Jillian, a resident of 🇨🇷 Costa Rica for nine years, recently embarked on 👷 building her dream ❤️ home with her partner, Arturo. 5️⃣ years ago, she bought a little over an acre of land in 🇨🇷 La Fortuna, Costa Rica with the intention to build. Despite their 👀 lack of knowledge and experience in construction, Jillian and Arturo learned from the 😱 horror stories of others who did ❌ not conduct proper due diligence before building in 🇨🇷 Costa Rica. They did their 🧠 homework and sought the 💬 advice of experts before taking the plunge. In this 🎥 video, you can see their beautiful ✨ home, which is only a month away from completion. 🎊 Jillian shares her experiences on hiring an 👷♀️ architect, project manager, and where to get 🪵 materials for building. For those considering 💭 building in 🇨🇷 Costa Rica, it’s 👀 important to be aware of the pitfalls and challenges, but it is possible to👷 build your dream home with the right preparation and resources. The 🔑 key is to be fully engaged in the process and be present 🗓 daily during construction. So, if you’re thinking of living abroad in Costa Rica 🇨🇷 and building your own home, check out Jillian’s story and learn from her ✅ do’s and ❌ don’ts.
What Was Said In the Video
All right, guys, Jillian’s been living in Costa Rica for nine years, and she’s finally decided to build a big-ass house. So, we’re gonna be actually touring the house. If you’re thinking about living in Costa Rica and maybe, possibly building at some point, you’re definitely gonna want to watch this video. Now, normally I advise people if you don’t know anything about building, especially in Costa Rica, you probably shouldn’t build. But I think Jillian’s got some good things to say. She knows the do’s and don’ts. We’re going to talk to her all about it right after this. Hey, guys, I’m michael alan for Travelcostaricanow real estate. Guys, we have a lot of different properties on our site, but man, we need your help. Please hit the subscribe button. YouTube doesn’t care if you subscribe, but if you want to see real estate videos when we put it up or videos like this when we put it up, you’ve got to hit the notification bell. We would totally appreciate it. Jillian, this is gonna be fun.
Fun.
All right, so first of all, we’re in our town La Fortuna, and we are on this property. It’s how big?
5,250 square meters, 1.3 acres. 1.3 acres.
I think it’s so cool when you say acres. This is your farming.
This is our organic garden.
Yes, all right. Do you want to get in front of us as we walk, or… Oh, say hi D’Angelo.
Hi D’Angelo.
Hi, D’Angelo.
All right, so let’s start at the very beginning, okay? This has been…you’ve been…you bought the land a long time ago. Is that true?
Eight years ago, we bought the land. My mom and I owned the land.
Okay, so… And it was always going to be something.
It was always going to be something, but we took a big break because we weren’t sure. Again, the building thing. We were like, “Okay, we own the land, but now what do we do with it?”
Now, did, back when you were first starting out, you kind of, I’m sure you knew what people say about building here. It can be pretty tough if you don’t have the right people around you. Were you a little apprehensive at all, or were you always…?
It took us three years to pick an architect and then another 10 or 11 months to design the house.
So, would you say an architect might be the most important person, kind of, as far as…I mean, you’ve got to trust this person.
Yes, a lot of times when you have somebody come and help you build your house, the architect does the plans, and then they come and check every week, and they do the updates. Then you have a project manager who would oversee all the buying and all of that nature. You can pay somebody to do it, or you do it yourself. We have full-time jobs, and there’s no way that I wanted to be responsible for buying every little piece of a house that I have no idea what I’m trying to purchase.
So those two people got to be the trusted.
They do, and in our case, we hire the architect, not even a project manager. Because he designed the house, he knows the ins and outs, he knows every little corner, and that was really important to me.
So he’s doing both.
He’s doing both.
I know we just met him, he’s over there, so he’s doing kind of, yes, we’ll put his information in the video, kind of both. Ah, checking out the garden.
I’ll take you guys for a tour in there, it’s pretty amazing actually.
So you didn’t feel any stress like building? You weren’t worried about all the horror stories of people building here and getting ripped off by their project manager, getting ripped off by their architect? How did you find, okay, how did you find your architect?
So, how I thought originally, I had an architect from San Jose. She was amazing, she’s extremely sweet, very educated, made me feel comfortable in a lot of the aspects, moving up to, you know, to just deciding to go ahead and move forward. And then we said, you know what, let’s look for somebody local. There’s a few things, you know, you need to know the municipality, you need to know the ins and outs of the water company here, and outsiders are not going to have nearly as much success as somebody.
Who may know the different zoning things and all that kind of stuff?
Knowing the managers are helpful. Being friendly with the managers of all these different places is very helpful, them knowing you and you knowing them, so that was super important.
How much were you working with the architect, you and your architect.
Daily, daily. We still are here daily, like he’s here doing all of this, but all the little details that are in your head, no matter how many times you try to tell somebody, unless you’re standing there when it happens, it’s going to look different than what you think.
Wait, I think you need to say that again because that’s a very important thing and a lot of people bring that up, that you kind of have to oversee some of this stuff, like over-the-shoulder watching.
Yes. So like today, we’ll go inside, you can see we’re going to be building the kitchen counter structure and we’ve been down to inching it, and they’re in there talking about, you know, what tile’s going to go on this side, no wood around the sink, you know, these are all things that they had already put in there was all wood, we had to change all of it, but that’s what’s great about this process is that my architect is really willing to learn and understand that all of these things are important.
What you want. So we don’t have to obviously talk about specific costs, but how do you feel about how the cost part of doing all this is going? Are you getting nickeled and dimed? Do you put out a big deposit down in the beginning for your architect? How does the structure work?
We paid for our plans separately, like our designing the house is separate, that’s the first stage you pay, you know, it’s a different contract with just the architect. Then you come into the building portion of it and do you want them to just oversee it and you’re going to project manage and you’re going to get all the permits yourself and you’re, you know, some people feel that they can…
Do that.
Do that, and if you can, it’ll save you a lot of money, but most people don’t and can’t.
And can’t.
And can’t. It’s not that much more to pay somebody who knows what they’re doing. I feel like every penny that we’ve paid for the architect has been worth it. So, I would say right now, the last time he told me, he’s because he has projects that he’s doing, he says that, “you know, nothing, it’s all gonna be about your finishes.” But if you have standard middle-of-the-road finishes, it’s between a thousand and twelve hundred dollars a square foot to build a decent, you know, something like you’re going to see.
This is a pretty big-ass house. Julian, go big or go home, right? Go big or go home. I love the big patios, and I can’t wait to show, I wish it was out, but you have one of the, well, you have one of the best views of the volcano in all of the town.
Probably. We’re pretty excited.
There are no wires in the front of it, there’s nothing.
And, you know, we’ve been crossing our fingers for nine years that it would stay this way, eight years that we’ve had it, and we’re so lucky that it, it’s, you know, okay for a little bit longer.
But looking back on this process of starting it, it’s not over yet, but starting it, have you looked back and go, ‘We should have probably maybe done this thing different’? Have you been upset at anything, like you maybe wrong call or…
When we very first started, and I’ll give you a video so you can show everybody when they’re sticking the literal poles into the ground to start, you know, shaping everything, I couldn’t tell how wide something was or how big it was originally, so by the time that I could tell how wide the hallways were, it was too late, the walls were in, and I would have widened them about six inches. So, it was because of the system that we used, we, that’s a whole other thing when you have, you probably have five or six ways, like ways to put up walls. What we found out is they’re all about the same cost no matter what you do because, so I was trying to save money. I don’t know if you’re going to get the shot, but down at the bottom it’s cement and we could have gone all the way up. I thought, well, maybe it’ll be less expensive if we use siding, you know, it’s not cement. In the end, the structure that’s underneath to hold the siding and everything else, the cost was the same no matter what we did. So then it was about aesthetics and that nature.
So, what do you think about, I mean, a lot of times, uh, the stories, maybe not here, but some of the stories are when they’re building your house, they are not always using the best of materials, like let’s, for instance, the piping or the, you know…
Correct. We were, again, we were here every day in the contracts, we asked for, you know, bigger than normal piping. Obviously, the house is bigger, so we asked him to take all of that into account. We have two septic systems for just this house. There’s one here and they’re building a second one that you can see right over there for the other bathroom. So we made sure in the design and working with him as well that there were plenty of resources for that type of thing. We actually asked for an inspection. Okay, so the way that these a lot of the houses are done here is that everything’s buried in concrete, right?
What is that, what is up with that? Because if something goes wrong, they gotta sledgehammer the concrete to get to the pipe. That’s the weirdest thing ever.
And a lot of times they put them in, they put the cement on, and then they check the systems. Oh, something’s wrong, so what I asked for was that they checked the water systems and all the piping in the house before they laid the cement. And they found something and they’re like, “Ugh, no way.”
“Thank you, Jillian.” Oh my god, so much common sense there. That’s so cray-cray.
So we put in a few clauses in there to kind of help him not make the mistake and help us catch the mistake. So it was kind of like a start-stop, like you can’t go any further until we approve it. And that helps because if they just keep going…
They’ll just keep going.
They’ll just keep going. And that’s something that we learned on this project too. Like every time we talked about something, the doors, okay, you have to, like we had to have a meeting and there were pictures.
How much does your partner Arturo know about building? Was he, I mean, he’s a chef, so that doesn’t mean he knows about building. And he is Tico, but that doesn’t mean he knows about building.
No, no, no, nothing. We both were just kind of like, I mean, he can understand what they’re saying more and a couple of things, like, you know, they use different words that I had to kind of get used to. So I didn’t know what they were talking about at first, but now.
Actually, how did you find this architect?
He’s here in town. Okay, so the way that I went to my neighbor, our neighbor is very, very well-known and loved in town. And so I went and talked to him, and I…
They got a nice house by the way.
Yes, so I said, “Who built your house?” And he told me. And then we found out that he also designed this recycling center. So actually, our architecture…
That is a good bet.
Yeah it is, and he designed all the buildings on the street.
Nice. Yeah, let’s go outside, kind of go in and cruise around.
Sure. I think you should see my roosters first though, they’re super cool. So, the one that got us into all this, well, the restaurant, you know, we have our first eggs and we have meat chickens. It’s probably our third round of meat chickens, but we have two roosters. That is Kaylor back there. Jake caught him when we were at a doctor’s house. Arturo was doing a dinner for a doctor, and they said if you can catch the chicken, it’s yours. And Jake was pretty sure it was a female, so he named it Kaylee. And then obviously, as he/she grew, we now have Kaylor the rooster. He’s beautiful. And then we got Kaylor a friend, and this is Chili. Chili’s a Chili Corn, and he has no hair on his neck.
We might as well do a shoutout to what you do, you and your partner Arturo. He’s a chef, and you guys do high-end catering.
High-end dining experiences on location at Airbnb’s vacation rentals.
I’ve had the food, I’ve had the food. All right, but this isn’t about food.
Not today, not today.
Let’s go.
This is about the house.
Okay? So, did we say when you started? November, right? November is when we broke ground, and then you had a little lull there for a couple of…
The actual what we call “obra gris”, which is the gray part of the house, putting up the walls, all of that stuff, that happened really fast. I would say within eight to ten weeks, we had most of the structure, and then it’s been all this detail. This is gonna be a bedroom, this will be one bedroom over here, the front door…
Now, are all your materials coming locally, or are you getting anything from… Are you doing anything like so custom that you have to get it somewhere else?
No, that was the idea in this house was to kind of keep it as simple as possible with local supplies to see what we could get. The only thing that I am bringing in are door handles, and faucets, and showers, just because the quality
From where?
The States. My mom’s bringing it down.
Check out this living room, kitchen, dining area. Party central right here, Jillian.
Totally. And with the view, look, she’s coming out, Ms. Volcano, Ms. Arenal is coming out.
This is the Arenal volcano smack dab on the volcano side of your house, and we’re gonna throw up that picture just so people realize how good you got it.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of been our hidden secret. I haven’t brought you guys out here till today.
I don’t, I know I keep saying this, but I love patios in Costa Rica. There’s so many options you can do because really?
One second.
Because of the weather. I just think…
I’m gonna ask them to stop it for a second.
Yeah, we just need a couple of minutes. Oh, okay, rudely interrupt. No. I love the patios, man. Are you do what’s your plan out here? Can we do a sports bar?
Anything we want? I mean, right now, the patio, the idea is, okay, so one of the things that I kind of conceded on were windows. Windows, there’s not super, there’s not a lot of options. There’s like three or four providers on a financial level that you would be comfortable with. Yes, you can get anything custom. You can spend as much money as you want, but if you’re trying to stay within your means and, you know, at that thousand twelve hundred dollar…
Well, you could nickel and dime to turn a hundred thousand dollars in a minute with a house, really.
“I mean, we would go into some places, and some of those really cute tiles right over there, it’s 400 a sheet. I was like, yeah, no. Yes, like the floors, for example, are about 9,700 colonies a square meter, which is very good.
I’d say about 15 bucks?
But they can go up to however much. Those are the things that are going to make the house more expensive and not, the over grist part. The gray work is what is kind of like standard amongst homes.
Have they made any mistakes along the way that you’ve noticed that you had to get corrected?
Yes.
And are they cool with that?
Yes. But my architect is such, so level-headed, like he’s understanding.
No worries.
I mean, when I first got started this project, I was so like, you know, all the time, but he’s the one who’s like, “Look, everything’s gonna be okay, I’m gonna fix it.” I was like, okay.
I know I’ve said it already three times in this video, but I don’t, I don’t people cannot underestimate how important the architect and the property manager is in these, in these buildings.
And you have to be here or have somebody, you know, like you. Almost every day, we come in the morning, say hi to everybody who’s working on the house. We come at lunchtime, sometimes drop off a snack. I mean, we’re here all the time.
After 16 years, we have stories where people have had their building being done like this, and they’re in the United States or something. You’re going, what the hell are you doing?
Right. Not a good, it’s just because, again, like they can’t read your mind. It’s not, it’s just.
And they keep going and they keep going, they just say, “I didn’t hear anything. I’ll just keep building.”
What I’ve tried to do with our architect is to help him help more people in La Fortuna build houses because I fully feel that right now, there is nothing built in La Fortuna that’s worth buying. You can build something for the same amount of money or less.
That was a strong, strong comment.
I’m sorry.
No, that was good. I like it. That was good. True is true.
I mean, if you want, right? If you want to have a house, at least they’re your mistakes, they’re not somebody else’s, that something else happened, and you can’t fix. Like we said, most of the plumbing is going to be buried, so if there’s a problem with the house you bought, you’re going to be digging it up anyway and building a new house essentially.
I think what, I think there’s so, the reason I told people, usually tell people not to buy if they don’t know what they’re doing, which I still kind of stand by that, but if you do know what you’re doing and you surround yourself with the right people, and you are involved, obviously you cut your risk factor and all that kind of down to, you know, very minimal.
And you can expect your house to be like it’s going to be in the states. You don’t have the same availability, and again, you can hire people that might be able to do it, but that’s just going to keep increasing the cost. So those are your, those are the variabilities, essentially.
I think a lot of people like to say there’s no one perfect house, you know, there’s always a little thing, there’s always something that, you know, you don’t really care for or you would have done different. I guess in your, you keep mentioning the hallway, so it sounds like it’s the hallway that’s gonna, you’re gonna be walking down them at night going, “Damn it.”
Good thing they’re only like five feet long, you know, they’re, the whole, oh, they’re together, they’re hardly any hallways, so we’re good.
Let’s just walk over here real quick.
Check it out?
So the dining room, kitchen, uh, living room separate the two sides of the bedrooms.
Yeah, the idea was because we have such an amazing view that we made the house as long as possible so that as many rooms had views as possible. That was the idea.
So, this is your master bedroom?
This is the master bedroom and then there’s a bedroom on the other side and they, so this whole thing is going to have volcano views, including from the shower.
Yeah, there are people back there.
Yeah, there are people back there.
They have a bathroom, trust me it’s nice.
We can go through, or there’s, yeah, people in here. Yeah, they’re trying to, you can see here’s the shower, and what I’m really stoked about are my new tile shower, my floor tiles.
Oh, those look good.
Isn’t that cool?
Yeah, those are nice. Where did…
Natural stone. Cool no?
Again, my architect, I go, “Okay, this is what I want,” and I’m like, “Okay, sources.” And he’s really good. In San Jose, he took us twice to San Jose to go shopping. He drove us so it was super stress-free, took us to the stores, knew the people. We had all these pictures. We came back, and then he was able to call and talk to them that way so it didn’t feel so pressured, you know, like you had a minute to think.
So, it looks close. How far are we away?
Um, okay, so probably 30 days, 30 to 45 days. The hold up was the windows. This lovely window, these two windows over here, are huge. I want a sliding window, like one that folds against the wall here.
Right.
Just the window is another two thousand dollars just for that style. So, for now, it’s going to be a regular slider until we move in, see what we like, what we don’t like.
But all they’re doing, all the cabinets, and all the woodwork, is going to be that’s this?
So the counters and everything are the structures made out of metal, so that we don’t have to worry about wood breaking down over time. It’ll be wood veneered on some of it, and then some of it will…
What’s the top. Is it wood or a granite or…?
It’s called calacata, so it’s like a fake marble, but it’s a granite-like, you know it’s a stone, so it’ll be white with some gray going through it.
So it doesn’t look like you have any regret doing this.
Not yet.
Well I think you’re…
We’re past that.
Isn’t the hard time over really basically.
Honestly, the details are frustrating, you know, a little tile, a little crooked, and this and that. That’s me too, but I mean, I’m sure somebody building a house wants to see it perfect. So we’ve had to go back and take stuff out and redo it, so that’s what’s taking a long time. Picking paint was way harder than I anticipated.
Really?
Yeah, I just don’t want you to be that person that everybody that I’ve ever interviewed about building always say this, “They loved their finished project, but they’d never do that sh#t again. The process was too hard, too fraught with peril. People were ripping off their lumber, you know, I was just… But they loved, they loved the finished product, but it just…”
I’ve had a pretty good experience. I have to be honest, I mean, we’re building, building number two already. As soon as this is done, we start over there.
Damn, Jillian, where’s my house going to be here? Can I be in the back somewhere?
Sure.
I like this. I mean, you got no neighbors. Again, we put up that volcano shot. Man, you gotta, I can see why everything is pointed in this direction, for sure.
Yeah, we’re pretty happy about this.
All right, can we think of any other questions? D’Angelo, I don’t know, I think we covered everything. So, you’re a thumbs up on building if you do it right?
Yeah, and I mean, like I said, one of my goals, like we have a business, I’m not looking for another job, but my idea is to help this architect explain things or give options in more of a way that is relatable for us to understand. Like for the windows, let me give you a perfect example. You can have windows, you can have plain windows, windows that just have regular glass in them. The next step up is like laminated windows, which are security windows so they don’t break. You can punch them, and there’s a film, and they’ll shatter, but you can’t get through them. They also do UV and all kinds of other stuff. So that’s the next level up, you pay for that. Then there’s screens. Most people don’t do screens, so I had to get a whole separate quote. It took me 10 days to get them to break it down into; this is how much you cost you for regular windows, this is how much it cost you more for lamination, and this is how much more it cost you for the screens.
You are getting screens, right?
Uh, yes.
Screens are kind of big.
I think you need screens.
We did screens over air conditioning, actually, for now, because we’re not putting air conditioning in the house right now.
Well, I guess we’ll find out, right? I don’t have air conditioning. I mean, most people don’t run their air here too much. I don’t think.
We do and we don’t. We have two air conditioners already. The thing is, is like the way that we designed the house, there’s airflow going through four points from east to west, and that’s the way that the wind blows.
Right?
So if it’s ventilated correctly and we have a few room fans, I don’t think we’re gonna need air conditioning on a regular. To temperature control things like you don’t want your sheets going moldy, your clothes, your food, that will work on.
That’s called a dryer.
We’re gonna have dry rooms for the restaurant, and we’re gonna have walk-in freezers, so that’s all going to be fun.
I don’t think you’re going to need air. I think you’re going to have a nice float through here. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.
It makes it more usable inside, outside. That was the whole idea even with the color of the house was green and brown, and it’s supposed to be kind of like a tree in nature, and you know, kind of more open, not, we don’t want the doors closed and sitting behind air conditioners.
Right. There you go. Alright Jillian, thank you so much for talking to us.
Thank you.
Hope you guys learned a little bit. Can’t wait ’til she builds my house out here in the back. I’m michael alan, Travel Costa Rica Now, real estate man. Please subscribe. D’Angelo, say bye.
Ciao
In conclusion, if you’re considering building your dream home in Costa Rica, it’s important to be fully informed and prepared. Jillian and Arturo’s story is a great example of how with the right research, advice, and engagement, you can successfully build your dream home in this beautiful country. As Jillian shares her experience of building a home in Costa Rica, she provides valuable insights into the process, including hiring an architect and project manager, where to get building materials, and the importance of being present during construction. With proper planning and guidance, you too can create your own piece of paradise in Costa Rica. Check out Jillian’s story to learn from her experiences and avoid the pitfalls of building in Costa Rica.
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