The Costa Rica real estate market has begun to respond to demands for minimal sizes in houses and condominiums.
Apartments measuring 40 square metres (430 square feet) for singles or small families with starting prices of US$65,000 are making up a large part of the real estate supply, a move by developments to build larger and high costing units.
The shift of developers has to been to aim at the lower middle class segment of the market.
According to Minister of Housing, Rosendo Pujol, “…The ‘magic number’ that the market is offering is US$65,000. The Housing chief says that about two years ago developers started to turn their eyes towards the lower middle segment of the population. Developers tend to produce projects for people with more wealth (…). Now they understand that the market has other features, especially now that we are talking about high-rise housing. ”
The change in shift by developers is in response to the constant demand of the middle class for not finding affordable housing in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM), willing to accept small spaces, of not more than 65 m2 (700 sq. ft) for lower prices.
These are typically single people or family units of not more than 3 people. Studies by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) indicate that 816,562 of the 1.4 million households in the country are between one and three persons.
The small units can be found in horizontal and vertical developments.
Source La Nacion