The size of Costa Rica real estate for sale can be a real problem. By law, the size of the property in the National Registry and the size shown on the survey map has to be exactly the same.
If you hire the wrong person to sell your property or to represent you as a buyer of a property, this can create huge problems later on. Often, real estate agents do not check the title of your property when they list it for sale. The reason is that they do not have the necessary knowledge to perform a title check. Not knowing, they won’t find out there is a discrepancy in size of Costa Rica real estate, until it’s too late.
Sometimes sellers get mad at the agent who asks for all the property information, so a title check can be done to make sure there are no liens on the property that cannot be corrected in a short time because they don’t know how important it is to check everything before listing it.
A Revision
- boundary differences,
- parts of the property missing because a fence was moved over,
- an unregistered easement,
- or any other discrepancies between the survey and the title registry.
Parts of the property missing because a fence was moved over
Check in person
You need to take into account that few closing attorneys in Costa Rica check the property that you are buying in person. They have no obligation to do so. They check the title of the property to make sure there are no liens or legal procedures against the property. But their revision doesn’t go past that and often dont’ even check the size of Costa Rica real estate. Only
Costa Rica Title insurance might not cover this kind of discrepancies either. In my whole real estate career, I have only met one closing attorney who insisted on seeing the property in person before closing. Therefore, it is recommendable you hire a surveyor to check on the boundaries of the property before closing on your purchase.
Mortgage
When a buyer needs a mortgage, the bank’s legal department will check for this kind of discrepancies. I have had several cases where I was the buyer’s agent and the listing agent never checked for this kind of discrepancies. We lost the sale because the bank’s attorneys would not accept the difference in size of Costa Rica real estate
Most real estate agents don’t realize that the buyer’s attorney will stop the purchase when there is a discrepancy with the size of the property. Then, all the effort of promoting the property has been wasted.
It is recommendable you hire a surveyor before closing on your purchase to check on the boundaries of the property.
A discrepancy
My reason for writing this blog will be very clear to you if you read an email I received recently from a seller of a property in Santa Ana below. It is very clear how important the size of the Costa Rica real estate is before listing a property.
Dear Ivo,
Maybe you remember me; it has been 7 years ago when I asked you to help me to sell my house in Santa Ana. Thanks to you we realized that we had a problem with the “survey”. Our new house was larger than the lot registered in the National Registry.
Finally after 7 years of hard work we registered the house losing 1850 m2 in the National Registry.
We moved to Europe 7 years ago. The house is rented right now, but the contract expires in September. We still want to sell the house and want to ask you if you are interested in offering it.
This is how a survey map looks like
I am very happy the seller emailed me after all these years. He even remembered who to contact to sell their property in Santa Ana.
American – European rules
And that is one of those things that sets us apart from the crowd. Our group’s regulations include that the title of the property for sale needs to be checked in the National Registry for liens. Then we also make sure you look at the survey map and in the National Registry, that there is no discrepancy in size of Costa Rica real estate.
Are you in the market to purchase or sell Costa Rica real estate? Play it safe and contact us now.
Feel free to leave your comments on this blog. If you like this article, please feel free to share it on your social media.
If you like this blog, connect with me on Google+ or subscribe to our newsletter by clicking the banner below.
While we’re at it, I DO want to remind our readers that we appreciate any referrals you can send us. Finally, please remember the American-European real estate Group’s agents when you refer a real estate agent. Because we DO appreciate your business.
