FIRESALES IN JACO, COSTA RICA, really?

Jaco Costa Rica Beach Fire Sales!
UPDATED: Nov 1, 2009 by Jeff Fisher,
Owner-Broker CR Beach Investment Real Estate 

• Will the U.S. recession and Global Crisis terminate by the end of the year as some economists are predicting ?

• Will Costa Rica's new highway to the Central Pacific, Jaco Beach area near completion as scheduled (moved up to August 2010) 
  and help to create another boom? 

• Will you have waited too long, hoping for that last additional 10% off and miss the opportunity of your dreams?

Everybody likes a deal!   
We watch the U.S. news stations, and we know what's going on in the States; but here it almost never happens to find a property selling for 60% off of its former market value, as found in other popular U.S. and European destinations, nor are there many foreclosures. 

Here in the Jaco Beach Central Pacific area, our fire sale properties generally are 10%  to 35% off; with only about 7% of our areas' listings offered at "fire sale" prices!   

 Main reasons why there aren't more Fire Sales:
1. Costa Rican banks did NOT make many loans to foreigners, nor even residents the past 7 years. Our banks are not in the same crisis state as in many other countries, with bank repossessions and liquidations, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

2. Our condo market consists primarily of purchasers who only have 10-30% invested, with the rest Owner-financed. Thus they can only discount what they have invested!   If the building isn't finished, they might only have equity of 10-20%.  Some developers are offering discounts of only 10% now, so as not to infuriate their previous purchasers.

3.  Remember, even at our peak, the prices in the Jaco Beach, Central Pacific area never reached the incredibly high price points found in other popular international tourist or retirement destinations. Lower building & land costs were reflected in the original sales price.

Why Buy Now?

1.  "With crisis comes opportunity" but nobody can predict with 100% accuracy the perfect time to buy.   We at CR Beach believe that with all the positive international real estate news of late that our market has possibly bottomed out. 
Many JACO realtors will tell you that October 2009, (typically our slowest month) was the best ever! 
The time to buy is now, because 10 of our favorites were sold in the past 2 months, 2 in the past week! 

2. The new highway ...the new highway.... the new highway from the San Jose area to the Central Pacific area- is really being built, and on schedule to be completed by August 2010!  Of course this is predicted to bring another housing boom to our area.
Costa Rica is a small country and access to the capital San Jose is very important for all kinds of "quality of life" issues. 
The appreciation of the Jaco Beach Costa Rica Central Pacific area real estate market is thus, (dare I say) guaranteed! 

 (Jeff says "since 90% of our sales are from U.S.-Canada residents, what happens there does influence what happens here!)

Existing-home sales bounced back strongly in September with first-time buyers driving much of the activity, marking five gains in the past six months, according to the L. Yun of the National Association of Realtors®.

Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – jumped 9.4 percent. Sales activity is at the highest level in over two years, since it hit 5.73 million in July 2007.

Even with the improvement, Yun said the market is underperforming. “Despite spectacular gains in the stock market, principally from the financial sector recovery, most of the 75 million home owning families have more wealth tied to their homes. Home values could soon turn consistently positive and help the broad base of middle-class families, but we are not there yet,” he said.  

Early information from a large annual consumer study to be released November 13, the 2009 National Association of Realtors® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, shows that first-time home buyers accounted for more than 45 percent of home sales during the past year.
A separate practitioner survey shows that distressed homes accounted for only 29 percent of transactions in September. 

  “The current housing supply is the lowest we’ve seen in two and a half years,” Yun said. “If we could continue to absorb inventory at this pace, home prices would return to normal, modest appreciation patterns next year.  
    

Bloomberg's Global Economic State:
Global investors and analysts agree that the world economy is on the mend. Almost 75 percent describe the global economy as stable or improving, up from just over 60 percent in July. The IMF said on Oct. 1 that the world economy will expand 3.1 percent next year after shrinking 1.1 percent this year.