Scouting international real estate in Central America requires a fair bit of bumping along unpaved roads
November 9th, 2009
I seem to spend a lot of my time bumping along unpaved roads in Central America on my way to see how overseas property developments are progressing.
Sometimes this can give you the feeling that you’ve arrived at a secret paradise, miles from anywhere, when the bumpy road suddenly opens out to sweeping vistas, lush gardens and well appointed homes. Ahh, you think, no one except other discriminating investors like myself will take the time to reach and assess this opportunity so I’m guaranteed exclusivity, privacy and maybe somewhat of a discount due to the access. But, more often, the bumpy trip can leave you tired and grumpy and heaven help a developer who doesn’t then have a cool drink on hand and something worthwhile to show you as an investment opportunity.
It’s important to be prepared before you set out - to know exactly where the project is located, how long it will take to get there and on what sort of road. So on Reveal Real Estate we include a location map for each real estate development and answer these 3 questions:
- Is the road paved from the nearest international airport? (if it’s not paved, we’ve estimated the amount of driving time on unpaved sections)
- What is the total driving time from the international airport?
- How long does it take to drive to the closest town with a decent sized grocery store?
This data is useful on a project-by-project basis when planning a trip, doing a price comparison, or for tossing up real estate options; but there’s also something to learn from aggregating the data and analyzing by country. So here’s the picture for Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Is the road paved from the nearest international airport?
In broad terms the data reflects the level of investment each county has made on its infrastructure and the remoteness of the main property purchasing destinations. Panama leads the field when it comes to paving. You can drive in comfort, on paved roads, to most of the real estate developments featured on Reveal Real Estate, including of course all the condo projects in Panama City.
Costa Rica real estate follows close behind with over 70% of the developments having paved access. We haven’t yet seen the new section of road between Quepos and Dominical, but this should improve driving comfort further.
If you’re interested in scouting for Nicaragua real estate, be prepared for a bumpier ride. Only 20% of the projects on Reveal Real Estate have paved access. But if the planned coastal road from the border with Costa Rica heading northwards following the ribbon of development ever gets off the drawing board, this would change the picture quite dramatically.
How long does it take to drive to the airport and the nearest grocery store?
The pattern between the countries is similar when it comes to driving times. Real estate developments in Panama and Costa Rica have a shorter driving time on average to the airport and to a decent sized grocery store than those located in Nicaragua.
If you need to pop out to a grocery store with a decent range of items you’re looking at a 9 minute drive, on average, in Costa Rica. In Nicaragua, your grocery run is 23 minutes on average. Of course this varies considerably for each real estate development. Check each development page for individual driving times.
What about Belize real estate?
We’ve included the Belize real estate data separately as it’s not directly comparable to the other countries. The terrain is quite different, particularly on the coast, and visitors mostly get about by taking short internal flights and then getting in a golf cart for the final stretch. Many of the projects on Ambergris Caye for example do not have paved access but in practice all this means is a short golf cart ride on a sand road.
Infrastructure is steadily improving in Belize. The paving of the 16 mile road along the Placencia Peninsula is underway with the section from Maya Beach to Placencia Village already completed. So the only bumping we’ll do on our next trip to Placencia will be over speed-bumps.
So what does all of this mean for pricing? Does paved access lessen a development’s exclusivity? Does a long driving time from the airport or grocery store mean that prices will be lower for comparable real estate? We’ll be looking at this in our second post on accessibility. Stay tuned.
Related posts:
- Can you find what you are looking for in international real estate?
- Are real estate prices stickier in Central America?
- What’s the cheapest real estate you can find in a master planned community in Central America?
- 16 insider tips to investing in real estate in Central America
- The real estate market in Central America: In graphics
Tags: Ambergris Caye, Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Panama City Real Estate, Placencia real estate
This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 12:41 am and is filed under Market statistics and data. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Our development, Pacific Lots of Costa Rica, has seen a dramatic increase in sales in southern Costa Rica as highway improvements make the southern Pacific region more accessible.
There are two major highway projects under way in Costa Rica, the Caldera Highway extension from San Jose to Orotina near the west coast and the Costanera Highway extension from Quepos to Dominical heading south toward Panama. Both projects have been huge engineering feats requiring hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of stone to build the road bed as well as construction of multiple bridges over the roughly 120 kilometers combined between the two sections. The Costa Rican road network is divided in two systems, the National Network and the Cantonal Network.
The new Caldera toll road from San Jose to Puntarenas is now open from Orotina all the way to Puntarenas and the toll for automobiles is 480 colones (about 85 cents). The missing section between Orotina and Ciudad Colon is expected to be completed by early 2010. The project, funded by the Inter- American Development Bank, is nearing completion. This highway required the construction of 5 new major bridges to cross some very steep valleys as well as rivers and other water bodies in the mountains west of San Jose. The project has been slowed as safeguards to run off into local aquifers are being installed in this environmentally conscious country. Road work can be challenging since Costa Rica is home to four mountain ranges, with peaks over 11,000 feet.
On the southern coastal highway known as the Costanera extension between Quepos and Dominica the final finish coat of pavement is now being installed. At this point less than 3 miles remains unpaved and most of this section is nearly ready for paving. The drive time has been reduced from several hours to less than an hour. There is a big increase in tractor trailer traffic along the coastal route since the Costanera is a better alternative than the Inter-American Highway stretch known as the Cerro De La Muerte (passage of death) via the inland route by San Isidro En General. Truck traffic will increase along the coastal route as more drivers realize they avoid the climb to nearly 11,000 feet above sea level required on the Cerro and also avoid having to pass through San Jose on their trip north.
Bridge Update: All the major bridges from Jaco to Dominical are now complete and open. Just two years ago all traffic had to drive through the two rivers via this route, sometimes impossible during the rainy season. The new bridge in Parrita is finally open so you no longer have to wait at the one lane antiquated bridge to cross the river where weekend traffic to Quepos and Manuel Antonio would often back up for hours. The bridge across the Sevegre River has now been fully widened to two lanes and the bridge across the Naranjo River just south of Quepos is finished as well. The only bridge left to be completed is the one lane bridge by the town of Hatillo, which was only installed a few years ago and is close to Dominical. This is welcome news for the southern region since an antiquated hammock bridge recently collapsed just north of here on the Tarcoles River. posted by Steve Linder of Pacific Lots of Costa Rica, http://www.PacificLots.com