Field notes · From the sites we run
Most writing about building in Costa Rica is either a brochure or a forum guess. These are the answers we give our own clients — with the numbers, the legal constraints and the parts nobody enjoys explaining.
Featured · Cost guide · 2026
Per square foot, per square metre, and everything the per-square-foot number leaves out. Written from the bid tabulations rather than from a forum thread.
Evergreen guides on this site
These are not posts — they are the reference pages we keep current and send to clients. They carry the same topic tags, so the filter above reaches them too.
Cost guide
The three construction bands we actually build within, per m², and the six site factors that decide where a project lands inside them.
Build standard
Reinforced block and beam, light-gauge steel, and why a house detailed for Denver fails here in year five.
Area guide
Escazú to the Nicoya Peninsula: permitting behaviour, ground conditions and market depth, cantón by cantón.
Service
CFIA visado through the APC platform, the municipal permiso de construcción, SETENA, and the uso de suelo check that comes before any of it.
Service
Building affordably here is a discipline of structure and repetition — not of buying worse materials.
FAQ
Every question on the site in one place: permitting, foreign ownership, timelines, methods and materials.
Nothing filed under that topic yet.
Ask us directly
Send the plano catastrado and what you are trying to build. We will answer the specific version of the question rather than the general one — for your cantón, your slope and your access.
Replies within one business day. Consultations in English or Spanish.
