Costa Rica Forum

RandL
Joined 2016
Posts: 60

7 years ago

The Ever Evolving Plan

7 years ago

Quick review, we are in our early 70s. We spent a week on each coast and one in a cloud forest in June 2016. Mostly it was a vacation, but one inspired by a life long unrealized dream to move to CR. We both spent our childhoods in South Florida and I have a deep love of tropical flora and all natural landscapes. The upshot is that we are now hoping to move to Costa Rica, but at least one of us will have to travel to the US every 3 months for medical reasons, we have a large German Shepherd that our ethics and our hearts require to go with us. Also we have a mostly blind and deaf 41 year old horse whose death is on our critical path but which death we are trying to prevent while that can be done humanely. Additionally we will need to sell our farm.

When all that has come to pass … we will need a plan. The most recent and extreme involves up to six months of scouting real estate with most of that time spent in the US, going through listings, making lists of properties to see and travel to and from CR to see them. At the end of that process we would buy out right and plan to live there a year before deciding whether or not to put the house on the market and just stay till it sold. We would just repeat the evaluation each year till we decided it was time (most likely for medical reasons which could require a sudden departure). It would be hurtful but not lethal to loose money on the house. Except for the dog and that we want a nice place near the beach we would follow the recommendation to rent the first year. From what I've seen, even if someone would rent to people with a large dog the rentals look like they'd be between $2500 and $3500 per month. At 3000/mo. x 12mo. = $36000/yr. which could equal a good deal of the lose one might expect on a purchased house.

Thoughts, suggestions, etc. welcome and appreciated. And many thanks for the people and resources here.

R and L

William Russell

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