Guanacaste: A tourist’s paradise with empty houses
By: Noelia Esquivel Solano
Do you know your neighbors? Do they have a chat group organized to talk about urgent matters or about a suspicious car spotted in the neighborhood? Chances are, if you live in a highly touristic district of Guanacaste, it can be very challenging to build relationships with your neighbors when different tourists arrive week after week. Practically one in five houses in the province are unoccupied, according to the most recent data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Spanish acronym: INEC).
The province has the highest percentage of unoccupied homes in the entire country, at 19.4%, according to the 2022 Population and Housing Estimates (7.5 percentage points above the national average, which is 11.7%). But that’s a conservative figure. On Guanacaste’s coastline, the number of empty houses rises to 60%.
INEC defines a home as “unoccupied” when it doesn’t have the same residents for at least six months of the year, but rather is used for temporary residence for vacations, study or work, or because it is for sale or rent.
The high vacancy rate is influenced by the real estate boom that makes Guanacaste have the most growth in house construction, but with a clear inclination to gratify the tourist demographic that vacations and looks for second homes. Housing solutions for locals are given less importance.
Many properties are designed as vacation retreats for Costa Rican tourists and, above all, a good portion of the 1.5 million people who arrive annually through the Guanacaste airport (according to figures from 2023, which are trending upward).
In fact, the country is experiencing a quantitative housing deficit of about 150,000 houses, which means that there are more nuclear familys than houses, according to estimates from the 2023 Housing Sector Balance and Trends study, prepared by the Federated College of Engineers and Architects (Spanish acronym: CFIA), the University of Costa Rica’s (UCR) Architecture Graduate Program and the organization Gestionando Hábitat (Managing Habitat).
If we consider the qualitative deficit, in other words, the quality of the roof, walls and floor of the houses already available, that figure rises to more than 750,000.
A lot of housing is being built, but not to meet the needs of locals. The theory we are working with is that they are short-term rental homes, what they now call Airbnbs, recreational housing or second homes for wealthy people from other areas who come to vacation,” explained Franklin Solano, a researcher on urban planning and housing issues and co-coordinator of the Housing Sector Balance and Trends study.
Moreover, this dynamic – based on poor urban space planning and nonexistent and outdated regulatory plans – jeopardizes the response to a common interest and the guarantee of decent and adequate housing for the population. Housing grows, but the resident population doesn’t, so services (health centers, education, water systems, electric systems, public transportation and roads in good condition) meet the requirements of the tourism logic and not permanent housing.
“We could dare to say that [real estate development] has managed to satisfy some economic needs, but the impacts that it is beginning to have are the social impacts that are beginning to be more worrying than the mirage of having been able to participate in these revenues,” expressed a professor at the UCR School of Architecture, Pablo Acuña.
Coastline leads depopulation
The number of vacant houses is worsening in coastal and tourist communities: Cuajiniquil of Santa Cruz, Puerto Carrillo of Hojancha, Sámara of Nicoya and Bejuco of Nandayure are among the five districts with the highest percentage of vacant houses and are also within the top 20 nationally.
Cuajiniquil of Santa Cruz, which incorporates communities such as Marbella, San Juanillo and Ostional, reported 32.1% of houses vacant in 2011. Ten years later, the figure doubled, now reaching 66.4%. It is, in fact, the district with the highest vacancy rate in all of Costa Rica.
“I think that (66.4%) is a devastating figure,” lamented Acuña, from UCR. “When you promote ways of occupying space and extracting a series of community resources – enjoying the beach, taking a photo, I came here to enjoy but not to stay – you encourage this movement that contributes little to generating community networks,” he added.
A homeowner in Marbella, who preferred not to be identified and who rents his house on Airbnb, said he sees three trends in the community: condominiums with a good number of homes owned by foreigners who don’t live in the country, workers quarters from real estate projects who later moved to other communities and residences built illegally that afterwards have difficulty legalizing access to public services, such as water and electricity, and are then left uninhabited.
There are more than 60 houses (in the condos where he has his seasonal rental home) and a good number of them get rented out. People see the investment opportunity and pay for the investment by renting the house, thinking that when they’re older, they’ll have the house to rest in,” he said. While renting his house on Airbnb, he is also trying to sell it.
Why vacant…?
Although censuses usually provide detailed data on population and housing characteristics, the 2022 census only achieved 61% coverage and, statistically, it was impossible to detail the districts’ reasons for vacancy, as was done in previous editions of the census.
But there is one thing that is certain: “Since 2011, Guanacaste has had a much higher percentage of vacant homes than the national average,” explained INEC researcher Sofia Mora.
Not just in vacant homes. Since the 2011 census, the coastal districts that now top the list already showed the trend of homes designed for vacations. At that time, for example, Bejuco of Nandayure had 67.7% of its vacant houses intended for vacations.
“On the coastline where I am, those homes are rented out. And at this time (low season), they are empty. There are no people. On the beaches of Bejuco, Costa de Oro and San Miguel, there is absolutely nothing, not even a pulpería (convenience store). If you want to buy something, you have to go to San Francisco, eight kilometers (5 miles) away, where there are only a few restaurants and pulperías, but there aren’t many sources of employment,” described Pilar Campos, who owns a container converted for vacation rentals in Bejuco of Nandayure.
In districts like Sámara, one might think that the 2012 earthquake left a mark on the homes, leaving them vacant. But since 2011, the district has had a 36% vacancy rate, with half of those homes used for vacation rentals.
In addition to Sámara and Bejuco, there are Cuajiniquil of Santa Cruz and Tierras Morenas and Arenal of Tilarán as districts in which half of the vacant homes were already used for vacation rentals, according to the last census. These two communities in Tilarán are located near another growing tourism center: Lake Arenal.
Campos, the Bejuco property owner, estimates that in recent years, about 10 houses have been built in the community, all with that tourism intention. Engineer Marcial Rivera, from CFIA, thinks it has to do with the contemporary logic of construction and business.
[Before,] Airbnbs were that room that was left over in the house, that was very big or it was an old house that was being taken advantage of. But now, there are houses that are made thinking that they will only be Airbnbs and will never be lived in by a family on a permanent basis,” he described.
To him, the issue of vacation homes “knocks us down” because the statistics don’t have a possibility of correctly segmenting those constructions. “It’s a business model and we’re not accounting for it in an adequate way,” he believes.
INEC researcher Sofía Mora admits that even within the institution, the trend of building houses as mere merchandise represents a challenge for understanding the country’s housing and population.
“INEC is doing a lot of reflection on these new forms of housing in order to identify whether we need to improve our categories for classifying vacant housing or if it’s a new classification,” she explained.
But in addition to statistics, it has to do with the right of access to housing, a fundamental pillar for building community which goes beyond the neighborhood, which also has to do with offering and guaranteeing access to basic services such as health centers, electricity and water supply, and efficient transportation.
“In the last ten years, where more housing has been built, such as Carrillo, Jacó, Herradura, Pacific areas and coastal areas in general, they are also areas that have a high percentage of unoccupied individual housing. And what does this mean? They also have high rates of housing deficit or informal settlements,” adds the researcher in housing and urban planning, Franklin Solano.
Also in this special:
Social housing: absent in tourist resorts
Areas with more construction coincide with more people in informal settlements
This text is part of the special “Guanacaste: between tourism and the roof,” which includes four reports on the right of access to housing in the province. These articles address the issue from three perspectives: vacant houses, which are mainly used for short-term rentals and second homes; the growth of informal settlements, a result of the housing deficit facing the region; and the decrease in housing vouchers, caused by the increase in the cost of land due to real estate speculation.
Journalists: César Arroyo Castro, José Pablo Román Barzuna, Noelia Esquivel Solano
Editor: Noelia Esquivel Solano
Graphics: Carolina Corrales
Photography: César Arroyo Castro
Translation: Arianna Hernández, Debbie Bruylant and Jana Saldana
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