List your Arenal property free. Pay nothing until it sells.
No listing fee. No marketing fee. Nothing monthly. And it is an open listing, so you can list with us and with every other agent you like at the same time — whoever brings the buyer is the one who gets paid.
Arenal is the one area on this list where the buyer is not looking at the sea. They are looking at a volcano, a lake and a climate that lets them sleep without air conditioning. That combination pulls a particular kind of buyer, and it pulls them away from the coast deliberately.
It is also where a buyer’s money tends to go furthest. People who looked at Guanacaste first, did the arithmetic and came inland are a real share of this market.
Where we take listings: La Fortuna, El Castillo, Nuevo Arenal, Tronadora, Tilarán and the north shore of Lake Arenal.
What sells here: Lake-view and volcano-view homes, small farms and acreage, B&Bs, cabinas and tourism businesses in La Fortuna, and houses in the established pockets around Nuevo Arenal and Tronadora.
Two groups. Retirees and full-time residents who want the cooler weather, the greenery and a lower cost of getting in. And tourism operators buying a business — a lodge, cabinas, a restaurant — where the numbers matter more than the view.
The questions here are not coastal questions. How much does it actually rain, and in which months. How windy does it get, because the Tilarán side can be relentless. What the internet is like. How long to San José, how long to Liberia, and how far to a hospital.
And for anything near the water, what the rules are along the lakeshore. Arenal is a managed reservoir, not a private lake, and there are limits on what can sit close to it. Buyers who have done their reading will ask, so have the answer ready.
If the property is a working business — a lodge, cabinas, a restaurant — buyers will want occupancy and operating history, not photographs of the rooms. Pull that together before you list and you will shorten the sale considerably.
- List with as many agents as you like, and sell it yourself if you find the buyer
- Every agent has to actually produce a buyer to earn anything
- Walk away whenever you want — nothing binds you to us
- More agents showing it means more people see it
- One agency holds it for a fixed term, often six months or a year
- They earn the fee even if somebody else finds the buyer, or if you do
- After the first flurry of calls, a lot of exclusives simply sit there
- If the agency loses interest, you wait out the contract
On an exclusive our payday is protected the day it is signed. On an open listing it is not protected at all. That is exactly why we prefer it.
Two things, and neither is difficult. Keep the price the same everywhere — nothing kills a sale faster than a buyer finding your house at three prices on three websites. And tell every agent when something changes: a price adjustment, a new roof, a tenant moving out, an offer under negotiation.
Send the address, the price you want and whatever photos are on your phone. That is enough for us to tell you whether we can help and what we would do with it. There is no contract to sign and nothing to pay.
