Construction prices in Costa Rica and especially in the southern Zone are comparable to construction prices in the USA or Europa - read here why!

We hear a lot that construction must be cheaper in Costa Rica then in the USA or Europa. Especially some real estate agents are still talking about $30-$50 a square foot. This might have been true long time ago but with current prices and local monopolies this is definitly not the case anymore.

A couple years ago most of the builders where working without insurance and or without permits. But times have changed! We have now monthly visits not only from the Municipality but also from the College and sometimes even Setena and from the Caja or social security. This means that now everything has to be paid or the Construction will get stopped!

Also it is the owners obligation to get insurance (INS) since in case of an injury of a worker they will come after the owner of the property and not the builder!

This fact alone contributes 8-10% for Architecture and plans and about another 7.5-8% of the budget for the Municipality and other Permits.

In addition we have the Caja de Segurity wich charges another 34% on top of the salaries of the workers. All workers have to be reported imidiatly when they start with their salary which is usually from $450 - $850 a month. That is for a construction time of lets say a year and 10 workers about  $18.000 - $35.000 alone for the caja or social security! Thats $12/sft on a 3000ft home!

For the price of the gravel we get already mixed concrete delivered to the site in Europa!

All those prices are higher than in most states in the US where some of the building material is coming from anyway. There are only a couple import companies which hold prices high like Abonos Agro and in adition there are only two Cement companies where everybody has to buy. Steel is imported like most other construction material with high costs and duties.

In general only the labour in cheaper than in the USA but please keep in mind that local workers are basically untrained and are not as efficient as we are used to. Usually we will need 3-4 workers where we would have one specialist. We have crews of 10-15 people on a site which would be not necearry in the States or Europa.

We see in our calculations that prices for quality construction now starts at $90-100/sft under roof. Real High Quality construction comparable to the states goes up to $150 and $200 /sft under roof which is the same as in most states of the US or Europa.

By quality construction I don't mean Tico style houses which are usually made of galvanized perlings with cheap Gipson boards from China in between. Water tubing is made from low pressure pipes and the foundations are more than shallow. 

A good example can be seen right on the beach in Dominical where a Developer tried to build 23 "villas" but got stopped for not following environmental procedures. As can be seen there those "villas" are falling apart already after 3 years! The wood (pressure treated pine and local Teak) on the walkways is breaking and the galvanized perlings are having holes where you can look trough them. The Gipson boards are moldy and have huge brown spots. The tiles are falling of the roof ... The clients got absolutely no value after reportedly paying close to $500.000 for their small ocean front "villas".

The high price for transport and concrete material is positive for our business since eventough the price of wood its higher than conventional materials the prefabrication method and speed of construction saves a lot of money on the total price of construction.