I owned and sold a house in the San Jose area near to Alejuela. If you would like some contacts who can be of help to you just send me a PM so that we can connect offline. As Chilimike said, most of the real estate brokers and attorneys in CR are difficult to trust. There are no effective regulatory bodies for real estate brokers and attorneys in Costa Rica so as you can imagine, some screwy things happen to those who misplace trust based upon what we know to be true in the US.
What you think you know based upon US laws mostly does not apply in Costa Rica. The first step is to review the Registry in Costa Rica to make sure that your brother still owns the property, that it has no liens and that no one has moved onto the property and claims homestead rights since your brother has not likely been in Costa Rica for over 6 months.
In Costa Rica, real estate is easy to buy but hard to sell.
