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More of Eric Hovde’s Foreign Business Dealings Come to Light, This Time in Costa Rica

Oct 21, 2024

More of Eric Hovde’s Foreign Business Dealings Come to Light, This Time in Costa Rica

MADISON, Wis. — Today, Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel uncovered that California bank owner Eric Hovde owns a four-star ocean-front resort in Costa Rica that offers swanky wellness retreats, is only accessible by boat, and can cost thousands of dollars per night for a stay. 

This comes as Hovde has come under criticism for taking millions of dollars in deposits from foreign banks and governments and admitted he would be a walking conflict of interest in the Senate. 

Read more below: 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Eric Hovde joined California-based firm to buy swanky, 189-acre resort in Costa Rica

By: Dan Bice

You’ve heard about Republican candidate Eric Hovde’s luxurious $7 million estate in Laguna Beach, California.

And his $2.3 million house in Washington, D.C., that he transferred to a trust headed by his brother.

And his hedge funds that stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in the Cayman Islands in the past.

But here’s a new one: Hovde and a business partner recently bought a luxury resort in Costa Rica for $1.8 million.

The international deal is briefly mentioned in Hovde’s financial disclosure report filed with the U.S. Senate earlier this year. But the complete nature of the transaction becomes clear only through a review of U.S. and Costa Rican property and business records.

In December 2022, Hovde Properties joined with California-based Soul Community Planet, a “holistic hospitality” company, to purchase a 189-acre jungle lodge on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula along the Corcovado National Park. Hovde is challenging Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in the November election.

The four-star, ocean-front property, renamed SCP Corcovado Wilderness Lodge, features a main lodge, 14 garden villas, a three-bedroom beach house, a restaurant, two bars, a beach club and three swimming pools.

Accessible only by boat, the resort is set among acres of botanical gardens, waterfalls, streams, beaches and a jungle — billing itself as the “most biologically intense place on earth.”

The Business Wire said the new owners hoped to add Peaceful Rooms, state-of-the-art wellness facilities and a full spa with dedicated yoga shala and meditation space.

But if you’d prefer to attend a weeklong New Year Reset Retreat on Jan. 6-12, 2025, it will cost $3,950 for a single private room with a king-sized bed to set yourself on “a path to a happier, healthier more connected you.” For that sum, you’ll get daily yoga sessions, a snorkeling tour, kayaking and waterfall hiking excursions, a guided hike in Corcovado National Park, bird-watching activities and a journaling session with Holly, a Seattle content creator.

The lodge “is an exotic destination for adventure-minded, eco-focused travelers who seek immersive, unique, regenerative experiences not found in main-stream resorts,” Ken Cruse, the head of Soul Community Planet, told the Orange County (California) Business Journal in late 2022. (Cruse gave $1,000 to Hovde’s campaign in June.)

The retreat’s focus on health and wellness is reminiscent of the “Life, Health & Happiness” video series that Hovde has posted on YouTube and his campaign website.

Haven’t heard of them? In the videos, Hovde tells viewers how to live happy and fulfilling lives, why it’s important to be grateful and have perspective, and what healthy eating, sleeping and exercise habits to develop. Most have, at best, a couple of hundred views.

“Gratitude doesn’t really matter based on material goods or economic class,” Hovde says in one video. “It’s how you look and your perspective on life.”

Easy for a rich guy to say. Remember that Hovde, a real estate and banking mogul, is worth up to $564.5 million, meaning he’d be perhaps the wealthiest senator if elected.

But Zach Bannon, spokesman for Hovde, said there was no connection between his role playing a volunteer life coach on YouTube and his decision to buy the wilderness retreat in partnership with a boutique hotel firm with core values of personal wellness (soul), social good (community) and the environment (planet).

“It is a normal real estate investment for Hovde Properties and relatively small for the company,” Bannon said.

Relatively small deal for the Hovde real estate empire? Sure. But the jungle lodge looks like nothing else in the firm’s portfolio. It’s not even mentioned on the Hovde Properties’ website of commercial and residential properties.

Even its financing is a little off-the-beaten-path.

Records show that Hovde Properties joined with Soul Community Planet to create SCP Corcovado Holdings LLC in Delaware in October 2022.

That firm then bought the off-the-grid resort for slightly more than $1.8 million on Dec. 19, 2022, according to Costa Rican property records. Of that amount, SCP Corcovado Holdings agreed to pay the final $1.35 million in two installment payments, with $675,000 due in December 2023 and $675,000 in December 2024.

The payments are made to Evianna del Bosque Sociedad Anónima, an entity created by the seller to document the obligation of future installment payments, according to Bannon. Hovde has no connection to the entity other than the purchase of the resort.

There was no interest paid on the deal because it was not a mortgage.

“The purchase of the property was structured as an installment sale,” Bannon said. “This was not a bank loan, and installment sales like this are not unusual.”

The retreat is already paying dividends to Hovde.

On his statement of economic interest filed with the U.S. Senate, he reported that he had made between $100,000 and $1 million in “rent/royalties” from SCP Corcovado Holding over the past year. Bannon said this represents “normal revenues related to the operation of the property as a hotel.”

Arik Wolk, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, said the Costa Rican resort represents yet another foreign business deal that has come to light during the heated campaign.

Equally important, Wolk said, Hovde’s ownership of the Central American resort shows he’s in a different class than most Wisconsin voters.

“A megamillionaire raking it in from a luxury resort in Costa Rica?” Wolk said. “Tough to say that’s a man of the people.”

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