How We Priced Sabalo Eco Lodge

We admit buying an eco lodge is not like buying a house or other property in the United States. The first problem you are going to have is appraising the value of an eco lodge because “comps” (comparable properties) are generally not available to help assess property values in Costa Rica. There are several reasons for this but mostly eco lodges are spread out all over Costa Rica and no two are alike. There are so many subjective variables that make it difficult to come up with a uniform value. Most homes in a given area in suburban America are very similar making comps and uniform values easily obtained.

In an effort to bridge the gap of “sales price” and “actual value” and to give you a better idea of how we priced Sabalo Eco Lodge, we spoke to a local contractor.  We wanted to know what it would cost to build Sabalo Eco Lodge today on raw land. We were surprised at what this contractor had to say.

Re-creating similar infrastructure (in a remote location such as ours) of JUST the buildings: lodge (or 3 bedroom house with one bathroom with shower), two cabins, two ranchos, a common bathroom and shower facility and a secure bodega (think of a bodega as a garage) will run you approximately $200,000 in building materials and labor.

This eco lodge is turn-key so all your furnishings, linens, furniture, beds, kitchenware, dining ware, lawn furniture, etc. are already included. You can add another $15,000 - $30,000 for these items depending on your tastes and how much time you want to invest locating everything for the better deals and/or better quality. Most specialty items will have to be bought and transported from San Jose. We hired a professional shopper on many occasions to locate amenities that are not sold in local stores. We also brought some items with us from the states in our 20’ shipping container. Another expense to consider is transportation costs to bring all the items to your remote location.

The interior of the deluxe rainforest cabin.

We are including the boat, accessories and motor which is valued at $5,000. Our 25 hp motor is only a little over a year old.

Don't forget electricity; if you want to be off the grid you’ll be investing at least $20,000 in a solar or hydro solution and about $5,000 for your back-up generator, extra parts and delivery.

Landscaping is one of those subjective variables I mentioned above that is difficult to attach a uniform value to. It took twenty years for the trees that surround our property to mature and make Sabalo Eco Lodge the “Jewel in the Jungle” that it is today. We looked for properties in Costa Rica from the Northern Pacific to the Southern Pacific Coast and it was Sabalo Eco Lodge’s established grounds of mature fruit, ornamental and indigenous trees that surrounded and shaded the property along with its unique location that made it stand out from everything else we looked at. The mature gardens also bring three different troupes of white-faced monkeys through the property almost daily. They are wonderful entertainment as they eat the fruits from the trees and palms, swing through the trees and run around and play on our lawn.

We have mature almond trees that attract the Scarlet Macaws. Toucans, Aracaris (a colorful medium-sized toucan), Trogons, Kingfishers, Ibis, several kinds of Hawks and many other birds enjoy the mature trees as well. Our bigger point is that with raw land which usually consists of cleared pasture with little or no trees, you not only have to wait for the trees to grow but there will not be many animals on your property until the gardens are more mature. That said to plant an eight acre area with a variety of trees and plants (our grass would cost $4,000 to plant on eight acres according to our contractor Marc and that’s if the first planting takes, most times it does not), would cost between $20,000 - $50,000 depending again on your tastes and on how remote you are; transportation can be difficult and expensive.

Okay, let’s add the hard numbers up and see what we get for a low and high figure on what it would cost you to build your own eco lodge today.
                                                                                         Low                  High
Construction Costs (material and labor) . . . . . . $200,000 . . . . . $250,000
Furnishings, linens, kitchenware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15,000 . . . . . . $30,000
Landscaping (grass, trees, ornamentals) . . . . . . . .$20,000 . . . . . .$50,000
Electricity (solar and back-up generator) . . . . . . . $25,000 . . . . . .$40,000
Boat (or other mode of transportation) . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 . . . . . . $10,000
Satellite internet (if no cell signal available) . . . . . . $3,000 . . . . . . .$5,000
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $268,000 . . . .$385,000

If you were in the United States you could probably work with these low and high numbers but this is Costa Rica and there is one more cost that no one will tell you about. We call it the “Costa Rica Factor” and it affects every foreigner’s bottom line when building in Costa Rica. You see, this is a developing country and people come here thinking the rules where they came from apply and they do not!  You will take a loss on something whether it is from a shortage of materials (costing you more for expensive substitutes), theft, someone lying to or conning you, substandard materials, improvements or upgrades; trust me the list is endless. Everyone thinks they are smarter when they get here but all are humbled by the time they are finished, having spent more money and time than they thought they would. Our contractor says he’s almost always right when he tells his clients, “take what you think you will spend and double it, then you will get closer to the actual amount you’ll end up spending”. Based on our personal experience, we too were humbled by the “Costa Rica Factor”.

So an average of the low and high may give you a better idea of what you might actually spend were you to build a lodge like ours from the ground up. This brings your average total to: $326,000.
You are still missing one thing however and that is the most important part.  You have everything you now need for your eco lodge but you haven’t bought the land yet!

$349,000 is the price for Sabalo Eco Lodge and includes eight flat, open acres of grass and mature trees, an acre of additional specialty fruit orchards and ten acres of protected lowland rainforest, the most endangered type of rainforest in the Osa Peninsula.  $349,000 minus $326,000 equals $23,000 estimated value of what we are charging for the land.

We think you would be hard pressed to find any other properties for sale in Costa Rica with twenty acres of land that has river and road access in a beautiful location for $39,000. And we have not even factored in the costs and time for creating an established business that gets repeat guests, excellent reviews and has a comprehensive web site and blog that ranks high on most search engines.

These exotic hard woods are currently very expensive to purchase legally in Costa Rica.

One last selling point: our timing was lucky when we rebuilt the lodge because exotic hard woods (legally acquired) were affordable at that time. Currently the cost to build a lodge and cabins out of the same types of woods is much higher due to the lack of availability. A lot of the hard woods were used up during the building boom here several years ago. We are one of the last lodges to be built out of tropical hard woods, unless the wood is being purchased illegally on the black market (not a good idea for an eco lodge for sure, not to mention that you could go to jail for this). Currently if you want to build rustic structures, you are limited to using treated pine for your wood; it is nice but truthfully just not as durable and beautiful. Our place was built to last and with the proper maintenance will be around for a long, long time.

We realize this is not “hard science” on how we arrived at the above numbers but we hope we have given you a better idea of what’s involved with building and establishing an eco lodge and the great value of our place. You will also have to figure out what your time is worth; just make sure you add a lot of hours into the equation ;-)

At this point, you may be reading all of this information and wondering to yourself “if all this is true, why is their price so low?”.  Well, we know that we could set our price higher and it would still be a fair price. But, luckily for you and other prospective buyers, due to family health reasons we are in a position where we must soon return to the states so we have set a more than fair price for a quicker sale. We hope that you don’t wait too long if you are interested in becoming Sabalo Lodge’s next owner and living the dream in this unique and amazing environment.

Sincerely,
Dan and Holly Pesta

 

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