Why is there no MLS in Costa Rica?

What happens here instead is that brokers will have their websites listing the properties available for sale in their region. My company’s website, OsaTropicalProperties.com, is a very reliable source for listings in the South Pacific Costa Rica region known as Costa Ballena. This area of Costa Rica includes Dominical, Uvita, Ojochal, and the surrounding satellite towns. We have often been told that ours is the closest website to an MLS in this region as it is the most detailed, up-to-date, and user-friendly real estate website in Costa Ballena.

Our independent local brokerage manages Osa Tropical Properties’ website. We invest a lot of time and money into our website, the highest-ranking website dedicated to real estate in Costa Ballena (according to web ranker, SimilarWeb). We create detailed listings for our clients, including sophisticated property descriptions, professional home photography, drone photography, high-quality video tours of our clients’ properties for sale, and other unique content about this region. Users of our website also have access to our high-powered search capabilities and well-defined filters that make finding the perfect property in Costa Ballena much easier. 

Although we consider our website to be a comprehensive overview of the properties available for sale in Costa Ballena, there are properties that we will not choose to list. Some reasons not to list a property include a lack of access to utilities, improper title, or even a highly inflated sales price. 

These deal-breaking issues make specific properties virtually unsellable until resolved. We choose to spare buyers the heartbreak of putting their hopes into a property that we cannot ethically sell in the state that it is in currently, even though it may still be listed for sale elsewhere.

Osa Tropical Properties realtors are bound to a code of ethics through our certifications with the Costa Rica Real Estate Board (CCCBR). We have standard contracts and practices allowing other realtors to present our listings to their clients without a conflict of interest. Our office offers high exposure to listings for sale through a network of strongly ranked real estate websites. 

We are one of the few companies in all of Costa Rica that produces quarterly market reports showing the state of our local real estate market, including sales figures, average prices, and our predictions for the coming months.