Know what you’re buying before you buy it.Property due diligence for Costa Rica & Panama

That's fine — upload whatever you have. We analyse what's provided and flag anything missing as part of the report. Most Survey Only orders come with just the plano catastrado, and that's enough to run a full survey analysis.

All reports are written in English, even when the source documents are in Spanish. We read and extract the Spanish-language documents and present the findings in plain English.

You'll receive a confirmation email immediately. Your documents are analysed and a PDF report is sent to your email address within 48 hours. If we have questions about your submission we'll contact you directly.

For closing, yes — you'll need a local attorney to handle the actual transfer, escrow, and registration. What Clara Deeds answers is the question that usually comes first: is this property even worth pursuing? Our report flags bad title, zoning problems, and unpaid debts before you pay a retainer, so you either walk into a lawyer's office already knowing what to ask about, or know to walk away first. It's not legal advice and we're not a law firm — think of it as the fast, affordable check most buyers want before committing to one.

The most common ones: sellers offering land they don't actually own or haven't fully registered, boundaries that don't match the survey on file, properties inside maritime or protected zones that can't legally be built on, and unpaid taxes or debts that quietly transfer to the new owner at closing. Nearly all of these show up clearly once the registered documents are checked against what you're actually being told — which is exactly what a due diligence report catches before you sign anything.

You check the property's entry at the national registry — the Folio Real — to confirm who is actually listed as the owner, whether the boundaries match the seller's claims, and whether there are any liens or annotations against it. Doing this yourself means requesting and reading registry documents in Spanish and knowing what to look for; a Clara Deeds report does this for you and returns the findings in plain English.

At minimum: confirm the registered survey (Plano Catastrado) matches what you're being shown, confirm the title (Folio Real) is clean and matches the seller's name, confirm the zoning (Uso de Suelo) allows what you intend to build or do, review the sale contract for unusual terms, check for outstanding debts (Paz y Salvo), and rule out environmental or maritime restrictions. That's the same six-point checklist every Clara Deeds report runs through — see what we check for the details on each.

It's the official land title registry entry in Costa Rica and Panama — the government record of who legally owns a property, plus any liens, mortgages, or annotations against it. Searching it (what's often called a title search) is the single most important check before buying, since it tells you whether the person selling you the property actually has the legal right to.

It's the officially registered survey map of a property — the document that defines its legal boundaries, exact area, and registration status with the national cadastre. If the plano catastrado doesn't match what you're actually being shown on the ground, that's one of the clearest signs something is wrong with the sale.

Currently Costa Rica and Panama. Both countries have well-structured cadastral and registry systems that lend themselves to document-based analysis.

PDF, JPG, and PNG. If your documents are in another format, convert them to PDF before uploading. Maximum 10MB per file.

Once analysis has begun we cannot offer a refund, as the work is already underway. If you have a problem with your order contact us at hello@claradeeds.com and we'll do our best to help.