Guanacaste, Costa Rica — On 139 acres of lush, forested mountainside looking out on the Pacific Ocean in Costa Rica’s spectacular Guanacaste Province, Jim and Gina Correll and their CR Development Group partners Julian and Karen Rembert are developing Coco Bay Estates. The resort-lifestyle community with its unique combination of Costa Rica vacation living and vibrant North American spirit is attracting American, Canadian and European buyers looking for smart investment alternatives outside the U.S. in this popular, beautiful and friendly country. CRDG Development, the team’s 4-year old company, is right on target to complete the first phase of the project – 100 home sites, 54 luxury condominiums and a tennis and aquatic center – in early 2009 when Coco Bay Estates homeowners will begin moving in to their new, hacienda-style digs with Pacific views and jungle panoramas.
To date, CRDG has sold more than 60 percent of the condominium homes and villa sites integral to the architect-designed master plan that guides the elegant coastal Spanish Colonial style of Coco Bay Estates (http://www.cocobayestates.com).
According to Correll, people come to Costa Rica and fall in love with the area and the people. “Once they are here, the opportunity is easy to understand,” says Correll. “They invest in vacation property or a second home; then they start spending more personal time here. They begin to realize they can work from here, bring their skills here and become part of the growth that is happening. Soon they start spending a majority of their time in Costa Rica and then look to moving here full time. They love it and so do we,” he concludes. Correll estimates that more than thirty percent of Coco Bay Estates buyers are planning to live there part of the year; others will take up the Costa Rica lifestyle full time like the Correll and Rembert families do now.
Correll and his wife Gina searched seriously for real estate opportunities along the coast of Mexico and the Baja before heading to Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast for a short vacation where the couple met real estate professional Julian Rembert and his wife Karen a tennis pro. The Remberts had also been scouting real estate sweet spots on the other side of the country, looking along the Atlantic Coast down to the Caribbean. The two couples quickly recognized they shared a common vision and the business skill set to make it happen. As they explored the region, their instincts and some hard-core research told them they had found what they had been looking for on Costa Rica’s northwestern shore. They loved the area’s tropical beauty, its exhilarating eco-lifestyle, people, expanse of beaches and friendly Pura Vida spirit.
And, they agreed that the region had inevitable potential to become a destination and value proposition on par with opportunities in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Mexico years earlier. “I estimate we are in the first 20 percent of the cycle of growth here”, says Correll, “if you take other coastal resort areas like Hawaii or Cancun as a model, you find development expands after major hotels are in operation. In this region more than a dozen hotel projects have been announced with key flagships like the Four Seasons in place already. With more visitors, more people fall in love with the area and want to come here and live.”
The Corrells and Remberts are making that process easy for Coco Bay Estates buyers. CRDG offers a full-blown menu of professionals and services for buyers that can help them design, build, furnish and maintain their homes. “Our team consists of the people who developed the Four Seasons, the top service providers in Latin America, definitely in Costa Rica — it’s a great Costa Rican team, not a foreign team. They know how to work here, they have the contacts and the track record, they’ve already done it.”
CRDG offers a vacation rental program for owners who want their Costa Rica home to perform like an investment and make money when they aren’t living in it. “We wanted to build a resort community that would allow our investors to live here year round and totally enjoy the day to day lifestyle. At the same time, if an owner plans only to vacation here and wants to rent his property out for the rest of the year, we wanted to make that easy for them, too. Our goal was to create a community and the amenity set that would inspire anyone who visits this area to want to stay at Coco Bay Estates because of all that it offers,” says Rembert.
“There aren’t too many places in the world where you can go to the beach, go to the rainforest, go surfing, visit a volcano, go ATVing, hiking or play in waterfalls all in the same day and then go home to a community that is comfortable, safe and in what we call affordable luxury,” adds Rembert. “We love it, our families love it, our friends love it-and we’re pretty sure lots of other folks are going to love it as well.”
The CRDG team enjoys demonstrating the virtues of Coco Bay Estates and offers invitation only, VIP fly and buy trips for serious potential buyers. The trip includes gratis accommodations in a luxury villa, transportation, meals, tours and interactions with bank, building and tax experts, and a coastline tour on an 80-person catamaran.
More information: http://www.cocobayestates.com .
[tags]Coco Bay Estates, CR Development Group, Jim and Gina Correll, Julian and Karen Rembert, Costa Rica vacation rental program, CRDG Development[/tags]
