Who is Folio?
A fair question to ask before you trust anyone with the biggest purchase of your life. Here is the honest answer.
A real firm, on the ground
Folio is built by Real Estate Grupo, a real estate firm operating in Santa Teresa, on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. We are not a faceless app from somewhere else. We work in this market every day, we have watched good people get burned by things a listing never mentioned, and we built Folio so any buyer can see what we see.
Real Estate Grupo is led by Noah Werner (CEO) and Leo Glazer (COO), with a team of agents and advisors across Costa Rica's main buyer markets. You can find the brokerage at realestategrupo.com. Folio is our product for the part that has nothing to do with a sale: telling you the truth about a property from the official record, whether you ever buy through us or not.
Why we built it
Buying property in Costa Rica is more open than most countries, and also easier to get wrong. "Beachfront" that turns out to be a concession, not a title. A lot with no legal water, so it can never be built. A seller who is not the registered owner. None of this is hidden. It is all in Costa Rica's own government records. The problem was never the data. The problem was that no ordinary buyer had a fast way to read it.
So we made one. Enter any Costa Rica property and Folio pulls the official layers, the parcel, the maritime zone, protected areas, flood risk, water context, and shows you what the listing left out, in one tap.
The fastest way to understand what Folio does is to point it at a property you are curious about.
How we source
Everything Folio shows comes from public, official Costa Rica records, the Registro Nacional, the National Cadastre, ICT, SETENA, SINAC, CNE and SENARA. We surface government data and gather it into one place. We do not invent it, and we are independent of every one of those agencies. The full process is on our How we verify page, and every Academy article cites the specific authority behind each claim, with a review date.
What we will and won't say
What Folio always does
- Reports findings from official records
- Cites the CR law or agency behind every claim
- Shows a review date on every page
- Tells you when you still need a lawyer or surveyor
What Folio never does
- Call a property "safe," "clean" or "guaranteed"
- Promise a return or appreciation
- Invent stats, reviews or testimonials
- Pretend to replace your attorney or notary
Folio makes a lawyer's and a surveyor's job faster and cheaper. It does not replace them, and nothing in the Academy is legal advice. That honesty is the whole point of the brand, not a disclaimer at the bottom of it.
Talk to us
Questions, or spotted something we should correct? Email hello@foliocostarica.com or use the chat on the site. If you are buying and want a firm on the ground, that is what Real Estate Grupo does, disclosed and separate from the free check.