The pitch had the seductive geometry all land pitches have: a triangle drawn between two boom towns and a beach, with his parcel sitting in the middle of it.
The road, he was told, would be paved within two years. The corridor would follow. Buy the dirt before the dirt got expensive.
He bought the dirt.
The road was not paved in two years. Or four. Municipal budgets moved, shifted priorities, found other roads. The corridor’s boom arrived on schedule — eight kilometers north, along a road that did get paved.
Infrastructure rumors run on Costa Rica time. Capital runs on calendar time.
Meanwhile, the land needed him. Raw land in Costa Rica is not a set-and-forget asset: boundaries need maintaining, caretaking arrangements need paying, and untended parcels invite occupation issues that are far easier to prevent than resolve. Add property taxes, a corporation to maintain, and an annual trip to look at his own trees.
Here is the honest ending: he’s probably going to be fine. The road is now — genuinely, finally, visibly — being graded. The parcel has appreciated on paper. But seven years of carrying costs and parked capital have eaten most of the discount that made the deal feel clever, and the same money in the boring built town up the coast would have doubled while collecting rent.
“I wasn’t wrong about the future,” he says. “I was wrong about the schedule. In land, that’s the same mistake.”
“I wasn’t wrong about the future. I was wrong about the schedule. In land, that’s the same mistake.”
The Story Timeline
The Cost
Lessons For Future Buyers
Insider Perspective
Land is where the biggest Costa Rica fortunes were made — and where the most capital quietly naps for a decade. Our rule for clients: emerging-corridor land is a fine third purchase. It is almost never the right first one.
Where They Are Now
He's keeping the parcel. The machines, after all, have arrived. But his next purchase was a condo in town — 'something,' he says, 'that pays me to wait.'
Considering Avellanas corridor? You can read the unfiltered local take on this area, or talk it through with us before you fall in love with anything.
