For Sellers & Agents
Most of what delays a sale in Costa Rica is not the price. It is the weeks spent establishing what the public record already says about the property, after an offer is on the table and everyone is waiting. This is that work, done first, by someone with no stake in the sale.
In Costa Rica there is no title insurance to fall back on, no single MLS of record, and no national licensing body standing behind a transaction. None of that is anyone's fault, and none of it reflects on the people working in this market. It is simply the structure.
What it means in practice is that when a buyer asks whether the title is clean, whether the taxes are current, whether the company holding the property is in good standing, there is no institution to point at. The answer comes down to the word of whoever is standing there. Usually that is the seller, and increasingly it is the agent, who is being asked to personally vouch for records they did not pull and have no obligation to pull.
A foreign buyer feels this more sharply than anyone. They are buying in a jurisdiction they do not know, in a language they may not read, using a registry they have never seen. The caution they bring is not personal. It is rational, and it costs you time on every single transaction, whether or not anything is actually wrong with the property.
We pull the records ourselves and report what they say on the date we pulled them. Title and charges from the Registro Nacional. Corporate standing where a company holds the property. Municipal and national tax status. Every finding is dated and attributed to the source it came from. The report also carries our maintained dossier on the zone the property sits in, covering water supply, access and roads, utilities and internet actually available at the street, zoning rules, and published hazard mapping, so a buyer gets the area alongside the paperwork.
It is delivered in a form built to be handed to buyers, and the seller is free to share it with any buyer, as many times as they like, and to link it from the listing. No permission is needed each time and we are not notified when it is shared.
The questions answered before they are asked. A clean record currently earns you nothing, because there is no way for a buyer to see it without taking your word. This is how it gets recognised, in time saved and in fewer renegotiations.
The listing with the paperwork already done, and the ability to stop vouching personally for records you did not pull. You hand over a document from a third party instead of your own assurance. We take no commission, so we are not competing with you for anything.
Facts with dates and sources attached, which they can check against our published version themselves. Nothing in a report tells a buyer what to do. It tells them what the record says and leaves the decision where it belongs.
A shorter diligence period, because the first three weeks of it have already happened. Surprises surface before an offer rather than after one, when surfacing them costs a renegotiation or the whole deal.
Because they do not have to trust it. They can check it.
Every report carries a unique ID and is published by us at a permanent address. Anyone holding a copy can confirm it against the version we published, at no cost, without permission from whoever handed it to them and without contacting us. If a copy differs from what we published in any respect, our published version governs and the copy has no standing. Editing, redacting or re-typesetting a report ends the permission to share it immediately.
That sentence does more for independence than any amount of asserting it, which is why it is printed on the face of every report rather than buried in our terms. A seller cannot ask us to remove a finding. An agent cannot ask us to soften one. There is nothing to negotiate, and a buyer can satisfy themselves of that in about ten seconds.
See a sample Listing Edition or try the verification yourself with the ID TR-0000-0004.
Then you found it on your own schedule, before an offer, when you still control the timing and the explanation. The alternative is not that nothing is found. It is that a buyer's attorney finds it in week three of diligence, when the same fact arrives as a surprise and becomes a renegotiation or a dead deal. A known issue disclosed up front is a condition of sale. The same issue discovered later is a reason to walk.
Two to three business days, done remotely, before the listing goes up. It is the only part of the process that gets faster by happening earlier.
No. Most agents would start with one, usually a higher-value listing or one where the ownership structure is complicated enough that questions are guaranteed. There is no retainer, no minimum and no agreement to sign.
It overlaps and it does not replace them. A notary confirms a title is clean enough to record, which is a narrower job than checking tax standing, corporate standing, HOA finances and permits. Many attorneys do more than the minimum, and where yours does, you may not need us. Nothing in a report is a legal opinion and we say so on every page.
No. We do not list property, do not represent buyers or sellers, take no commission in either direction, and accept no referral fee from anyone. A report is a fixed fee for a document. That is the entire business, and it only works if it stays that way.
Either. Most often the seller, sometimes the agent as part of how they bring a listing to market. The fee and the findings are identical regardless.
The finca number if you have it. A listing link or an address works too, and we confirm the match against the registry before any work starts.
Registro Nacional for title and charges, Personas Jurídicas where a company holds it, the municipality and Hacienda for tax standing. Every record pulled fresh for your engagement. Nothing reused from another file.
A PDF and a published version with its own ID. Yours to share with any buyer, complete and unaltered, as often as you like.
Anyone you hand it to can check it against our published version without asking you or us. That is the part that makes it worth handing over.
We would rather you know this before you order than after, and the same limits are printed in every report we issue.
There are also no scores, no ratings and no risk grades anywhere in a report. The moment a document starts grading properties it becomes a judgment, and a judgment is the one thing a seller could reasonably object to. Facts, dated and sourced, are not something anyone has to argue with.
Where someone else is better placed than we are, we say so and point you to them. Coastal site work, legal opinions and structural questions all belong with people who do that for a living, and we take nothing for sending you there.
Order a Listing Edition on a property you are bringing to market, or write first and ask whatever this page did not answer. There is nothing to sign and no ongoing commitment either way.
$250 · 2 to 3 business days · Fixed fee · No commission · No referral fees in either direction
Questions first: contact@jotapropertiescr.com or WhatsApp.