There is a point in almost every property tour in Costa Rica when I can tell that a buyer has stopped looking at the house and started imagining a life. It can happen in an expensive villa or a modest condominium. Sometimes it happens when we open the doors to a terrace and the Pacific suddenly appears below us. Sometimes it is a walk to the beach. Sometimes it is something surprisingly ordinary: hearing howler monkeys in the trees while standing in a kitchen or realizing that dinner,...

Buying a home in Costa Rica has a way of making otherwise disciplined people temporarily forget about spreadsheets. It is understandable. You arrive at a house on a hillside above the Pacific, walk through a wall of sliding glass doors and find yourself standing beside an infinity pool at four o'clock in the afternoon. Below you, fishing boats move slowly across the bay. The temperature has begun to fall. Someone mentions that the beach is seven minutes away. An ocean-view villa in Guanacaste...

There is a moment in almost every Costa Rican real estate transaction when the property begins to look very different. It usually happens shortly after the offer is accepted. Until then, the experience has been overwhelmingly visual. Buyers have walked through kitchens, opened sliding glass doors and stood on terraces overlooking the Pacific. They have compared swimming pools and neighborhoods, measured the distance to the beach and imagined where visiting children or grandchildren might...