Introduction and Market Assessment
[Richard Bexon] Good afternoon, Jake, how are you doing?
[Jake Alexander] I’m doing great. Thanks.
[Richard Bexon] How are you doing today? Good, man. You’re looking good, buddy.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, thanks. I had a lot of free time on my hand the past month or so when I was back in the States and it’s nice to be back here, but yeah, thank you.
[Jake Alexander] Awesome, man. Well, Jake, the first question I’d love to ask everyone is, I mean, I say volatility in Western markets looks like it’s here to stay. That doesn’t seem to be changing.
I mean, what are you seeing happening here in Costa Rica?
Current Costa Rica Real Estate Market Conditions
[Richard Bexon] Yeah, here, like people are buying things and things are for sale. Things that have been sitting for a long time are moving. There’s one house in Ojochal that I remember showing to people over a year ago that just sat and sat.
I think I’ve showed it three or four times and then finally that gets sold and it was nice. It was the three bedroom, brand new house for $2.95, like wouldn’t be able to build it for less. So I think things are going to continue to move and there’s more interest.
[Jake Alexander] What do you think about pace? Do you think pace is slowing down a little bit? Is it a buyer’s market, seller’s market?
[Richard Bexon] I think it’s going to continue to pick up. Yeah, you know, I think we are shifting more towards a buyer’s market. You know, the days where people were asking ridiculous prices is kind of over.
Things are coming down to what the actual market value should be. But that volatility that’s in the markets now, I think is really playing to our favor. I have conversations weekly with people who are ready to leave the United States, mainly political climate, politically motivated, but also at the same time, they’re like, hey, you know what?
If I don’t do this now, when am I going to do this? So I think I’m going to try living in Costa Rica and we just try to make that safe for them.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because we don’t talk much politics down here in Costa Rica. So they always say that you can tell how long someone’s been here because if they’ve been here under six months, they’re talking politics. If they’ve been over six months, they’re not.
No one cares.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that’s like the nice thing about being down here. The weather, at least down at the beach, the weather is nice enough on Saturday and Sunday where you’re not plopped in front of the TV watching football all day. And you also don’t care to watch the news or you deal with politics.
You can read about it if you want, but you really got to go out of your way to be involved in it and seek out those conversations as opposed to just like bumping into someone at the coffee shop in the States.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah. I mean, we’ve had an election here in Costa Rica in like eight months and you’re not hearing anything even here. You know, things are still pretty quiet here.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. Like there’ll be, you know, in a couple of months you’ll see people driving around with flags and stuff hanging off of their cars and a big speaker strapped to the top of the sedan driving around in between promoting the DJ at the club in Quepos. They’ll drop like a political commentary as well, but it’s, yeah, it’s just not such a big thing here.
[Jake Alexander] I wonder how many presidential candidates we’ll have this time. I think it was 23 last time. So we’ll see how many we get this time.
TucanChat.io: Revolutionary Translation Technology
So yeah. Well, Jake, you recently launched ToucanChat.io, okay. And again, very impressive.
Congratulations. I mean, but for listeners here, what is it? Where did the idea come from?
Who’s it aimed at? Like, give us a bit of an idea about it.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. So TucanChat, it’s a WhatsApp chat bot that works right within WhatsApp. And what it does is it translates and transcribes and produces voice notes.
So think about you ever get a voice note in Spanish that you play it over and over again and like you hold it up to your ear because you think that the next time you’ll actually understand what this person is trying to say.
[Jake Alexander] Yep.
The Origin Story Behind TucanChat
[Richard Bexon] Like the idea came from that frustration. And what happened was when I was in the States and James was watching my house, the pipes was like, were backing up into the kitchen, couldn’t figure out what it was. I called one of the guys that helped build the house.
Turns out a pipe that went across the road was broken and filled with dirt and that’s why everything was backing up. And I was talking to this guy about like paying him and I paid him a little bit of money for when he came first to look at it and then for the day. And then he asked me if I could send him a little bit more.
And I thought I understood what he wanted. But then he sent me a voice message and I could tell that he was frustrated. I’m like, I don’t know, where’s the disconnect here?
So I just started looking for something that like, how do I figure out what this guy is trying to say to me and actually understand?
[Jake Alexander] Well I can imagine a lot of expats having that issue. But also just people in, I mean, look, I mean the US is heavily Hispanic, you know, population as well. So, you know, and there are some people there, I mean, you go to Miami sometimes and it’s like, I don’t speak English.
You’re like, what? I’m in the States. Like, you know, so.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah.
[Jake Alexander] So yeah.
How TucanChat Works
[Richard Bexon] So yeah. Yeah. You can.
It’s really simple. All you do is just forward a voice note to it. Like you would send it along to a friend and then it replies back with what it heard and then the translation and then an audio message in the translation.
And once you set it up, it also works in reverse. So if you set it up to that, you know, you’re sending a Spanish voice note, it’ll give you an English translation and an English voice note. But then if you speak to it in English, it’ll give you Spanish text and a voice note in Spanish.
Interesting. So, you know, for the people, there’s, don’t get me wrong, Costa Rica has a really high literacy rate, but there’s still people here and there’s a reason why voice notes are so popular, whether it’s quicker literacy. But the fact that you can just then forward this voice note on to the person, keeps the voice notes flowing and also might help them understand better as well.
Pricing and Availability
[Jake Alexander] Yeah. I mean, it’s a great idea. As I said, congratulations.
I’m sure a lot of people are going to need it. I mean, how do they download it? How much does it cost?
Yeah.
[Richard Bexon] So you can go to tucanchat.io and just click the link there. It says get started on WhatsApp, or you can just add the phone number. It is, we’ll put it in the description down below as well for people.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah.
[Richard Bexon] It’s 478-778-8226. And you just send it a message and follow the prompts. And the first 10 messages are free, so you can try it out.
And then after that, it’s only $1.99 a month or $19.99 for the year.
Multi-Language Support and Global Applications
[Jake Alexander] Well, yeah. I mean, again, I think for anyone that doesn’t speak Spanish, especially down here, but I mean, I suppose it applies for all of Latin America, no? Yeah.
You can use it.
[Richard Bexon] So right now there’s five languages on it, English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese. Yep. If there’s someone who’s really dying for another language to go on there, let me know and I can add it, but that’s what we’re starting with.
But yeah, it’s not just Costa Rica. I mean, it’s all over Central America, South America, Mexico, the US, I mean, Europe. If you’re involved in those languages, you can utilize this, and it’s two bucks a month.
If it saves you from going and copying and pasting to Google Translate and then coming back, it’s worth it. Even having a conversation with someone at a coffee shop, instead of giving them your phone to type in their language and then show it to you, and then you go back, you can just speak to it and then they can speak to it.
[Jake Alexander] And now you’re communicating with each other. I think my dad would have found this useful when he lived in the Czech Republic like 20 years ago, because he would go with a Czech English dictionary, and then also a piece of paper and a pencil to draw stuff on. And so he had this friend who didn’t speak English.
He didn’t speak Czech. And so they’d drink beer and basically try and communicate.
[Richard Bexon] Like draw and flip through their book together. It was pictionary and dictionary, dude, like, you know, so yeah. Because, you know, think about you go to, you know, you go to the I like the mechanic example.
And even if you’re standing there, you can still like point at things. Yep. And that helps.
But, you know, I found like when I wasn’t here and like James had my car and something happened with the front axle and this guy is sending me voice messages, I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on or like how bad this is.
Yep. So I just use this and I’m like, oh, it’s just the front axle. OK, take it to this guy.
And then it was fixed for 200 bucks in two days.
Major Investment Projects and Development Areas
[Jake Alexander] Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool, man.
Let’s switch gears into kind of a little bit back towards investment real estate. Where are you seeing the majority of kind of demand and investment being focused at the moment?
[Richard Bexon] Yeah, so I’d like to look at this from the bigger picture, not so much like individuals, but when you look at big projects going on. So, you know, you have like up in Papagayo, they’re building that Waldorf Astoria. Yep.
So there’s a bunch of money getting pumped in up around that area. You look at Quepos Manuel Antonio with the marina, they’re expanding the slips in the marina. They’re building a huge condo tower there.
I think it’s eight floors. Yep. There’s like two units left.
And the starting price of those was 675, 700 K. And then you go south and a similar style of project of like a marina project down in Golfito, where I think we’re finally going to see that project come to fruition there with the group that’s involved with that there now.
Investment Risk Assessment for Different Regions
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, you know, I mean, it depends on your risk profile. I mean, we mentioned this in the next podcast we do, you know, we talk about risk investing in land, but.
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just you have to, you know, because a client for me was like, hey, what do you think about the southern Golfito project? And I was like, dude, it’s not easy to get to, like unless you’re big into fishing, like don’t don’t I use the word punt, take a punt on that unless you’re really going to use it and enjoy it, because that area is not going to develop overnight and hasn’t done.
[Richard Bexon] No, and it’s like that’s the main thing, too, is, you know, when we have conversations with people, it’s well, what is this for? Is this an investment? Is this a property for you?
Is this something that you want to be able to exit easily or do you just want to be in this area and you’re happy if it doesn’t cost you any money or it costs you a little bit of money a year and you get to use it?
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, I mean, I think the goal is important, right? And also exit timeline, because if you want to exit in a short period of time, probably buying a key area. But I mean, if you’re going to be like, no, we’re going to hold it for 10 or 20 years, then you can take a little bit of risk, I think.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah, you just have to be you have to be OK with that and not not need the money in a rush situation if you’re going to be planning that strategy there.
Market Outlook for 2025
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, I agree. I agree. What do you think is going to happen for the rest of 2025 in Costa Rica?
[Richard Bexon] I think we’re going to continue to see strong demand here. You know, like we were saying earlier, there hasn’t been a drop off in people that I’m meeting with every week that are interested in either investing here or relocating here to subcapacity.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah. Do you think, you know, the one thing that I found that a lot of the realtors were saying was, you know, post pandemic, it was easy, man. I mean, stuff was selling like hotcakes.
Now they have more deals falling through, like things are a little bit more difficult, if that makes sense, to get to the finish line. Are you getting that sense as well?
[Richard Bexon] I don’t think so. I look at like the deals that I had fall through and. There was really like outside circumstances and like one of them, I was really surprised we even got that far along.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah.
[Richard Bexon] One was completely outside circumstance, had nothing to do with any issue here, just a financial situation change. And that happens. And the other one.
Yeah, like there is a point where we have backed out of it before and then came back and then, you know, when it fell apart on closing day, it happened. And I wasn’t necessarily shocked that that was the end result of it.
Common Real Estate Purchase Mistakes
[Jake Alexander] Yeah. I mean, it’s, I just wish sellers sometimes would have all of their due diligence together, man. I mean, you know, I’m, I have a client buying a piece of land in Uvita at the moment.
It was beautiful. The, the, you know, the seller’s rep just gave me everything I needed, everything right there. And I was like, well, this is great.
I just need to do a sole study, do topography study, check wells and we’re good to go.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. Yeah. You know, when they give you like the in-booth study right off the bat, before you even go look at the property, it’s going to be an easy, easy transaction.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, where have you seen people making mistakes in buying real estate in Costa Rica?
[Richard Bexon] The most recent one I think would be letting the seller do any sort of the repairs on the property.
[Jake Alexander] Yep.
[Richard Bexon] And that’s what ultimately resulted in the one deal that I had fall through was we asked for money off. They were insulted at that and said they would just fix it themselves and just didn’t do a good job. And the buyer lost all confidence in their ability to do anything if they couldn’t even put the right kind of hardware on a pair of cabinets.
Yeah. You know, if they can’t do that, did they really fix the roof?
[Jake Alexander] I mean, I agree. Sometimes it’s better to just be like, look, we’re going to deduct it off the final price and you can manage it. I mean, we had a deal in the office very similar to that, where it was like, look, have our, you know, a general contractor go over, quote all this stuff and we’ll take it off the price and then we’ll do it afterwards.
Like, and they can go themselves. They can be there with a general contractor if they want, but like, yeah, I want to make sure that the work is done great. It’s done really well because otherwise, you know, I was always like to say caveat emptor buyer, but where, as soon as you buy that, I mean, there’s no going back, you know, so I mean, what areas of Costa Rica, I mean, you mentioned quite a few areas of Costa Rica there.
Recommended Investment Areas and Opportunities
I mean, where do you think that there is area for opportunity of investment in Costa Rica?
[Richard Bexon] So I’m, I’m kind of biased, but I like the Quepos, Manuel Antonio area, specifically Quepos for, uh, for long-term rentals for the boat crews that are going to be here. Yeah. Um, they’re already here.
There’s going to be more of them coming. They pay. If they can take care of a million dollar plus boat, they can probably take care of your house and not wreck it.
[Jake Alexander] Yep.
[Richard Bexon] And you know, they pay they’re here and they’re going to need a place to stay.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah.
[Richard Bexon] And people just don’t think about boat crews. Yeah. And they’re great.
I mean, that’s kind of my long-term plan with the house I’m in now is eventually do something else and rent this out to, uh, to a boat crew and they’re going to take care of it.
[Jake Alexander] And they’re going to pay. What areas of Costa Rica would you not be investing in Jake? Or you would be double taking and kind of thinking about a little bit more.
Areas to Avoid for Investment
[Richard Bexon] Purely from an investment standpoint, uh, I’d say out of like, Uvita. Yep. Uh, they’re just overly saturated with short-term rentals right now.
[Jake Alexander] Yep.
[Richard Bexon] I’d probably stay away from Tamarindo just because of a budget constraint.
[Jake Alexander] Yep.
[Richard Bexon] And yeah, like even Golfito Puerto Jiménez, you know, those kinds of places where, yeah, there’s like money going down there, but I don’t want to sit on it for 20 years for a, maybe when there’s other opportunities for, for less.
[Jake Alexander] I agree. I agree, man. Okay.
Personal Investment Strategy: Quepos Focus
My last question for you, Jake, and I think that this one changes every time, but you might have, you’ve got the answer here, but if you inherited $500,000 and you had to invest it in business or real estate in Costa Rica, what would you invest it in and why?
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. So I buy, uh, two condos right next door to me. Yep.
And how’s the end of Pacifica? There’s two for two 65 right now. I’d offer them less.
There’s my 500 and I’d rent them out long-term to, uh, to boat crews. Nice.
[Jake Alexander] Nice. I think that’s a, yeah. I mean, what do you reckon your return would be on that?
[Richard Bexon] Uh, it’s like seven, 8% a year, but like 2k net. Uh, yeah, well, I mean, think about your, it depends how you build it in, but the HOA is 200 bucks and you’re not paying utilities. So six, 7% a year.
Yeah. It’s not bad. And also asset appreciation as well.
Yeah. And then they’re just going to continue to go up. You know, the, the thing with this area here is there’s not a lot available.
[Jake Alexander] Yeah.
[Richard Bexon] That’s especially in like a gated condo community. They’re just not really building that. If you want something like that, you’re, you know, gated communities in the area here.
You have the condos where I live in Hacienda Pacifica. You have the other Hacienda Pacifica, which is the units where these are. You have, uh, El Salto, but that’s a totally different market.
And then you’d be going out to Villanueva to a newer place out there. Villas Del Rio, but that’s 15 minutes outside of town, totally different market.
[Jake Alexander] Wow. Well, Jake, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you here on the podcast kind of sharing some of your, uh, your knowledge. And also again, with the Toucan chat, again, anyone that wants to download that, um, I’ll put all the contact details down in the description down below, but we very much appreciate you joining us on the podcast, sir.
[Richard Bexon] Yeah. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Always a, always a good time. And I’m sure I’ll be seeing you here probably next week. Sounds good, bud.
Have a good one. Bye.
