Costa Rica Property Due Diligence: The Complete Checklist Before You Make an Offer

My Guanacaste Real Estate · CELAFI-Certified Buyer Advisory · Updated August 22, 2026

Last reviewed August 2026. Prices, regulations and institutional information were verified against the sources linked below.

There is a single moment in a Costa Rican purchase where the money stops being yours and the problems start being yours. It is not the closing. It is the day your due diligence period expires.

Everything that follows is about what has to happen before that date — and about the fact that in Costa Rica, nobody does it for you. There is no title insurer quietly checking the file, no state regulator verifying the survey, no lender whose own risk department catches what you missed. What gets verified is what you commission.

This is the checklist we run. Take it to your attorney and ask which items they are covering.

First: protect the period itself

Nothing else on this list matters if you cannot walk away. The purchase option agreement has to state the length of the due diligence period, what happens to your deposit if a condition fails, and that the deposit sits in registered escrow rather than the seller account. Thirty days is common; forty-five is more comfortable when a municipality is slow.

None of this matters if you cannot walk away. Before anything else, the opción de compra must state the length of the due diligence period, what happens to your deposit if a condition fails, and that the deposit sits in SUGEF-registered escrow rather than the seller's account.

Thirty days is common. Forty-five is more comfortable when a municipality is slow — some land use certificates come back in days, others take two to four weeks, and that clock does not care about your deadline.

If a seller resists a written due diligence period, or pushes for a deposit released directly to them, you have already learned the most important thing about the transaction. That resistance is information.

Layer 1 — The registry

Everything titled in Costa Rica sits in the Registro Nacional under a folio real number, and the cadastral survey is registered through the Catastro Nacional inside the same institution. This layer is public and digital, which is exactly why buyers mistake it for the whole job. It tells you who owns the parcel and what is attached to it, and nothing about what you may do with it.

Everything titled in Costa Rica lives in the Registro Nacional under a folio real number. This layer is public, digital, and the easiest to verify — which is exactly why buyers assume it is the whole job.

The title study

Your attorney runs it back at least 30 years, confirming the seller is the registered owner and that nothing is attached to the property:

• Gravámenes — mortgages, liens, encumbrances
• Anotaciones — annotations flagging pending legal actions against the property
• Embargoes and judicial claims
• Registered easements (servidumbres) running across or in favour of the parcel
• Usufructs, life-interests or habitation rights held by third parties

The plano catastrado

The registered survey map, issued through the Catastro Nacional, which sits inside the Registro Inmobiliario. Two things matter: that a current one exists, and that it matches the property you actually walked. A plano showing 1,200 m² against a fence line enclosing 900 m² is not a paperwork detail — it is a boundary dispute waiting for you.

You can look up registered cadastral geometry yourself on the national territorial information viewer, searching by finca or plano number. What no public tool does is confirm that the registered plan matches the ground. That is a field task for a licensed topógrafo, and it is the reason an independent survey appears in Layer 4 rather than here.

If the property is anywhere near the coast, this is also where you confirm whether it is titled at all, or a concession. The distinction is covered in full here.

Layer 2 — The municipality

The registry says who owns it; the municipality says what you may do with it, and the two systems do not talk to each other. Article 28 of the Ley de Planificacion Urbana requires a municipal certificate confirming that the intended use conforms to zoning. Construction permits, the patente for any commercial use and the municipal tax account all live at this layer too.

The registry tells you who owns it. The municipality tells you what you may do with it — and they are entirely separate systems that do not talk to each other.

Uso de suelo

The requirement is statutory. Article 28 of the Ley de Planificación Urbana prohibits dedicating land or buildings to any use incompatible with the zoning in force, and requires owners to obtain un certificado municipal que acredite la conformidad de uso a los requerimientos de la zonificación. Article 29 adds that without it, no commercial or industrial patente is granted.

The certificate is issued by the municipalidad of that canton — there is no national equivalent. Request it through your attorney using the finca number and the plano catastrado reference, before you sign anything.

The trap most rental buyers walk into: residential zoning does not automatically authorize short-term rental operation. Running one in a non-approved zone exposes you to municipal fines. If rental income is part of your reasoning for the purchase, the certificate must say so — not the agent.

Permits and tax status

• Construction permits for everything already standing. Unpermitted construction becomes your liability the day you sign.
• CFIA-processed plans if you intend to build. Projects are filed electronically through the Colegio Federado de Ingenieros y Arquitectos on its Administrador de Proyectos de Construcción platform, established by decree and governed by its own regulation, before the municipality issues a permit.
• Municipal tax account current, along with any patente if there is a commercial use.
• Property tax current. Article 28 of Ley 7509 makes unpaid property tax a hipoteca legal preferente on the property itself — it attaches to the parcel, outranks other creditors and arrives with the deed.

There is no public way to search construction permits by property. The CFIA platform is a professional-login system, and we found no municipal or national lookup that lets a buyer query what was permitted on a given parcel. The only route is to ask the municipality directly for the permit file, which means it has to be requested inside your due diligence period rather than checked in an afternoon.

Layer 3 — Water, power and access

Water is the item that most often kills a deal in Guanacaste. You need a written availability letter from the operator that actually serves the parcel, which outside AyA service areas means the local ASADA, a private non-profit association operating by delegation. Legal access and a documented electricity path are the other two, and neither is settled by what you can see from the road.

Water — the item that most often kills a deal

You need a carta de disponibilidad de agua from the operator that actually serves that parcel: AyA where it operates directly, or the local ASADA across most of rural Guanacaste. The requirement runs through the INVU Reglamento de Construcciones, whose article 117 conditions building on potable water availability. Without the letter there is no permit.

It is worth knowing what an ASADA actually is, because buyers assume it is a branch of AyA. Under the governing decree, ASADAS are private non-profit associations that administer water and sanitation by delegation from AyA under Ley 2726, and they are the bodies empowered to issue the availability certification for a construction project. They are local, they vary enormously in capacity, and their authority to issue that letter is not permanent.

Costa Rica's water authority has sanctioned dozens of ASADAs across Guanacaste for irregularities — illegally drilled wells, missing water quality studies, undocumented well capacity. A sanctioned association cannot issue availability letters for new construction until it remedies the findings, which has taken many of them years. Two neighbouring lots can therefore have completely different futures.

So ask, precisely: which provider serves this parcel, is that provider currently authorized to issue letters, does an existing legal connection reach this property, and has a letter actually been issued — not promised. A well on the land is not a substitute; unregistered wells are their own problem.

Legal access

Does the property front a public road, or do you reach it across someone else’s land? If the latter, there must be a registered servidumbre. A neighbour who has always been happy to let people through is not legal access, and their goodwill does not transfer with the deed.

Costa Rican law does provide for a forced right of way. Per the Sala Primera’s own review of the case law, articles 395 to 400 of the Civil Code allow the owner of a landlocked parcel to compel passage — but only where there is no sufficient outlet to a public road, and with indemnification to the neighbour whose land is crossed. It is a remedy, not a substitute for buying a property that already has access.

Access also has a documented planning consequence: article 36 of the Ley de Planificación Urbana lists inadequate access to public roads among the grounds on which a municipality may refuse the visado required to subdivide land. Whether a municipality will refuse a construction permit outright for want of registered access is a question for your attorney in that specific canton. What is clear is that municipalities treat access as a permit input, and that a parcel without it is a problem you inherit.

Electricity

Confirmed service, or a documented and costed path to it. "The poles are close" is a sentence, not a connection.

Layer 4 — The physical property

This layer exists because the paper can be perfect while the ground is not. An independent survey confirms the registered boundaries match the fence line, a soil study drives foundation cost, and statutory setbacks along rivers, springs and sloped ground can remove a large share of a parcel from the buildable area before any municipal rule applies.

• An independent survey. Have a licensed topógrafo verify that physical boundaries match the plano catastrado. This is cheap relative to the problem it prevents.
• Soil study if you are building — composition and stability determine foundation cost, and slope changes everything.
• A building inspection on any existing structure, by someone you hired, not someone the seller recommended.
• Occupancy. Walk the parcel. Fences, crops, animals and structures all indicate sustained presence by someone.

Statutory setbacks, which are not negotiable

This is the item buyers most often discover after closing. Article 33 of the Ley Forestal declares protection areas that no municipal plan overrides:

Protected areas under article 33, Ley Forestal 7575

Feature	Protected width
Springs (nacientes permanentes)	100 metres, horizontal radius
Rivers and streams — sloped ground	50 metres each side
Rivers and streams — rural, flat	15 metres each side
Rivers and streams — urban areas	10 metres each side
Lakes and reservoirs	50 metres

On a narrow riverside parcel in sloped ground, fifty metres on each bank can remove most of the buildable area before any zoning rule applies. Establish where the water is, and whether the ground counts as quebrado, before you price the lot.

One status question for your attorney. A 2022 reform added articles 33 bis and 33 ter, creating exceptions for certain low-impact and public works inside protection areas. Their current status is disputed. The distances above are unaffected either way, since those articles created exceptions rather than changing the widths — but if your plan depends on one of them, have an attorney confirm where it stands before you price the lot.

Protected areas, and what you can actually check

Confirm the parcel is not inside or adjoining a protected wildlife area. The national territorial viewer carries SINAC boundary layers alongside cadastral geometry, which is the practical first look. A formal answer for a specific parcel comes from SINAC by certification.

If the project needs environmental viability

Per SETENA’s own published guidance, environmental impact assessment is required for activities listed in the annexes of the general EIA regulation, and must happen before a project begins rather than retroactively. The thresholds it publishes put projects above 1,000 m² in scope, 500 to 1,000 m² in environmentally sensitive areas, and generally exempt anything under 500 m².

Here is the part nobody tells buyers. SETENA’s public consultation system searches by correspondence number only — there is no field for property, plano, finca, owner or location. You cannot discover whether an environmental file exists on a parcel; you can only track one whose number you already have. If the property has any development history, ask the seller for the expediente number in writing, and if none is offered, ask SETENA directly.

If it is a condominium, article 21 is the one that matters

Ask for the reglamento, the fee history, the reserve fund balance, any pending special assessment and the architectural restrictions. Then ask for one more document, because Ley 7933 makes it decisive. Article 20 provides that unpaid common-expense quotas constitute un gravamen hipotecario sobre la finca filial. Article 21 requires the seller to produce a certification of payment on transfer — and where there are arrears, the buyer se considerará deudor solidario por el monto certificado.

Read that twice. Unpaid condominium fees are not a debt you can leave with the seller. They attach to the unit as a lien, and the certification under article 21 is the instrument that fixes and caps your exposure. Asking for it is not a formality — it is the mechanism.

If you are buying a company, not a property

Many Costa Rican properties sit inside an SRL or SA, and sellers often propose transferring the company instead of the property. It can be cheaper and faster, and it means you inherit everything that company has ever done: its debts, contracts, filings and any litigation. A property transfer gives you a clean asset; a share transfer gives you a history.

Many Costa Rican properties are held inside an SRL or SA, and sellers often propose transferring the company rather than the property. It can be cheaper and faster. It also means you inherit everything that company has ever done.

• Corporate books, share registry and legal representation, all current
• Corporate tax filings and the annual corporation tax, paid up
• Any debts, contracts, employment obligations or litigation attached to the entity
• Confirmation that the shares are nominative and properly registered

A property transfer gives you a clean asset. A share transfer gives you a company with a history. Neither is wrong — but the due diligence is a different exercise, and your attorney should price it accordingly.

The document set, at a glance

Core due diligence documents

Document	Issued by	What it proves
Registry study folio real	Registro Nacional	Ownership, liens, annotations, easements
Survey map plano catastrado	Catastro Nacional	Registered boundaries and area
Land use certificate uso de suelo	Municipalidad	What may legally be built or operated
Building permit permiso de construcción	Municipalidad	Existing structures were legally permitted
Water letter carta de agua	AyA or ASADA	A legal water source can serve the parcel
Right of way servidumbre	Registro Nacional	Legal access across another parcel
Protected-area check	SINAC / MINAE	Parcel is not inside a restricted zone
Independent survey levantamiento	Licensed surveyor	Physical boundaries match the registry
Tax status	Municipalidad	No arrears — unpaid tax is a preferential legal mortgage
Condominium payment certificate	Administration	Caps your liability for arrears under art. 21, Ley 7933

The risks that never appear on paper

Costa Rican law recognises adverse possession after ten years of possession held as owner, continuous, public and peaceful. Tolerated occupation confers nothing, but the distinction is decided after the fact and rarely cheaply. Vacant land with an absent owner, lapsed taxes and no monitoring is the vulnerable case, and no document will tell you about it.

Occupancy and usucapión

Costa Rica recognises adverse possession. Per the Civil Code as compiled by the university legal information centre, article 860 requires ten years of possession to acquire immovable property by prescription, and article 856 requires that possession be held en calidad de propietario, continua, pública y pacífica. Article 853 adds the requirements of a transferring title and good faith.

There is a second track that matters for farmland. The agrarian regime under the land and colonisation law establishes a special prescription that keeps the ten-year clock but relaxes the good-faith and just-title requirements, weighing productive agricultural work instead. We describe it as characterised in legal commentary rather than quoting it, and we would treat any specific case as a question for an agrarian specialist.

One provision cuts the other way and is worth knowing. Article 279 of the Civil Code provides that merely permissive acts no confieren posesión ni autorizan la formalización de derecho alguno — occupation you tolerated does not become possession. That is real protection, and it is decided after the fact and rarely cheaply, which is why the practical answer is still to walk the land.

Ten years is a long time, which is why this rarely surprises buyers of occupied homes. It surprises buyers of vacant land, particularly land whose absent owner let taxes lapse, let the corporation fall out of good standing, and never visited. Those three lapses are precisely the pattern that makes a parcel vulnerable.

So walk the land. Ask who has been using it and for how long. Look for structures, fences, planted crops, grazing animals, anything indicating sustained presence. And if you buy vacant land, understand that ownership here is partly an act of maintenance: a caretaker, visible boundaries, taxes current, corporate filings current.

What the neighbours know

Talk to them. Ask about water pressure in April, about the road in October, about flooding, about the noise, about whether anyone has ever disputed the boundary. It is not a document and it will not appear in any file, and it is frequently the most useful hour of the entire process.

Who actually checks what, and who checks nothing

The notary has statutory duties over the registry layer: informing you of tax liens, describing the finca correctly, checking capacity and powers. Those duties end there. Land use, permits, water, access, setbacks and occupancy are covered by nobody unless somebody is engaged to check them. Knowing exactly where that line falls is what stops a buyer from assuming the closing itself is a safety net.

Start with what the law obliges. Under the Código Notarial, the notary must inform the parties of los gravámenes legales por impuestos o contribuciones que afecten los bienes (art. 34), must state the finca number together with its naturaleza, medida, situación y linderos (art. 88), and must assess capacity and the powers of any representative (art. 40). The notary carries civil liability, backed by a guarantee fund.

So the registry layer is inherent to the notarial function, not an upsell. The other three layers are not covered by anyone. Uso de suelo, permits on what is already built, the water letter, legal access, statutory setbacks, whether the plan matches the fence line, whether somebody is living on the lot — none of that is part of authorising a deed. It exists only if it is commissioned.

Say the incentives out loud, because they are not hidden. The attorney bills due diligence as professional work, separately from the deed. The agent is paid a commission when the transaction closes. Those are the facts of how this market pays people, and a buyer is entitled to weigh them. Ours is stated plainly: we are paid at closing, and we still push the verification, because a transaction that goes wrong costs us far more than the commission is worth.

The failure mode this does not cover

Everything above assumes the seller is who they say they are. That assumption fails often enough in Costa Rica to have its own specialist prosecutorial unit and its own OIJ section. The fraud is documentary — a forged power of attorney, a falsified corporate representation, a bogus liquidator for a dissolved company — and it is invisible to a buyer who only inspects the land. In June 2024 a network of fifty-four people, thirteen of them notaries, was dismantled after targeting exactly one profile: elderly foreign owners who did not live in Costa Rica.

Two free steps, and one that costs US$15. Check the notary on the Dirección Nacional de Notariado’s public lookup before signing, insist on your own counsel rather than the seller’s, and enrol the property in the Registro Nacional’s alert service once it is yours. We set out the mechanics, the case, and what the system can and cannot undo in a separate article — it is the one piece of this checklist that matters after closing as much as before it.

Thirteen questions to ask before you make an offer

1. Is this titled property or a concession — and can I see the registry record?
2. What does the 30-year title study show in liens and annotations?
3. Does the plano catastrado match what I walked, in area and in boundaries?
4. What exactly does the uso de suelo certificate permit — and does it cover short-term rental if I need that?
5. Which water provider serves this parcel, and is it currently authorized to issue availability letters?
6. Is there an existing legal water connection, or only the possibility of one?
7. Is access via public road, or a registered servidumbre?
8. Was every existing structure permitted, and can I see the permits?
9. Are property tax, municipal tax and any HOA fees fully current?
10. Has anyone occupied or used this land, and for how long?
11. If I am buying a corporation, what liabilities does it carry?
12. Who is the notary, and may I look them up before we sign?
13. What is the total annual cost of holding this property, in writing?

That last one is the question buyers skip and later regret. We break the numbers down in what each budget actually costs to hold.

Red flags that should end the conversation

• Pressure to skip or shorten due diligence, or to close before a certificate arrives
• A deposit requested directly to the seller rather than into regulated escrow
• Insistence that you use the seller's notary and "save the duplication"
• Verbal assurances offered in place of documents that plainly exist
• A concession being described as though it were ownership
• Any structure proposed to work around a foreign-ownership restriction
• A price meaningfully below comparable properties, with no explanation you can verify

None of these are proof of bad faith. All of them are reasons to slow down, and slowing down costs nothing compared to the alternative.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and verification

Every legal requirement above links to its instrument at the point it is used.

1. Ley de Planificación Urbana 4240 — articles 28, 29 and 33 to 36. The municipal land use certificate, and the visado required to subdivide land.
2. Ley Forestal 7575 — article 33, protection areas. The statutory setbacks around springs, rivers, streams, lakes and sloped ground.
3. Ley 7509 — Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles, article 28. Unpaid property tax as a hipoteca legal preferente attaching to the parcel.
4. Ley 7933 — Ley Reguladora de la Propiedad en Condominio, articles 20 and 21. Unpaid quotas as a lien on the unit, and the buyer’s joint liability for the certified amount.
5. Registro Nacional — Catastro Nacional. The institution that registers the plano catastrado.
6. SNIT — national territorial information viewer. Public cadastral search, and SINAC protected-area layers.
7. CFIA — Reglamento del Administrador de Proyectos de Construcción. The platform through which construction projects are filed before municipal permitting.
8. Decreto 42582-S-MINAE — Reglamento de ASADAS. ASADAS as private non-profit associations operating by AyA delegation, and their power to certify availability.
9. SETENA — published guidance on environmental viability. When environmental impact assessment is required, and the size thresholds.
10. Sala Primera, Corte Suprema — La Servidumbre Civil en la Jurisprudencia. Civil Code articles 395 to 400 on forced right of way and the indemnification it carries.
11. Ley 7764 — Código Notarial. Articles 34, 40 and 88 on what the notary must verify and disclose.
12. Delfino — Caso Madre Patria, composition of the network. The 54 people implicated, including 13 notaries, referenced in the fraud section.

Four questions here turn on your specific property and belong with your attorney: whether registered access is a precondition for a construction permit in your municipality, the current status of articles 33 bis and 33 ter of the Ley Forestal if your plan depends on one of them, which SINAC certification confirms a parcel sits outside the Patrimonio Natural del Estado, and, if a defect appears in the chain of title, which line of authority governs a good-faith purchaser. That last one is genuinely unsettled and anyone who answers it confidently is overreaching.

Read next: Where to Buy in Guanacaste: An Honest Area Comparison — the zone-level decision that comes before any of this.

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My Guanacaste Real Estate is a CELAFI-certified real estate advisory. We represent buyers — your Buyer Protector in Costa Rica.

This article is general education, not legal advice. Statutory provisions are linked to their instrument and were verified in August 2026; requirements vary by municipality, and laws and regulations change. Engage a licensed Costa Rican attorney to conduct due diligence on any specific property. Next scheduled review: February 2027.