The Process

Three bilingual private schools serve the Dominical–Uvita area. Ballena Academy in Playa Hermosa runs preschool through grade 12. Uvita Christian Academy is PreK–12 and awards a US-accredited diploma. Escuela Verde is dual-immersion and accredited by Costa Rica's Ministry of Education. Families don't have to leave the coast for high school.

There's no large private hospital on this coast — worth knowing before you buy rather than after. Day to day there's good private urgent care in Uvita and Dominical, and San Isidro has both a private hospital and the regional public one. For anything major, San José has the country's top private hospitals. It's about four hours by road, but I fly out of Quepos and go up for the day, which is what most people end up doing.

Better than people expect — though what you can get depends on where the house sits. In the coastal towns there is real fiber choice: seven or so providers compete along this stretch, Liberty, Kölbi, Itellum and Supercable among them. As a rule, where there is electricity there is usually fiber, so coverage is rarely the problem — reliability is. Outages and storms are frequent enough — especially up the mountains — that most people working from home run Starlink alongside fiber rather than instead of it. Redundancy is the point. Working remotely from here is normal, not a compromise.

Power is the real caveat: outages are frequent enough that you should plan for them. Most homes run solar with battery backup, a generator, or both — I run solar at my own place. I work with Eco Integrated Solutions and MY Design Solar, and I am glad to introduce you to either and talk through which suits the house you are looking at.

Simpler than most people assume, once you know the distinction. Costa Rica's national banks will not open a personal account for a non-resident — but they will open a corporate one for a Costa Rican company, which is how a good many foreign owners bank here, and plenty already hold their property in a corporation anyway. The private banks do not require residency at all. I bank with LaFise, which has a branch in Uvita.

Not on the title itself, but effectively yes — and it is a common structure. The National Registry records ownership in the name of a person or a Costa Rican legal entity, so a US trust cannot appear on a Costa Rican title. What works instead is a layer: the property is held by a Costa Rican company, and your US revocable living trust owns the shares of that company. Ownership then passes inside the trust, and your family is spared a Costa Rican succession proceeding, which is slow, public and expensive — avoiding that is the whole point. There is a domestic route too: a fideicomiso, a Costa Rican trust that can hold the property directly. Two things to settle with your own advisers rather than take from me. Which entity you use matters more than people expect — for US taxpayers an S.A. can raise controlled foreign corporation issues that an S.R.L. may not, and that is your CPA's call, not mine. And the trust has to be drafted so a Costa Rican notary can actually act on it. Get your US estate attorney and a Costa Rican attorney talking early; retrofitting this after closing costs more than building it in at the start.

Yes — and it should cover everything you own here, not just the house. Vehicles, boats, bank accounts, anything titled in Costa Rica. The reason is straightforward: without a Costa Rican will, all of it goes through probate here, and Costa Rican probate is lengthy and costly. A US or other foreign will can eventually be recognized, but it has to be validated through the Costa Rican courts first — which drops your family into the same slow process you were trying to spare them. A Costa Rican will, executed before a notary and covering only your Costa Rican assets, avoids it. Have it executed on the same day as your closing. The notary is already engaged, you are already in the country, and it gets signed with everything else. Left for later it becomes the thing everyone means to do on the next trip. One drafting point worth saying out loud to both of your attorneys: the Costa Rican will must be written so that it does not revoke your existing one. The two are meant to sit side by side, each covering its own jurisdiction.

Start with the ferias. Tinamaste holds the Feria Tinamastes on Tuesday mornings. Dominical runs Wednesday and Friday; Uvita and Ojochal both run Wednesday and Saturday. Between them you are never more than a day or two from produce picked nearby. San Isidro holds the largest market by far, if you want the full version. For the regular shop, BM is the regional supermarket, with stores in Quepos, Dominical and Uvita. MaxiPalí is effectively a small Walmart — and in fact Walmart-owned — with locations across the zone for volume and basics. What surprises people is the specialty side. La Cola Market in Uvita carries fine wine, liquor and the hard-to-find gourmet items. Alexa’s Market in Escaleras is small and genuinely excellent — everything you need to cook a serious meal, plus beer, wine and spirits. L’Epicerie in Ojochal is that and more. San Isidro has the larger-format stores — Walmart among them — if you want a proper big run, and up in the San José metro there is PriceSmart, which is Costa Rica’s Costco; people heading to the city often build a run around it. But neither drive is one you have to make. There is plenty here.

Not much, and it is worth knowing before you buy rather than after. Osa Golf in San Buenas, just south of Ojochal, is a nine-hole jungle course open to the public six days a week — tree-lined, genuinely challenging, carts and club rental if you want them, and about 26 miles from Dominical. It is also the only course on this stretch of coast. For resort golf you are heading north to Los Sueños at Herradura, or up to San José. If golf is central to how you want to live, that drive is a real consideration, and I would rather you weigh it now than find out afterwards.