Good places to live in Costa Rica

Hi Marcus,

Welcome to Expat.com

I invite you to go through the Living in Costa Rica guide, it might help you.

Thanks,

Priscilla
Equipe Expat.com

Gracias Pricilla!

Marcus

Hi Marcus,  you need to give us some idea of what kind of lifestyle you want.
City vs Country.
Beach vs Mountains.
Community Vs more independent living
Hot and humid (beach) vs Cooler and less humid (mountains)
Gated community (all gringos behind a gate) vs living on your own, or in-between (not gated but a community of a lot of gringos) vs a community of a lot of Ticos.

Also do you speak Spanish or plan to learn? If you don't mind sharing also it may help to know if you'll be alone or have a wife or family with you.

So if you can tell us a general idea of what you are looking for in life here, what's important to you, then we can perhaps give you some pointers.

Hi Samramon, I like the idea of a gated community, of course safety is important. I also love the beach so not far from the beach would be great. I hate the humidity! Haha. Not sure about a house or apartment complex, of course depending on the cost. I hope this helps, and yes, my wife is Dominican and I'm a Newyorican ( New Yorker with Puerto Rican parents ) lol, so we both speak Spanish.

Marcus

M-125......The beaches here are humid as in, all the devils in hell.Costa Ricans are not PC,you can say you are a Puerto Yorki but you will be grouped in with all the $gringos$...........***

m1key125 wrote:

Hi Samramon, I like the idea of a gated community, of course safety is important. I also love the beach so not far from the beach would be great. I hate the humidity! Haha. Not sure about a house or apartment complex, of course depending on the cost. I hope this helps, and yes, my wife is Dominican and I'm a Newyorican ( New Yorker with Puerto Rican parents ) lol, so we both speak Spanish.

Marcus

Not everyone steals here but some do.

The beach area is super hot and humid. Living a mile or 3 away from it is worse, because at least when you are on the beach you can dip in the ocean to cool off. So it's either live on the beach or live twenty or Thirty miles Inland in the mountains, in my opinion.. Others May differ.

You will spend a lot on air conditioning if you are below 2500 feet altitude, and even then you might want air conditioning sometimes.

Also things are more expensive at the beach. Pretty much everything. And you will find even less variety of things to buy at the beach then in the rest of Costa Rica which is already much less variety than in the USA.

I lived at the beach many years ago when I was young and it was okay. I got used to the humidity and everything. But now that I am older, there is no way I would want to live at the beach here.

Everyone will tell you that the only way to really know where you want to live here is to choose a few spots that you are interested in and then come and live in each of those spots for at least one month, preferably more.

So my recommendation would be that first you choose a beach or two and live there for a while and see if you can stand the humidity and everything. Mold can be a big problem there too.