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Margarita de Vallarino, licensed real estate broker in Panama

Your agent for Lucero

Margarita de Vallarino

Licensed Panamanian broker, Licence PN 5442. Twenty years representing buyers on the Pacific coast, now living and working in Boquete. She answers her own WhatsApp, in English or Spanish.

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1,100–1,300 m
Altitude
Low 20s °C
Year-Round
40 min
To David Airport
50 min
Flight to Panama City
USD
Currency
ES / EN
Languages

The Region

Boquete, Chiriquí — Panama's highlands

Boquete sits in a valley on the eastern flank of Volcán Barú, at around 1,100 to 1,300 metres. That altitude is the entire proposition: eight degrees north of the equator, so no winter, and high enough that the average temperature stays in the low twenties Celsius year-round. No air conditioning, no heating, and a green season rather than a dry season and a wet one.

It has drawn coffee growers for more than a century — Boquete geisha is among the most expensive coffee in the world — and North American and European retirees for about thirty years. The result is a small town with a genuinely international population, an English-speaking service layer, and a property market that behaves differently from the beach.

David, the provincial capital, is forty minutes down the mountain with the regional airport and the hospitals. Panama City is a fifty-minute flight or a six-and-a-half-hour drive.

Citrus harvest in the Boquete highlands, Chiriquí, Panama

Why Buyers Come

What Boquete offers that the coast doesn't

Climate without air conditioningA year-round average in the low twenties Celsius. The single most common reason coastal owners end up buying a second place up here.
A working agricultural economyCoffee, vegetables and flowers — Boquete is a productive region, not only a residential one. That underpins the local economy independently of tourism.
Healthcare forty minutes awayHospitals and specialists in David, and Panama City's private hospitals within a short flight. A serious consideration for retiring buyers.
Outdoors as daily lifeVolcán Barú, cloud forest, the Lost Waterfalls trail, whitewater on the Chiriquí Viejo, and some of the best birding in Central America.
An established expat communityThirty years of North American and European residents means English is widely spoken, and the practical infrastructure for foreign buyers already exists.
The same ownership rulesForeigners buy with identical rights to Panamanian citizens, in US dollars, with title registered at the Public Registry. Nothing about Chiriquí changes that.

The Sub-Markets

Where people actually buy

Bajo BoqueteThe town centre — the square, the market, the restaurants, the coffee shops and the Tuesday market. Everything walkable, everything at about 1,100 m. Most of the rental stock and the smaller homes sit here.
Alto BoqueteLower and slightly warmer, on the approach from David. Supermarkets, the hospital road and the newer commercial strip. Convenient rather than scenic, and priced accordingly.
Jaramillo & Jaramillo AbajoUp the eastern side of the valley, cooler and greener, with the long views back over the town. This is where Lucero Golf & Country Club sits, and where most of the larger private estates are.
Volcán & Cerro PuntaThe other side of Volcán Barú, an hour and a half around. Higher, colder, more agricultural — the vegetable and flower belt of Panama. Land is cheaper; the trade-off is distance from services.
DavidThe provincial capital, forty minutes down the mountain. The airport, the hospitals, the big-box shopping. Not where buyers want to live, but the reason Boquete works as a place to live.
Caldera & PalmiraThe quieter outlying corregimientos — hot springs at Caldera, farmland at Palmira. Larger parcels, lower prices, and a real trade-off in road quality and services.

Two Territories

Coast and highlands, one agent

Margarita covers both of Panama's expat property markets: the Pacific coast around Coronado, Gorgona, Nueva Gorgona and Buenaventura, and the Chiriquí highlands around Boquete. Many buyers arrive certain they want one and leave having bought in the other — the honest comparison is worth having before you look at listings.

📖 Read: Boquete vs Coronado → 🏖️ See coastal listings →

Next Step

Thinking about the highlands?

Tell Margarita what you are looking for — climate, budget, whether this is a full-time move or a second home — and she will tell you honestly whether Boquete or the coast fits it better. She works both, so she has no reason to push you toward either.

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