Costa Rica Active Listings Fall 2.4% as Median Price Rises to $435,000 in August

Key takeaways

• National active inventory fell 2.4% in August while the median sale price rose 1.2% to $435,000 — a market tightening on both sides at once.
• Median days on market dropped 6.0% nationally to 186 days. In San José, the drop was 23.6%, down to 138 days — the fastest pace among the major provinces.
• Guanacaste saw its median sale price fall 5.0%, while median rent in Limón jumped 35.5%.
• Puntarenas broke from the national trend: its days on market spiked 61.3% even as price ticked up 1.7%.
• Canton-level swings were extreme in both directions: Acosta sale prices rose 41.2% while Buenos Aires in Puntarenas fell 58.9% — both on thin samples.

National overview

Costa Rica's median sale price closed August at $435,000, up 1.2% from July's $430,000, across a sample of 27,329 for-sale listings. Median rent held flat at $2,200, across 3,624 rental listings.

Active inventory fell 2.4% from July, down from 21,963 to 21,444 listed properties. At the same time, median days on market dropped 6.0%, from 198 to 186 days. Falling inventory paired with a faster median sale points to steady demand working through what's on the market — though it's worth flagging that fresh listings entering with the clock at zero can also pull the median down on their own, independent of how fast previously-listed homes are actually selling.

State of the marketplace

Propiedades.cr's cumulative listing count reached 41,996 by the end of August, up 0.3% from July's 41,861. That's modest, steady growth consistent with a platform still adding inventory month over month.

Province-by-province movement

Limón posted the sharpest rent increase in the country, while Guanacaste was the only major province with a sale-price drop over 5%. Puntarenas and Limón share the same median days on market — 352 — the highest of the seven provinces.

Canton spotlight

These are the cantons with the largest percentage swings in sale price this month. With samples this small, each figure reflects which specific homes happened to list that month rather than a lasting shift in the canton.

Buenos Aires (Puntarenas): median sale price fell 58.9%, from $263,132 to $108,184, on just 14 for-sale listings — the smallest sample of the five entries here.

Upala (Alajuela): median price dropped 45.8%, from $1,200,000 to $650,000, on a sample of 17.

Acosta (San José): median price rose 41.2%, from $271,500 to $383,250, on 8 listings — the smallest sample of the group. Days on market there fell 83.4%, to 46 days.

Montes de Oro (Puntarenas): median price rose 40.6%, from $190,000 to $267,049, on a sample of 14.

Pococí (Limón): median price rose 33.5%, from $191,000 to $255,000, on 61 listings — the largest sample in this group. Median rent there also rose 15.8%.

By property type

Retail space was August's biggest mover up, with a median price 14.3% higher than July. Warehouse was the biggest mover down, falling 15.1%.

Where buyers are looking

These are the districts with the most active listings on the platform in August. This is a listing count, not a price signal.

The Escazú–Santa Ana corridor holds three of the top ten spots, underscoring how much of the Greater Metropolitan Area's inventory concentrates there.

Another way to read the month is where new-listing activity grew fastest versus July:

Note that this Buenos Aires, in the canton of Palmares, Alajuela, is a different place from the Buenos Aires canton in Puntarenas covered in the canton spotlight above. Sámara and Puerto Carrillo had zero new listings in July, so their August activity is entirely new.

Developments

Rather than run the same ranked table every month — the same handful of large developments leads the active-listing standings for months at a time — it's more useful to look at which developments gained the most new listings in August versus July, since that actually shifts.

The biggest mover was Condominio Ribera Laureles in San Rafael de Escazú: it went from zero listings in July to 5 in August — a genuinely new name on the radar.

Three other developments entered the same way, with zero listings in July and new activity this month: Alterego in Mata Redonda (4 new listings), Waldorf Astoria Residences in Sardinal de Carrillo (4), and Cerro Real in San Rafael de Escazú (4).

Escazú Village Residencias, also in San Rafael, isn't a new entrant but did accelerate, growing from 4 to 7 new listings — a 75% jump.

Elsewhere, the rest of the active-listing standings held steady: Hacienda Pinilla at 89, Valle del Sol at 78, and Condominio Parques del Sol at 75.

As with the district figures, these numbers reflect where listing activity concentrated, not market size in dollars — and it's worth remembering that platform listing volume can also shift when a new brokerage partner joins with a full portfolio all at once.

Industry pulse

Across the whole platform, Propiedades.cr has accumulated 42,203 listings historically, of which 20,831 are active today and 21,372 have been removed — a 50.6% removal rate. That's a market-health figure: it reflects how much turnover the inventory has seen over time, not how many properties are available right now.

Methodology

All price and rent figures are medians, not averages, to limit the influence of outlier listings. Cantons featured in the spotlight require a minimum sample size to appear; even so, small samples produce large percentage swings that reflect which specific homes listed that month rather than a structural shift in the canton. District and development figures are listing counts, not prices. Both active-listing and new-listing counts reflect platform activity, which can move for reasons unrelated to the market — such as a new brokerage partner onboarding its full portfolio at once.

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