Tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET, I’ll open the first true beachfront real estate deal I’ve ever brought to my Real Estate Trend Alert (RETA) group in Costa Rica.
The community is called Solea. It will sit on one of the last titled beachfront sites in the most established central Pacific coast beach town.
And when I say beachfront, I mean beachfront. Not across a road or behind a hotel. Beachfront.
Step out of the building, walk past your amenities, and you’re on the sand.
That’s rare anywhere in the world. In Costa Rica, it’s rarer still.
Recently, my team put together videos, maps, and images to help RETA members understand why I’m so excited about Solea.
Together, they tell a story, and today I’d like to share that story with you.
The surfers discovered this coast first, in the 1960s and ’70s. Then came the sportfishers. Then the roads improved, the airport grew, and the world followed.
Costa Rica’s Central Pacific Coast
The beach town where the new opportunity sits is on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast, about 90 minutes from San José and the country’s main international airport.
It’s near Manuel Antonio National Park, the most visited national park in Costa Rica.
For decades this coastline was best known among surfers and sportfishers.
Today this town is one of the country’s most established beach destinations—and now it’s moving upmarket.
This is Jacó.
Jacó is just 1.5 hours from San José’s Juan Santamaría International (SJO) airport via the Route 27 toll highway. Ticos, as locals are known, have been driving down on Friday afternoons for more than 30 years.
The Big Picture
Last month my team spent time in Jacó, walking the beach and visiting the Solea site.
They put together a short video to give you a feel for the place.
It captures the coastline, the beach, and the atmosphere that have made Jacó one of Costa Rica’s most established beach destinations.
Click below to view it now.
Watch this short video from my team—Jacó, the beach, the coast, the country.
Easy Access, Strong Demand
When I first began researching Costa Rica in the mid-2000s, international access was limited. Today it’s a completely different story.
Costa Rica now enjoys direct flights from more than 30 U.S. cities, with new routes announced regularly, and major European carriers fly nonstop from hubs like Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, and Zürich.
Thanks to low-cost carriers, fares are competitive too. So, it’s quick, easy and affordable to get to Costa Rica.
Costa Rica welcomes close to 3 million international visitors a year—more than half its own population—and many of them land at Juan Santamaría International in San José.
The Road That Changed Everything
But what about once you land?
If you touched down in San José in the 1990s and wanted to reach Jacó, you faced a brutal drive…narrow mountain roads winding through towns, traffic bottlenecks at every turn, a punishing three hours if you were lucky.
But when the Route 27 toll highway opened in 2010, everything changed.
The drive from San José to Jacó collapsed to about 90 minutes.
A beach that had felt remote suddenly became the closest serious Pacific beach to Costa Rica’s capital city and its international airport.
Tourism exploded. Real estate followed.
Jaco is the closest stunning beach to San José airport and on the way to the country’s most visited national park, Manuel Antonio, which is a little over an hour south.
RETA’s History in Costa Rica
I’ve brought RETA members maybe a half-dozen off-market deals in Costa Rica in total, spread over 15 years.
Deals here are hard to come by. That’s a result of tight restrictions on development, limited supply, and insatiable demand.
The flipside is that when I get a RETA-only off-market deal it’s usually a total no brainer.
I bought myself in the Acquarello Flamingo deal in March 2024. It’s close to the beach in Playa Flamingo on Costa Rica’s northwestern Pacific coast. The RETA-only pricing was from just $286,800 for a two-bed home and from just $386,800 for a three-bed home.
Now, retail pricing is $405,000 for a two bed and $505,000 for a three bed. Those are uplifts of $118,200 in just over two years on the RETA pricing.
And that isn’t RETA’s only Costa Rica success story.
Past RETA deals in Costa Rica have led to uplifts of $118,200…$149,000…even $252,600…
A Closer Look at Solea
And now there’s Solea…
Solea is on one of the last true beachfront lots on Jaco’s 2.5-mile beach. It’s going to set a new standard for beachfront luxury on this stretch of coast.
A beachfront condo on the closest beach to San José’s international airport—with direct flights from major North American cities—is the perfect example of why I love owning real estate.
It performs. It compounds. It rents. And it gives you something a brokerage account never will: a place to actually go.
A place for long weekends. Family holidays. Escaping winter. Watching the sun set over the Pacific with friends.
On top of what I expect will be gains of $223,000 and gross rental yields of 17%, there’s the thing you can’t put a price on: you get to enjoy it.
Take a tour of Solea in the renders video below.
Click to take a video tour of Solea that my team put together using the developer’s renders.
The Opportunity
Tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET, I’ll open this deal to RETA members.
The RETA-only pricing is from just $297,000 for a two-bed condo.
A two-bed condo with the features Solea offers—modern, full-amenity, true beachfront, titled, in a stable democracy 90 minutes from an international airport—should not exist for $297,000 anywhere in the world.
The fact that this one does is the function of one variable, and one variable only: RETA’s group-buying power and off-market relationship with the developer.
By the way, the developer’s CEO is keeping a condo at Solea.
When the people who built it choose to live in it, you have a different kind of trust signal—and no marketing budget can manufacture it.
RETA members, make sure you’re ready tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET.
This developer render shows how utterly beachfront Solea’s condos and amenities will be. Right on the sand, tasteful and luxurious. I can’t believe the RETA-only price. Condos next door rent for $473 a night and list for over $500,000. But the RETA price is from $297,000.
Wishing you good real estate investing,
P.S. One final thought…
Twenty years from now, Jacó’s beach will still be 2.5 miles long.
There won’t be any more titled beachfront land than there is today.
Yet I suspect there will be many more people who want to spend time here.
That’s the simple supply-and-demand story that sits behind opportunities like Solea.
It’s the kind of scarcity I love.
Sunset over the Pacific is what renters will pay a premium for, and what the owners can enjoy anytime they’re in town.
