Turks and Caicos Real Estate Market Bounces Back

President of the Turks and Caicos Islands Real Estate Association, Kathryn Brown has reported that, based on year to date figure, “sales over the period climbed 28 percent, while property prices increased between four and five per cent over the period.”

The TCI’s real estate market has been steadily depreciating since 2008, but now it is showing tremendous signs of life from both the perspectives of properties sold and prices fetched.

“It is recovering. But in saying that, we’ve been steadily going down since 2008, and in the last months, we have seen a recovery in not only sales but increase in prices. We see increase in sales in a lot of high-end, and possibly, the low-end is also improving, with locals buying homes because they are able to get mortgages and get loans.

According to Brown, buyers are “getting more comfortable with the general economy” and “those having disposable cash” see “the Turks and Caicos Islands as good place to invest.” She may be right. The housing market isn’t the only thing doing well in the TCI right now. In fact, there has been an 18% increase in tourism.

The TCI’s real estate market is divided into three categories of properties: high-end, middle market and low end.

The high-end section of the market comprises properties valued at a million dollars and above;

the middle market constitutes properties valuing between four hundred thousand dollars and a million dollars;

while the low end of the market encompasses properties that value four hundred thousand dollars and below.

The market was demolished by a series of hurricanes, both natural and man-made (like the when Wall-Street and the global housing market collapsed). The recovery of the market however is fast removing any signs of death and despair. For example:

The home/villa market nearly tripled in dollar sales volume, and almost doubled in average price, led by the sale of Serendib Villa (which was once owned by developer Richard Padgett and bought by music star Prince) at $10.5M and La Dolce Vita at $6.25M (which was sold by our own Nina Seigenthaler)