The Permit Sign at a Nosara Job Site Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

A buyer walking the site of an almost-finished luxury complex near Playa Pelada in early 2025 would have seen what anyone touring new construction in Nosara sees: framed walls going up, a pool taking shape in raw concrete, and a printed placard near the gate carrying the seal of SETENA, Costa Rica's National Technical Environmental Secretariat. To most people, that sign reads as a government stamp of approval. It says the project cleared its environmental review and can proceed.

At that particular address, the sign told buyers far less than it appeared to. The project was Epic Nosara, six villas planned on five lots a few steps from the tennis courts at Playa Pelada, bordering the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge. Units were listed for pre-sale at prices reaching $5.8 million. And for most of a year, the project moved forward without the water availability confirmation Costa Rican municipalities are supposed to require before issuing a construction permit at all.

Two documents, not one

Building legally in Nosara's Ostional buffer zone requires clearing two separate gates, not one. The first is a municipal construction permit from the Nicoya Construction Control and Public Works Department. The second, which the first is supposed to depend on, is a confirmed letter of water availability, either from the Playas de Nosara ASADA, the community aqueduct association that serves Guiones and Pelada, or from MINAE's Water Directorate for wells and concessions outside ASADA territory.

At Epic Nosara, the developer, registered as Pacific Trust and Escrow Services Limited, requested a water connection from the Playas de Nosara ASADA in June 2023 for five houses, a community center, and a total of 32 bedrooms. The ASADA never approved that request. It later confirmed, in a document filed with Costa Rica's national water institute, that it did not have the capacity to issue new water connections in the district at all. Despite that, Nicoya's own building department approved construction permits for five of the six properties between April 9 and May 8, 2024.

SETENA's role tells a similar story. The agency granted environmental viability for the project on January 31, 2024, but that resolution covered a single, larger lot before it was subdivided into four additional parcels. SETENA later determined the smaller parcels did not require their own review, since none exceeded 1,000 square meters individually. What the sign at the gate did not communicate to a buyer standing in front of it was that the project's legal shape had already shifted since the resolution it referenced was written, and SETENA's own staff would later say that kind of change requires a fresh look.

What eleven months bought

The gap did not stay quiet. A municipal inspection on April 1, 2025, prompted by outside reporting, found a sixth house on the property with no construction permit at all. Its walls were up and its roof was already framed. The municipality shut the entire project down on April 4, 2025, and Nicoya's mayor opened a disciplinary review into the officials who had granted the permits.

Eleven months bought a partial reopening, not a resolution. The disciplinary proceeding against the building department coordinator who signed off on the original permits was still open when the closure was lifted. By January 2026, one villa was most of the way finished and the sixth house remained exactly as irregular as it had been discovered to be nine months earlier. Once the water gap became public, at least one listing brokerage in Nosara pulled the villa known as Casa Corcovado from its pre-sale catalog rather than continue marketing it.

The same gap, a second time

Epic Nosara might read as an isolated failure if it were the only case on file. It isn't. A separate condominium project called Mar Azul, in the mountainous inland section of Nosara, ran into the identical problem under the same municipal coordinator: a construction permit issued without confirmed proof of water availability, this time from the ASADA de Santa Marta rather than Playas de Nosara.

Homeowners at Mar Azul sent the municipality video evidence in April 2026 showing construction continuing after the planning department itself had ordered the project shut down. Investigators later found contradictions between water availability and non-availability letters the same ASADA had issued under different serial numbers for the same address, along with signs that the well listed as the project's water source was not actually in use. If those findings hold, the six building permits the municipality had already regularized could be invalidated outright.

Two documented cases within about a year show how much can be unresolved behind a standing structure. A posted permit, or a project that has already sold units, does not on its own confirm that the water question has been settled by the authority responsible for settling it, and the municipality's own reviews of both projects are still under way.

The rules are tightening while the paperwork check lags behind

None of this is happening in a vacuum of indifference. In June 2026, Costa Rica's Supreme Court rejected a developer's appeal against Nicoya's construction regulation for the five-kilometer buffer zone around the Ostional refuge, a zone that covers Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada. The upheld rules cap building height at 9 meters in the areas closest to the refuge and on slopes visible from the beach, 12 meters farther inland, restrict exterior lighting to low-intensity fixtures not visible from the beach, and require proper wastewater treatment systems rather than informal septic setups. An environmental lawyer involved in permitting disputes in the area put the underlying principle plainly: an environmental permit is not a go-ahead and do whatever you want.

That ruling strengthens what a project is allowed to build. It does nothing to change how the water availability step gets verified before a permit is granted in the first place, which is exactly where both documented failures occurred. The regulation on paper is getting stricter. The verification on the ground is still catching up, which is precisely the gap a buyer needs to close on their own.

What this means before you sign anything

None of this means construction in Nosara is inherently unreliable, or that the buffer zone should be avoided. It means the paperwork trail is worth reading yourself rather than trusting a sign, a floor plan, or a construction schedule to speak for it. Before any reservation agreement or deposit, it is worth asking for the specific SETENA resolution number attached to the property and confirming that the lot configuration it describes still matches what is actually being sold today, since subdivided or reunified lots can fall outside an older resolution's scope. It is worth asking for the water availability letter itself, not a verbal assurance, and confirming its serial number against what the ASADA or MINAE has on file, since the Mar Azul case showed that contradicting letters can exist for the same address. And it is worth asking directly whether the project's environmental viability was granted before or after any subdivision, since SETENA's own engineers have said that timing changes the legal analysis.

These are documents that exist, are requestable, and can be checked against the agency records that issued them. In a district where two separate luxury projects have already run into the same water and permitting gap inside of two years, checking them yourself, or having someone check them for you, is the difference between owning a finished villa and owning a legal question that outlives the construction schedule.

Christie's International Real Estate Costa Rica traces the permit trail, the water letter, and the SETENA file on every Nosara property before a client signs anything. If you're evaluating a home in the Ostional buffer zone, schedule a private viewing and we'll walk the paperwork with you as closely as the property itself.