you have heard about
If the deceased employed a caretaker, gardener or housekeeper, you have inherited an employment relationship along with the house. You may have read that long-serving employees can acquire rights over the property. They cannot. Possession that could ripen into a claim has to be held as owner, and an employee holds on the owner’s behalf.
What is real is the labour law. Costa Rican employees are owed notice, severance, accrued holiday and the aguinaldo, and those obligations sit with the estate. Terminating without following the correct process turns a manageable sum into a claim. Ask your attorney to handle it properly and budget for what is owed.
Keep paying everything
The executor is responsible for keeping the property’s obligations current through probate, and the list is longer than people expect. Municipal property tax continues. The luxury home tax, if the property is above the threshold, continues. Condominium fees continue.
If the property is held in a company, that company owes corporation tax annually and must file its return, pay the education and culture stamp and file a beneficial-owner declaration — whether or not it does anything and whether or not anyone is currently in charge of it. Miss the corporation tax for three consecutive years and the company can be dissolved by operation of law.
A dissolved company still holding the asset you are trying to inherit is a considerably worse problem than the one you started with. For absentee heirs, this is where things quietly go wrong. Put an accountant or attorney on the filings from the beginning.
Selling afterwards
Once probate concludes and title is in your name, selling is an ordinary transaction with one wrinkle. Capital gains tax applies, and if you do not live in Costa Rica, the buyer is required to withhold 2.5% of the sale price at closing and remit it. Take advice on your position before you price the property, because how the property was acquired and when affects what you owe.
If a corporation owns it
For years, buyers were sold the idea that holding property in a corporation made inheritance simple — just endorse the shares to the heirs.
It is no longer that easy. Selling an asset held by a corporation now requires a properly issued board resolution, recorded in the corporate books. The shares alone do not do it. Your attorney will need the books, and if the books are missing or were never properly kept, that is a problem to solve early rather than at closing.
Move faster than feels necessary
Probate takes as long as it takes. What you control is your end of it — producing documents, signing what needs signing, responding when your attorney asks. Delay on the heir’s side is the most common reason these cases drag, and every extra month is another month of taxes, maintenance and possession risk on a property nobody is watching.
Reviewed for 2026. Tax and corporate filing obligations have changed repeatedly since 2019. Confirm current requirements with a Costa Rican attorney.
