Eviction and Tenants in Default in Costa Rica

What the law actually gives a landlord

Residential and commercial leases in Costa Rica run under the Ley General de Arrendamientos Urbanos y Suburbanos, Ley 7527. It is a tenant-protective statute and foreign owners often read it as meaning they have no remedy at all. That is not right. The remedy is real and, since the procedural reform, it is fast. What decides whether you get to use the fast version is the paperwork you signed at the start.

Article 114 sets out the grounds a landlord can act on: non-payment of rent, failure to maintain the property, changing what the property is used for without authorisation, damage to the leased property, and abusive use. Article 113 deals with the ways a lease ends, including expiry of its term. Article 121 is the eviction process itself.

Seven days before anyone is late

Under article 58, rent is payable monthly unless the contract says otherwise, and the tenant may pay within the seven calendar days following the due date. Default does not crystallise until that week has run. A landlord who starts counting from the first of the month is a week ahead of the law.

Article 58 also caps what a residential landlord may require in advance at one month’s rent.

One point we will not guess at, because it changes what you do: the law contains a thirty-day period to remedy a breach, and whether that applies to non-payment or only to the non-monetary grounds is not something we will assert from a website. It is a question to settle on your specific contract and facts before anything is filed, and it is one of the first things we look at.

The monitorio arrendaticio, and why the lease decides everything

Rent arrears run through the monitorio arrendaticio under article 112 of the Codigo Procesal Civil. On admission the court orders the eviction, and it may order preventive retention of the tenant’s assets if you ask for it.

The tenant then has five working days to oppose. Under the old regime it was fifteen. And article 112.3 limits what the opposition can be built on to four things:

• Payment, proved in writing
• Prescription
• That no obligation to pay rent exists
• That the term has not expired

Anything else the tenant raises is treated as irrelevant and rejected. Not the state of the building, not a dispute about repairs, not an arrangement someone remembers differently. Those may be real claims, but they belong in a separate case and they do not hold up the eviction.

That is a genuinely strong position for a landlord, and it is why the next paragraph matters so much.

The handshake lease is the whole problem

The monitorio needs a written lease, and it needs payment history that exists in writing. Verbal agreements do not support it. Cash rent with no receipts does not support it. On this coast a large share of rentals are informal arrangements between a foreign owner and a tenant introduced by somebody’s friend, often with rent paid in cash or by transfer with no contract behind it, and those owners find out at the worst possible moment that the fast track is closed to them.

Where the monitorio is unavailable, the alternative is the desahucio sumario under article 104, which covers a wider set of grounds including damage, unauthorised subletting and improper use, and which is slower.

If you take one thing from this page: a signed lease and a bank transfer are not formalities. They are the difference between five days and a trial.

Two rules that catch out foreign landlords

Under article 57, where the rent is agreed in a foreign currency, the tenant has the option of paying in colones. A dollar-denominated lease does not guarantee you dollars, and it does not give you a claim if the tenant exercises that option.

Under article 67, residential rents are adjusted annually, but where the rent is set in foreign currency the agreed amount is held for the whole term with no right of adjustment. That is the trade-off nobody explains at signing: a dollar lease is protected from colon inflation and frozen against any increase for its full duration. Which of those two matters more depends on the term you are signing and what you expect to happen to prices, and it is worth a conversation before the lease rather than after.

If the tenant simply will not leave

Eviction is a court process and runs on the court’s timetable, not the owner’s. We are not going to publish a number of weeks, because the honest answer varies by court, by whether there is opposition and by whether the tenant has anything worth retaining, and a figure on a website is how people end up disappointed. We will give you a range for your own file once we have seen the lease and the payment record.

What we can say is that the file that moves fastest is the one that was set up properly a year earlier.

People who are not tenants

If the person on your property never had a lease, this is not the page you need. Article 7 of Ley 7527 excludes simple precarious occupation from the tenancy law altogether, and those cases run through an entirely different set of remedies with much shorter deadlines.

What we handle in landlord and tenant matters

• Monitorio arrendaticio for rent arrears, with preventive retention where it is available
• Desahucio sumario where the monitorio is not open
• Eviction on expiry of the term
• Eviction for unauthorised change of use, subletting or damage
• Recovery of arrears alongside the eviction
• Defence of a tenant facing a monitorio inside the five-day window
• Lease drafting that keeps the fast remedy available
• Review of existing informal or verbal rental arrangements
• Foreign currency and adjustment clauses for owners letting in dollars
• Deposits, inventories and the end-of-tenancy dispute
• Commercial leases and premises used for a business
• Short-term and vacation rental arrangements and what regime they fall under

Common questions about eviction

My tenant has not paid. When can I file?

Not on the day rent was due. Article 58 gives the tenant seven calendar days after the due date to pay, so default does not crystallise until that has run. Whether a formal notice is required after that on non-payment specifically is a question we settle on your contract before filing rather than assume.

I never signed a written lease. Can I still evict?

Yes, but not through the fast route. The monitorio arrendaticio needs a written lease and a payment record that exists in writing. Without them the case goes through the desahucio sumario under article 104, which is slower. This is the most common and most expensive mistake foreign landlords make on this coast.

The tenant says the house needed repairs and that is why they stopped paying. Does that stop the eviction?

In the monitorio, no. Article 112.3 limits opposition to payment proved in writing, prescription, the non-existence of the rent obligation, and the term not having expired. Anything else is rejected as irrelevant. A genuine repair claim is a separate matter and can be pursued separately; it does not hold up the eviction.

My lease is in dollars. Can the tenant pay me in colones?

Yes. Article 57 gives the tenant the option of paying in colones where the rent was agreed in a foreign currency. It is the tenant's option, not yours.

Can I raise the rent every year?

For housing, rents adjust annually. But where the rent is set in foreign currency, the agreed sum holds for the whole term with no right of adjustment. So a dollar lease protects you from colon inflation and freezes you out of any increase at the same time. Worth deciding deliberately at signing.

How much deposit can I ask for?

For a residential lease, article 58 does not allow the landlord to require more than one month's rent in advance.

Related pages

• Cobro judicial and debt collection
• Squatters and possession claims
• Real estate and due diligence
• Condominium and HOA disputes

Informacion general, no constituye asesoria legal. / General information, not legal advice. Case accounts on this site are anonymized and published with consent. Past results do not guarantee a future outcome.