Why Your Escazú House Has Sat for a Year
A house in Escazú that has been listed for a year is not a mystery. It is almost always one of six things, and five of them are fixable in an afternoon.
Nobody enjoys this conversation, so most agents avoid it. Here it is anyway.
1. The price was set against the wrong number
This is the big one and it is usually not greed. It is arithmetic done against the wrong comparison.
Owners price against what the neighbours are asking. Buyers price against what houses actually closed for. In Escazú those two numbers can sit a long way apart, because the asking prices include every house that has also been sitting unsold for a year. Price against a queue of unsold houses and you join the queue.
The tell is simple. If the property has had viewings but no offers, the presentation is probably fine and the number is high. If it has had almost no viewings at all, buyers filtered it out before they ever saw it — which is also the number.
2. It is on an exclusive that stopped working
An exclusive listing is at its most useful in the first few weeks. The agency has just taken it, they are calling their buyers, and it is fresh.
Then the flurry ends. If nothing came of it, the agency moves on to the next listing, and yours sits inside a contract that stops anybody else from doing anything about it. You are not being badly served, exactly. You are just no longer anybody’s priority, and you have another four months to wait before you can change that.
Check when yours expires. That date matters more than anything else in this article.
3. It is listed at three different prices
Go and search your own address. Owners are regularly surprised by what comes back — the same house on three portals at three prices, because it was adjusted with one agent and not the others.
A buyer who finds that does not conclude you are flexible. They conclude the lowest number is the real one and everything above it is optimism, and they open from below the lowest. Or they move on, because a property nobody is managing properly feels like a transaction that will also be badly managed.
4. The listing does not answer the obvious questions
Escazú buyers are well informed and they compare carefully. They want to know the condominium fees and what they cover, the water pressure, the state of the road in, how far the school run really is, what is included, and how old the roof is.
If the listing does not say, they either ask — which is work, and most will not bother — or they assume the answer is bad. Nobody assumes the unanswered question has a good answer.
Put the awkward facts in the text. A listing that deals with them up front gets fewer enquiries and much better ones.
5. It is English only
A serious share of Central Valley buyers are Costa Rican professionals searching in Spanish. Most Escazú listings are in English and nothing else, which quietly removes those buyers from your pool.
This costs nothing to fix and almost nobody does it.
6. Nobody can actually see it
A tenant who needs notice. An owner abroad. Keys with somebody who does not answer. Photographs taken in the dry season being shown to a buyer standing there in October.
Buyers here move fast when they decide. A property that cannot be shown this week loses to one that can, every time.
What to do this week
- Find out when your exclusive ends. Put the date in your phone.
- Search your own address and make every listing say the same price.
- Ask your agent what the houses that actually sold nearby closed at — not what they were asking.
- Write down the five questions buyers keep asking and get them into the listing text.
- Make sure the property can genuinely be shown at short notice.
And then list it more widely
When the exclusive expires, you do not have to sign another one. An open listing lets you list with as many agents as you like and sell it yourself if you find the buyer. Every agent then has to actually produce a buyer to earn anything.
Listing with GAP costs nothing. There is no listing fee, no marketing fee, nothing monthly, and no tie-in. Our fee comes out of the sale, and only if we sold it.
Send the address, the price you want and whatever photos are on your phone. If the number will not hold, we will tell you at the start rather than take the listing and let it sit for another year.
WhatsApp: +506 8888 0003
Email: info@gap.cr
Selling in Escazú →
Open listing or exclusive: the full comparison →
Glenn Tellier, founder of Grupo GAP
