End of April 2026
In our last blog we left a little bit of a cliff hanger... We had real estate photos taken and Casa Costa Breeze is being put on the market. We only told a handful of our closest friends and our families before that blog post went live.
We know that many of you will probably have a lot of questions about why we are making this decision, so that’s what this blog post is going to be about.
When we moved down here we always knew that Costa Rica would not be forever, but we didn’t know how long it would be for. The thought was that we’d stay here until we were either “over it”, or until a time where we “had” to move back. Truthfully, at this point, neither of those things are true, but this is the decision that we made anyway. Ramie and I have been discussing what our plans and next steps are going to be for some time now. There has been a lot of back and forth of should we, shouldn't we, “what if…”, worries and fears, and a lot of discussions that mirrored the ones that we had more than 5 years ago when we decided we were going to move to Costa Rica.
A couple of weeks ago, not too terribly long before our 5-year anniversary of moving here, we officially decided that we were going to list the house for sale, but we have been talking about it off and on for almost a year. Even though neither of us are necessarily ready to leave Costa Rica, now is the time to put the house on the market. This decision has certainly been a hard one to make for us.
So, let’s dig into the reasons for our decision, not necessarily in any particular order.
-Houses in Costa Rica do NOT go up in value like you may be used to in the US. The older they are, the less they are worth; houses certainly are not an investment opportunity here. Do people make money on them? Sure, sometimes, but don't expect them to go up in value each year. The market here is volatile and you can expect the value to go up or down for any number of reasons. Before we even moved to Costa Rica, we read this everywhere in our research. It's easy to buy and hard to sell. So many people came here during Covid to buy land and build a house, about the same time we did, and it saturated the area with houses. The huge influx of buyers, builders, and investors drove prices up for a while, fortunately we finished our house before we hit the peak price of building. I think in our small town of Uvita there are now at least 600 short term rental (Airbnb) properties and many of these houses are also now for sale after people that moved here and went through that COVID boom realized that living in a foreign country isn't easy.
-Overall, Costa Rica is becoming very expensive, and tourism seems to be dropping every year. It's a shame because the Costa Rican government could help fix this by adjusting the exchange rate, which has gotten significantly worse over the 5 years that we’ve lived here. It’s not only the tour companies being hurt by this, but everyone else from cleaners, landscapers, pool companies, and construction companies, and some stores too. People who make money off tourists aren’t making as much money, so can’t spend as much money on all of the other down-stream things. A lot of places that cater to foreigners charge in dollars, but the exchange rate is so poor now that they are actually losing money when they have to exchange it. One of the contractors that we use for projects has explained that he charges his clients in dollars but pays his employees in Colones and loses money in the process. So what does this mean? Well, honestly, who knows!? No one has a crystal ball to predict the future, but this is part of why we think it would be better to sell sooner rather than later.
-We don't want to “have to leave” but can't. As I mentioned earlier, we knew when we moved here that this was never meant to be forever. We didn't know if we would be here for 2 years, or 10 years. (By the way, May 28th 2026 marks our 5-year anniversary of moving here and the beginning of the Costa Breeze blog. Can you believe it's been 5 years and 199 blog posts!? We can't!)
Anyway, what do I mean by “we have to leave but can’t”. Let’s say we need to go back to the US for whatever reason. We own real estate, vehicles, and a whole lot of other stuff here, and all of that takes time to sell. How much time would it take? That's a huge unknown. Yeah, we could fire sale all of our stuff and sell it for bargain basement prices to be able to leave faster, but who wants to do that? It would be painful to take less than market value for our car and house just to be able to “get out of here”. People definitely do it, we see it a lot here. People are losing money all the time, and we don't want to be those people! Our theory is that we will list our house now for the price that we want (and think it’s worth) and wait for the right buyer to come along. We aren’t in a hurry, so if we don’t find a buyer, that’s ok, we don’t “have to leave” yet.
Your next question might be something like “Can't you just go back to the US and leave it for sale?” Well, yes, we could, but there are a lot of reasons that isn’t a great option either. We would likely have to come back for the closing anyways, so it’s just easier to stay. Not to mention that leaving a house empty in Costa Rica is not a good thing at all! A vacant house is an invitation for mold, bugs and critters, faster deterioration, and possibly worst of all, potential squatters. Plus, we’d have to pay someone to keep an eye on it, take care of the yard, and fix things that might end up needing repairs. Ramie is always doing preventative maintenance on the house to keep it clean and in good condition, it just wouldn’t get the attention it needs if it’s empty. You’ve read our blog posts about taming the jungle, and that is weekly, if not almost a daily necessity here, so having it sit empty is not ideal.
-There is no pricing structure for houses, no MLS, no good comps, etc. It's literally a free for all and has been described by many as the “wild west” when it comes to real estate pricing and sales. Just because you have a house next to you that last sold for 2 million dollars, it does not mean that the values of all of the properties in your neighborhood go up. HOWEVER, our 2 bed/2 bath house would probably have a completely different value vs a similar one a half mile away. Realtors like to try to come up with “comps” to figure prices, but it is impossible to find anything out there with similar land size, house size and type of materials used to build your house, plus all of the other things that also go into figuring out a reasonable price, like whether it has pool. What is the size of that pool? Does it have a car port, a motorized gate, and is it fenced or not? There are so many available options, so what makes your house stand out from the others and do those things add any monetary value?
At the end of the day, most sellers just pick a number and hope to get it. That is exactly what we are doing. We know what we spent to buy the land and build our house, and since we are not in a hurry to leave and don’t HAVE to leave yet, we picked a number that we are comfortable with, we are going to stick with it, and not negotiate down too much. We have discussed what we hope to sell it for, what we would be happy with, and our bottom dollar at this point in time. Of course, that might all change in the future if for any reason we are ready to get out of here sooner or “have to leave” for any reason.
-How long will our house take to sell? Honestly, we have no idea! As I just mentioned, we are putting a number on our house that we would like to get for it. On top of this, right now it’s a buyers’ market and there are a ton of “similar” houses for sale competing against us. Because of this, it could sell in 2 months, or it could take 2 years to sell, you truly never know! A buyer might come along looking for a property that is close to town, has a creek and a jungle on it and has more usable land than all the other houses in the area, fall in love with ours and decide that “this is the one” and will pay us full asking price. Alternatively, buyers may see other houses that are “close enough” to what they want and pass on ours for a less expensive one. This is part of the reason we are listing it now even though we don’t necessarily want to leave yet and have plenty of time to wait it out.
-For us, living here in Costa Rica is not a vacation like some may think it is. To us, it's honestly no different than your own regular daily life wherever you may be reading this from. You work, you cook, you go to the store, and you run your errands. We do the exact same things, except in a different part of the world. I work pretty much a full-time job, (which can be done from anywhere I have an internet connection). Ramie has his niche here as well between the Airbnbs, repair jobs and working at the warehouse. We are just living a regular life like you all are; it's not a vacation every day. Yes, you enjoy other things about where you live, and we do too, but that’s not really what the daily life is about. I’m sure we’ll be able to find things we enjoy doing if we leave CR and go somewhere else too!
While some people will still not understand our reasons for selling, ultimately, we think that it is the right decision for us at this point. Could that all change down the road? Yeah, I suppose it could, but if I had a crystal ball, we could make decisions based on that. Since I don’t, we can’t, and that’s all there is to it!
Some questions you may have for us:
-Are you going to move back to Minnesota? For a long time, even before we decided we wanted to sell the house, we have been discussing and researching where our next adventure is going to bring us. At this point, we know for sure that we wouldn’t be able to move back to Minnesota, mostly because we’ve gotten soft and will not be able to handle the winters of the North anymore. For months we went through the process of narrowing it down further and further. Ramie's Research has spent many hours trying to find places that we would consider suitable and Dana’s Decisions has vetoed the ones that didn’t make sense to us. As of now, we have narrowed it down to central or northern Florida. Some of the main reasons this is appealing to us is because it’s going to have the most similar climate we will be able to find in the Continental US, and although it gets “cold”, it’s not nearly as cold or cold for as long as further North, and we will get used to the FL chill in the same way we got used to the heat of CR. We also knew that we wanted to pick a place that was in the Continental US so that people don't necessarily have to fly to come visit us. Florida is truly a drivable destination from MN where just about all of our family is, and it will be easier for us to visit family there or have them visit us in FL.
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| If we end up regretting it, we've moved twice, we can move again! |
-What happens if it does sell fast? We’ve talked about this and do have a preliminary plan in place. Truly, it all depends on the time of year it sells. When you live outside of the US long-term there are US Tax benefits if you have spent very few days inside of the US during the year. This makes it a bit more complex for us because the tax benefits can add up to a large amount.
Right now, we are thinking that if it sells in first 4 months of the year (Jan-April) we will likely move back to the US right away after it sells. If its anytime after April, we will consider staying in Costa Rica and renting a house for the remainder of the year to take advantage of the tax benefit. I don’t want to go into a lot of details about this, but basically it comes down to if we are in a foreign country for at least 330 days during the year we don't have to pay federal income tax for that year. This is the exact same reason why we only go back to visit family every other year, and only for 3 weeks. This schedule allows about a week buffer if we have to come back to the US for anything during that year. This tax benefit really adds up and is worth it to us to be careful about our plans.
-Since you are finally getting your permanent residency in CR, are you going to keep it? Yes, as we mentioned in some prior blogs, we have been “temporary residents” for the required 3 years and are at the point of applying for our permanent residency. We are moving forward with the permanent status, and once approved, we plan to retain our residency until we know for certain that Costa Rica is no longer for us and we won’t be moving back here. Then, once we know for good, we will let our residency go.
-Why not just keep the house and travel back and forth or rent it on Airbnb? The answer to this was an easy one. 1) We can't financially afford to keep this house and own a house in the US. 2) After managing Airbnb’s, there is no way we would do that with our home. Most people just don't care how they take care of a property that they are renting, and they are absolutely a lot harder on things than you would be yourself. The repair costs would be much higher and the condition of the house significantly worse, likely lowering the value even faster. It’s just not worth the cost or the stress! There’s also the whole US tax situation that I described above that would prevent us from living here part time because that would make things just that much more expensive as well. Besides, traveling with Skye once will be difficult enough, what would we do with our pup if we went back and forth? We will not put her through flying any more than absolutely necessary! If you don’t understand why, go read blog post #3 about how the trip down here affected Breeze.
-Why move back to the US when you could move anywhere else? We have talked about moving to other places including Puerto Rico, Grenada, and Panama, but that doesn’t really help with several of the reasons that we’re leaving here. 1) It doesn’t make it any easier for family and friends from the US to come visit us. 2) Eventually Taylor and Dylan will have a baby and we want to be a part of that baby’s life, and it won’t be easy to do from a foreign country. 3) My job is stressful enough and I just don't have the energy to move to a new country and learn everything all over again. When we moved here, neither of us had jobs and we could spend our time learning how to live in a new country. Even though Ramie takes care of the majority of the “business” here (utilities, insurance, all of the day-to-day stuff, etc), I still need to be present to search for a home, open accounts, learn about the place we are living, get used to the new routine, and everything else that comes with moving to a new country. Yes, we’ll still have some of that moving back to the US, but things there are easier, more familiar, and will not be as big of a culture shock in general.
-What will be different about living in the US versus Costa Rica? A big negative that we know for a fact is that moving back to the US is going to be more expensive for us. Health insurance alone is the big one we keep talking and worrying about. I don't get it through my job and Ramie is not planning to return to a career job like he left. This is something big that we still have to explore but really can't dig too far into until we are almost at the point of going back. Plus, remember those taxes that I keep mentioning… that is going to be another big expense!
Something that is going to be different but in a positive way will be having “convenience” again. You’ve heard plenty of stories over the years about all of the things that just aren’t available and we can't get here, all of the things that we mule back down in suit cases, how expensive quality items are, and how for many of those types of things that we can get, we have to drive an hour or more to buy. I do look forward to just being able to run to the grocery or hardware store down the street to get anything that I want or need right now, having Amazon, and being able to get things delivered quickly.
-What about all of the things you are you going to miss about Costa Rica? Well, of course we are going to miss our friends (I feel obligated to start with that), but we will keep in touch with them. We’ve been through the “leaving friends and family” and starting in a place where we don’t know anyone scenario before, so we are prepared for that. We are also certainly going to miss how easy it is to eat healthy here. I mean, cooking from scratch is forced here because there isn’t all of that pre-packaged junk that I kind of dread back in the US. Yes, we will still plan to make a lot of our food from scratch, but the junk is so convenient and tasty. We are absolutely going to miss the fresh fruit and vegetables. Until you’ve experienced it, you just don’t realize how bland the fruit in the US is, it just doesn't compare!!
So, to all of you reading this, don't get your hopes up that we will be moving back to the US anytime soon! We don't expect that this will happen quickly and are still going to keep on living life here and enjoying this beautiful country for now. There is almost no chance that we will be moving back to the US in 2026, and depending on how long it takes to sell our house, it may or may not even be in 2027. We wanted to put this all out there so that in future blog posts we don’t have to be cryptic. Now you’ll understand why we might talk about weird things like house showings or selling our stuff that we don’t need any more. We also plan to continue writing the blog until we move back, so you will get to continue hearing about all of our Costa Breeze adventures. Once Casa Costa Breeze is in our rear-view-mirror, so will the blog, so enjoy it while it’s here!
Finally, how did the people who have heard this news already react when we told them? Our family back in MN were excited to hear that we would be moving back to the US, but the news about not coming back to MN had some mixed reactions. Of course, our friends here in Costa Rica are bummed that we will be leaving them. Many people are trying to make plans for before/after our relocation- but since there is absolutely no indication of when that may be, we are telling them to stop all of that and just keep moving forward as normal. If we aren't concerned with "making plans", then they shouldn't be either!
Well, there it is, our big reveal. If you would like to check out the listing click HERE. What other questions do you have for us about all of this?
Pura Vida!
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