What a condominium is in Costa Rica
Condominium is a form of title here before it is a building type. Under Ley 7933 a property is registered as a parent parcel divided into individually titled filial units, with roads, services and common areas held in common by the owners. A vertical condominium stacks those units in a building; a horizontal condominium lays them out as lots across a site. The structure is fixed at the planning stage, and it governs what can later be built and sold on each unit.
The five projects published here cover both forms. Two are apartment buildings, one is a private compound, one is a group of four hillside residences, and one is a resort community that contains a horizontal and a vertical condominium on the same property.
The projects on this page
Flora Apartments, at Nosara Springs, is a 632 m² condominium completed in 2025 after a 2020 start — wood-sided volumes and dark trim tucked into a screen of trees, a trim rectangular pool taking a fall of water from a board-formed concrete wall, and bright, unfussy interiors around waterfall-edge stone islands. Papagayo Design Center managed every phase; engineering was by Go Ingeniería.
Isabelle Gardens is a four-storey residential condominium of roughly 731 m² on a wooded hillside in Section L, Nosara, developed under the ownership entity Bioclimatic Limitada. Each floor stacks compact apartments behind full-height glazing, white stucco and warm timber cladding under a deep cantilevered roof. It is currently under construction.
Las Huacas Estate is a private residential compound of about 1,800 m² in the Las Huacas hills — crisp white plaster volumes, cantilevered roofs with thatched crowns, timber-slat screens and textured concrete among mature palms. The managed scope covered design management, building permit management and pre-construction management.
Nambú is a boutique condominium of four three-storey residences set into the hills above Playa Pelada, roughly 1,512 m² across the homes and shared areas, each unit opening onto deep terraces, a private plunge pool and a rooftop lounge framed by thatched pergolas, volcanic stone and timber screens. José Pablo Ortiz led it as project manager, then operating as PrendasLoria, from schematic design through construction documents, permitting and competitive bidding, and on into construction with monthly on-site inspection.
CocoBay Estates & Segovia Heights is the largest of the five: a multi-phase resort community across 65 hectares at Playas del Coco, with 113 individually titled lots in the horizontal condominium and apartment towers in the vertical one, 159 apartments and townhouses in total, plus a beach club and tennis facilities.
Site and permitting conditions that matter
Permitting follows the same route as any other project — CFIA registration of the drawings, SETENA environmental review, and a municipal construction permit — with the condominium registration running alongside it. Most of these sites are hillsides, so grading and storm drainage are documented with the unit layout rather than after it: where the water goes decides which part of the slope can carry a building at all. Sixty-five hectares released in phases changes the arithmetic again, because roads, potable water, wastewater and electrical distribution are sized for the finished community and built out as each phase opens.
What a client should expect
Schedules on this page run long: Flora Apartments spans 2020 to 2025, Isabelle Gardens 2022 to 2025 and still building, Nambú 2022 to 2024 and partially finished. Papagayo Design Center provides project management, not design or construction — design, engineering and construction are carried out by the project's architects, engineers and an independent general contractor.
Related categories: master plans & urban design, hotels & lodges.