Betsy Yagla - October Friday 2004

BEING a real estate agent is a bit like being a doctor. Real estate agents, like doctors, are bombarded at parties with questions. Only, instead of getting the ‘Ooooh, you’re a doctor? Well, I have a weird fungus on my foot’, they get the ‘Ooooh, you’re a real estate agent? Well, I was thinking about selling my house …’ Real estate agents, like doctors, are constantly bracing and consoling their clients when they sell a home. ‘Now, this is probably going to be painful. This is what you can expect …’ and real estate agents, like doctors, also make loyal, long lasting relationships with their clients.

Les Nunez, for example, is president of RE/MAX Costa Rica, the biggest grossing real estate franchise in Costa Rica. About 99% of RE/MAX clients are foreign. Nunez cannot drive through Escazu without seeing a client.

Black BMWs honk at him and sunglasses wearing silver Mercedes drivers wave. Some clients give him hugs. “When can we take you out for drinks?” they ask. Nunez, a short, bespectacled Canadian with graying hair, has X-ray vision. He can drive through neighborhoods and tell you what the inside of a house looks like: three bed, 2500 square feet, large patio. Vaulted ceilings, two car garage, Jacuzzi.

Lots of tile, Spanish style, newly remodeled. He points out buildings and names prices. “Those houses cost a million two.” Or he’ll announce, “There’s not a home on this street that’s less than half a mil,” or he’ll point and say, “Those condos over there cost 320 for 280 square feet.” HE knows the families: Cuban Americans that lived in Miami and moved here 10 years ago. They’ve got two kids. (See Condo resales in Costa Rica)

He golfs and she is an interior designer. U.S. citizens from Phoenix, Ariz. who just moved here last week. She’s an ex realtor and he’s an investor. They’ve got a dog and their two kids go to Country Day School.

There’s a secretive type of guy from Los Angeles, Calif. living in a three bedroom in Escazú that he designed. It’s got a killer view and he’s looking to move to Santa Ana to be near family. “After nine years here I know all the houses in these three neighborhoods Cariari, Santa Ana and Escazú and if I haven’t sold the house, I saw it or I previewed it with other realtors,” he said.

New buyers to be meet with Nunez in the mornings to be profiled and after a quick interview he knows their buying potential, the area they’re looking for and how serious they are about buying. With that information Nunez knows what houses to show them.

Nunez spends other mornings driving around what he calls the golden triangle – Properties in Cariari, Escazu Condos and Santa Ana Homes – and the afternoons filing paperwork, going to meetings and answering the 180 emails the office receives each day. “We get so many emails a day that we have to prioritize them,” Nunez says. “The lowest priorities are the ones saying, ‘We’re thinking about moving to Costa Rica when we retire in the next five years.

What’s it like?’ I mean, come on. E-mail me in five years.” On the selling end, he visits homes to do “comparative market analysis,” which is real estate talk for evaluating a realist price of the home. Nunez lugs his digital camera around the home snapping photos for the RE/MAX international Web site.

If a seller is asking for too much, Nunez says, “Get real.” Too often, he says, foreigners with no idea of Costa Rican home values overpay for their homes and when they need to sell, they may end up losing money. This happens fairly often because real estate agents don’t need to be licensed in Costa Rica. “Any old Joe or José can wake up one day and decide to be a real estate agent, but without the proper training it makes it very, very tough for the general public to understand what they’re getting into,” Nunez says. “It’s unfair to the public.” And it bugs him to no end. Nunez is licensed in Washington, Colorado and British Columbia and he renews his license every year.

After 22 years in the business, Nunez can take a family he doesn’t know to a house he does know and he knows exactly what they will say. It’s the light in the living room or the backyard pool.

He’s gotten to the point where he now hands new clients a sheet of paper with 10 questions. “You’re going to ask me these 10 questions and so let’s go over the answers,” he tells them.

One day when Nunez was struggling to get over a cold he caught on a business trip to Panama, he visited the Cubans who build three homes a year in Cariari to sell them through RE/MAX. They decided they didn’t want to sell the house they were living in four days after Nunez put it on the market. But they assured him they had another home that would be ready in about three weeks.

The commission rate on a house like that usually runs around 6-7%. On a house like that that means $27,000. That’s when people say, woah. That’s a lot of money, but out of that money the franchise fee has to be paid once a month.

RE/MAX also gets one and a half percent of the commission, Nunez explained. That might leave Nunez with a bit over $20,000, which he says, is “nothing to sneeze at” but for example, the Cubans’ house, which wasn’t even on the market for a week before they changed their mind, has already cost him $600 in marketing. Whether or not the house sells, he still has to pay for the advertising.

Early that afternoon he sat outside the newly rented Escazú home of the couple from Arizona who are looking to buy. “I know of a large four bedroom in Cariari in the $450,000 range that you should look at,” he said. The woman’s eyes raised, obviously interested. “Is it nice?” she asked. Nunez gave her a look as if to say, ‘come on.’

If you want more information about the best real estate affordable, please contact Costa Rica real estate and retirement properties or call toll free 1 888 581 1786.