Why Investment Funds Are Buying Costa Rica's Luxury Coastal Land

Costa Rica has spent decades marketing itself to retirees and vacationers. Increasingly, it's also attracting a very different kind of buyer: investment funds, family offices, and institutional capital looking for long-horizon, land-based positions on some of the country's last undeveloped coastline. The billion-dollar Marina Tambor development on the Nicoya Peninsula — backed by Gulf-region investment group Burkhan World Investment alongside Costa Rican developer Stone Alliance — is one of the clearest signals yet of where that capital is heading.

Here's what's driving it, and what disciplined institutional buyers are actually looking for.

The Macro Picture: Real Estate's Growing Share of Costa Rica's FDI

Costa Rica's total foreign direct investment reached approximately USD $4.32 billion in 2024, one of the highest figures in the country's history. Tourism alone accounted for roughly 14% of that total, or around $600 million, while real estate investment represented close to 7% — a share that has been steadily growing as the country's profile shifts from a pure vacation destination toward a longer-term investment platform tied to sustainability, wellness, and remote-living trends.

What Institutional Capital Is Actually Looking For

Fund-level buyers approach Costa Rican land differently than an individual purchasing a lifestyle property, and their filters tend to be consistent:

• Political and legal continuity: Costa Rica's core property rights framework, foreign ownership rules, and environmental protections have historically remained stable across election cycles — a form of institutional durability that matters far more to a fund underwriting a decade-long position than to a buyer purchasing a single vacation home.
• Verifiable ESG credentials: Institutional investors, particularly from Europe and North America, increasingly require environmental, social, and governance documentation before committing capital — which plays directly to Costa Rica's brand as a country with over 25% of its territory under environmental protection and near-universal renewable energy generation.
• Clean, titled ownership: Just as with individual buyers, funds strongly prefer land with a clear, registered title over property encumbered by concession restrictions, since titled land is straightforward to finance, structure, and eventually exit.
• Currency and macro stability: The USD/CRC exchange rate has been notably stable heading into 2026, an important underwriting input for foreign funds modeling long-term returns in dollar terms.

Case Study: Marina Tambor and the Gulf Capital Wave

Marina Tambor is a useful example of what fund-level capital looks like in practice. The project — a roughly $1 billion, 360-hectare mixed-use master plan on 4.5 kilometers of coastline — combines Gulf Cooperation Council investment capital with local Costa Rican development expertise and government-level investment support through CINDE, the country's investment promotion agency. That combination of foreign capital, local execution, and institutional backing is precisely the model other funds are watching as they evaluate their own positions on the Nicoya Peninsula and along the wider Pacific coast.

Why Land Specifically — Not Just Developed Property

Raw, undeveloped coastal land offers funds something a finished property can't: optionality. A well-located, titled parcel can be master-planned, phased, or repositioned entirely as market conditions evolve, which is attractive to capital with a longer investment horizon and its own development capability.

That said, discipline matters here. Undeveloped land does not generate rental income the way a managed coastal property does — well-managed Guanacaste rentals are currently producing net yields in the 5–8% range, while raw land is fundamentally a positioning and appreciation play rather than a cash-flow asset. Institutional buyers who succeed with land in Costa Rica typically have a clear development thesis and the capital to execute it, rather than treating land as a passive holding.

Risk Considerations for Institutional Buyers

Before deploying meaningful capital, sophisticated buyers are running the same due diligence checklist smart individual buyers should follow, at greater scale:

• Confirming titled status and boundary surveys (plano catastrado) against the 200-meter Maritime Zone
• Verifying water rights and availability, a genuine bottleneck for large-scale coastal development in parts of Guanacaste
• Reviewing the municipal land-use plan (plan regulador) for the parcel and surrounding zone
• Assessing environmental permitting requirements before committing to a master plan

The Bottom Line

Costa Rica's shift from a retiree-and-tourist market to a genuine institutional real estate destination is still in its early stages — which is exactly what makes this window interesting. Funds that move now, on clean titled land in the right locations, are positioning ahead of a wave of capital and infrastructure that is only beginning to arrive.