How to Find a Private Mortgage Lender in Costa Rica

Ask around about borrowing privately in Costa Rica and you will get names — a friend of a friend, someone at the bar in Tamarindo, a lawyer who “knows people”. The market is real, sizeable and almost entirely informal, which is exactly why finding your way into it feels harder than it should.

If you are the one with money to place, the useful question is the reverse of the one everyone asks: not how a borrower finds a lender, but how the good files find their way to you. Here is how that market actually works, and where the files come from.

Why the market exists in the first place

The short version is that the banks are largely closed. Approval here is measured in months, not weeks, and for foreign owners it is frequently not on offer at any speed. Borrowing from a Costa Rican bank generally requires permanent residency — four years away at minimum for someone who arrived recently — because without it there is no account of the sort the lending system depends on, and therefore no local credit record.

Which leaves a large group of people who own property outright, have assets elsewhere, and cannot raise a colón against any of it through ordinary channels. Private capital fills that gap. It is not a market of last resort so much as a market of only resort.

The three routes a borrower takes — and what each one means for you

A property owner needing capital has three ways to find it, and each produces a different kind of file on your desk.

Word of mouth

A friend of a friend makes an introduction. It happens constantly and it does work — but the borrower is matched to whoever was nearest, not to whoever fits, and the terms reflect that. As a lender, files that reach you this way arrive unexamined: you are inheriting somebody’s social circle, not a reviewed proposition.

A lawyer or notary with contacts

Common, and frequently sound. But it is worth being clear about the role: a notary executes the instrument — that is a legal function, not a credit assessment, and the lenders they can reach are however many people they happen to know. The title work will be correct. Whether the loan is a good one is a separate question that nobody in that arrangement has been paid to answer.

Through a brokerage — where most lenders end up

This is what GAP does, and it is why lenders use us. The file is built once and built properly — title pulled and read, liens searched, the property valued against what it would genuinely fetch, loan to value set — and then put in front of the lenders whose appetite matches it. You see a reviewed file rather than a rumour, and you see several of them, so you can decline one without waiting six weeks for another.

What a fundable file looks like

The requests that get funded quickly share the same features, and they are worth knowing as a checklist. Registered title in the owner’s name, free of surprises. A loan sitting comfortably inside what the property would sell for. A repayment plan that can be said in one sentence — a sale, a refinance, revenue from a build, or income that covers the payments. And documents that appear this week rather than next month.

Requests stall for dull reasons: title in a corporation whose books nobody can find, an unregistered extension, a municipal account in arrears, or an owner who cannot explain how the loan gets repaid. Files in that state are resolved before a lender ever sees them, or they go nowhere.

Where most of this capital comes from

A large share of the people funding these loans arrived at it the same way. They sold a property back home — Canada, the United States, Europe — and found themselves holding a sum of money that needed to do something. Some had already moved to Costa Rica and were working out how to earn here without buying themselves a business. Others never moved at all and simply wanted that money somewhere other than a savings account.

What draws them to a loan rather than a fund is knowing the shape of it. The rate and the maturity date are agreed before a dollar moves, and there is a registered mortgage behind them — which is a very different experience from watching a portfolio move around and finding out afterwards how the year went. It is not a promise; borrowers can fall behind and this carries its own risks. But you know what you agreed to, and you know when.

Getting yourself in front of the right files

The lender’s version of the problem is a mirror image: the files exist, but they are scattered across notaries, agents and personal networks, and judging one properly means reading a registry and a legal system you may have first encountered three weeks ago.

Anyone with money to place can lend here. Our lenders sit in Canada, the United States, Europe and Costa Rica, and a good number have never visited the country their loans are secured in. No finance background is required; what is required is a clear head about what you will and will not fund.

Practically, terms land between 9% and 16%, over six months to three years, from $50,000 upward with no ceiling. A hundred thousand dollars at 12% produces something like a thousand a month — plain arithmetic, not a forecast. Most people spread their capital over several files rather than one, so that different properties, different borrowers and different maturity dates are all working at once.

A note on rate

Our published range starts at 9%, and it is worth knowing why the bottom of it is interesting. Owners with the strongest positions negotiate — good address, orderly paperwork, a modest slice of the property’s value — and they simply will not accept the top of a range when they do not have to. So the cleanest files cluster low, and lenders who will look there get shown more of them. Saying you are open at 9% costs nothing: after the property has been examined the same file may reach you at 12%. There is more in what interest rate a private lender should expect.

Closing a file from another country

The obvious worry about lending somewhere you do not live is the closing itself. In practice it is routine. A lender abroad places the funds with an escrow company in advance, where they sit untouched until the file is genuinely ready. We confirm the moment it is, the mortgage is signed and lodged for registration, and the escrow agent releases the money against the agreed conditions. No flight, no signing appointment, no need to be in the country at all. More on the mechanics in escrow and trust in Costa Rica property lending.

What we handle

Title examination, lien searches, valuation, loan to value, documentation, and registering the mortgage. Every part of the process through to the day the loan closes is ours; after that we remain reachable. Payments then run from borrower to lender with nobody in between, and the insurance, municipal account and maturity date sit with the lender — small work, but theirs.

Structures flex: some lenders want the loan held in a trust, some use escrow at closing, some fund in crypto. The attorneys we work with close loans of this type constantly; if you would like your own to look over the file as well, no one objects. See how lending works in Costa Rica and hard money lending in Costa Rica.

Questions people ask

How long does a private loan take compared with a bank?

Considerably less. The exact time depends on the state of the title and how quickly documents appear, but this market exists largely because bank timelines do not suit people with a deadline.

Can I lend from outside Costa Rica?

Yes — and it is one of the most common arrangements we handle. No residency, no local address, no visit required. Lenders in Canada, the United States and Europe hold mortgages here without ever seeing the property in person.

What if a borrower stops paying?

The mortgage on the register is your security, and foreclosure is a route open to you if it reaches that. Our formal involvement ends at closing, though lenders in that position tend to ring us and we help from knowing the file. What happens in a foreclosure in Costa Rica sets out the sequence.

Do you also arrange larger project loans?

Yes — project funding and commercial loans, which can be released in drawdowns as a build reaches its milestones. See project financing in Costa Rica.

Start a conversation

Whether you are looking for capital or looking to place it, contact GAP Investments or browse the current lending opportunities. Nothing proceeds without your agreement, and no outcome is promised.

Introductions also travel the other way. Brokers, property managers, attorneys and accountants meet owners who are outside the banking system without realising a private option exists, and referring one takes a phone call and can earn up to 20% of GAP’s commission on a loan that closes and funds.

This article is for general information only and is not investment, legal, or tax advice. All lending and investment decisions should be made based on independent due diligence and with qualified professional guidance.

Article by Glenn Tellier (Founder of CRIE and Grupo Gap)