List your Papagayo 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.
Papagayo is the top end of the Costa Rica market and it does not behave like the rest of it. The resorts set the tone, Liberia airport is about half an hour away, and a good part of the peninsula is run to a standard that a buyer is paying for as much as they are paying for the house.
It is also the one stretch of this coast where the first question is not about the house at all. It is about what exactly you own.
Where we take listings: Peninsula Papagayo, Playa Panamá, Playa Hermosa, Nacascolo and Culebra Bay.
What sells here: Resort residences and villas, ocean-view condominiums, homes in gated communities at Playa Hermosa and Playa Panamá, and building lots with views over the gulf.
High-end North American buyers, many of whom stayed at one of the resorts first and decided they wanted to come back every year. They are used to being sold to properly, and a thin listing reads to them as a warning sign rather than a bargain.
The first question is title. A significant part of this area is concession land rather than ordinary titled property, and the terms are not the same thing. A seller who can say plainly which one they have, and on what terms, is taken seriously straight away. A seller who is vague about it loses the buyer to a lawyer.
After that: the resort or association fees and what they include, whether the property can go into a rental programme, what the restrictions are on changes and rebuilding, and how the whole thing is looked after when the owner is out of the country.
Concession property can be perfectly good to buy and perfectly good to own. What it cannot survive is being described loosely. Get the terms, the remaining period and the conditions in writing before the listing goes out.
- 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.
