Homes for sale and homes for rent in Santa Ana, San José, Costa Rica | Newsletters

Notes

When I started Residencias Los Jardines, I started writing a weekly news letter —determined to tell all the good, bad, and the ugly. I knew some readers would be interested in the construction process. I expected others might be interested in the lifestyle of two people who had decided to live outside the box. For others, the adventures of Lita, the parrot and the cat took on an entertainment saga all its own.

Residencias Los Jardines is finished. We periodically have resales and rental availabilty. Some readers may be interested in this information.

More and more, the content will be dominated by events of our new project, "El Dorado" for short. While the future is always uncertain, I again aim to tell it like it happens —the good, the bad, and the ugly, and that is what follows.

In an effort to make the format more interesting and visually appealing and to field inquiries re. El Dorado, the news letter is now being distributed by Jan Kozak, Marketing Manager, Hacienda El Dorado. I will remain the author.
 

Website

The website was not launched on Monday as predicted but on Wednesday. We wanted to fix a few little things before releasing it.  It is still not finished and we have subsequently noted a few errors. If you haven't seen it and are interested go to:

www.ElDoradoCostaRica.com

The site is not yet fully operational with the development and programming of several additional features and functions still pending.  Those are being worked on now and are expected to be up and running November 12.

Note: Throughout this process, Maria, our person in Argentina, tasked with the responsibility of putting  all this information together and making the links and clickers, etc, all work, has been nothing short of FANTASTIC.  She has worked late most nights for the past three weeks and into the early morning hours. She has remained cool, calm, and collected (at least from our end not sure what her husband (Gaston) received), She has translated all the English to Spanish, she has made all the little changes Jan and I asked. She continues to exceed my expectations and works beyond what I could reasonably expect. Our meeting 5 years ago was truly fortunate.

Marketing & Sales

Our printed materials were finished and delivered on Friday.

We now have a bout 15 units verbally reserved and contracts are beginning to be received and funds are being wire transferred. Many of these are through one realtor— Rudy Matthews of Costa Rica Retirement Vacation Properties with the assistance of Chris Howard's tours (the author of 15 editions of the #1 perennial BESTSELLER "New Golden Door to Retirement and Living in Costa Rica." ), who has been marketing El Dorado for the past 8 mo. and has put people on our newsletter. They have followed our progress and now that we are ready to show and tell, they are stepping up and making commitments.

Banking Arrangements

We meet with the bank as planned. We are awaiting their proposal. We outlined what we were looking for and introduced a concept that is not used here but is commonly used in North American. If we can come to agreement on it, it should be a major marketing  draw. 

Legal

Construction Application: My information is that all contributors will have their end of things ready for November 1.

Construction Log

Architect: The structural engineer and architect met,  compared and aligned their respective analysis.  Each is moving forward. I expect to meet with the architect on Tuesday to  advance, if not to finish, the floor plans for the Maya Tower. Once I had a chance to review all the floor plans, I realized we had a couple gaps in our current offerings and have asked the architect to develop two more floor plans—a three bedroom ground floor Cortez and to re-configure the current one bedroom ground floor

Balboa Split unit into either a two bedroom or a one bedroom w/ den.  In both cases, we have the space, we just have to use it differently.

Structural Engineer: He's now getting quotes and design specifications from a pre-cast structural beam company for the bridge.

Well Application: We have the permit in hand and will be finalizing the drilling contract.

Quebrada: We've  restarted the land filling and final grading.  Weather permitting, this should be completed this coming week.

Fence: We continue to work away at this.

Surveyor: After many delays due to weather, etc., this work is now done. We have a couple decisions to make but generally, all looks pretty good.

Residencias Los Jardines

For Sale: nothing available at the moment

For Lease: nothing available

Laundry Machines: The information I had last week was incorrect. Whirpool brand is still being sold and serviced here. What has changed is the level of service for commercial units which ours are. We have to physically take our machines across town to where they are repaired and then pick them up. All three of ours area now repaired and two have been returned to service.

Property Tax Reassessment: On Monday the City of Santa Ana property tax people arrived to do their 5 year property reassessment. They were driving a new City van. Santa Ana is beginning to reap benefits from all the new tax base.

Shareholders Meeting: This will be December 15. I'll be completing the documentation and readying the information necessary. What needs to be sent in advance will be. 

Our Lives

The weather has improved this past week.  We've actually seen some sunshine and rain has been relatively infrequent.  The ground is beginning to dry out.  The "winds of change" have been felt this past week.

This continued to be a busy and gratifying week. The website was launched with few errors and omissions and hasn't encountered any technical problems that we're aware of.  Sometimes you grind and grind away at something and are not able to see any progress.  If you're lucky, those components later come together.

Brian, Lita, Hugo, irreverent Vicka, the pigeon toed parrot, and the newbies— Chico and Chica.