by FSBO 
Should you buy or sell property in Barbados online? That’s a tough question to ask, as home prices in Barbados are yet to return to the levels last seen in 2008. Barbados, like the rest of the Caribbean, was badly affected by the recent global economic recession and is yet to fully recover.
Cherita O’Dell of Million Dollar Homes talks about how bad the downturn was: “You had to make decisions to reduce property prices by 20 percent and even then, it was not like before.” She adds that most of the property prices were “over-inflated” and have eventually came down “to what they should have been,” in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
But things are looking better. As a real estate agent based in Barbados, Rae Stollmeyer says in an interview with the New York Times, “We definitely had a great year last year and continue to have a great year this year.”
The best place to buy property in Barbados online is in the south coast of the island, which has a population of 290,000. There are many lovely luxury beachfront condos here, which cost anything from $3.75 million to $5 million.
There are also a number of great homes available in the west coast of Barbados, but they cost more, anything from $4.25 million to $10 million. Most people who buy luxury properties here in Barbados are foreign nationals, mostly from the United States, Canada and the UK. They spend a part of the year here, and rent out the property to visiting foreign tourists for the rest of the year. So they stand to earn a very good rental income from the property.
Generally Americans and Canadians favour the mid-priced, family-friendly accommodations in the south coast of Christ Church parish. UK buyers prefer the St. James and St. Peter areas on the west coast, which is also called as the gold coast.
Barbados is well connected by flights to Miami and New York. There are also a number of flights operating to Barbados from London, Toronto and Vancouver.
But there are problems that remain. Real estate experts in Barbados say that the number of property transactions has declined by 40 percent over the last ten years. This is a serious concern, according to executives from Terra Caribbean, a leading real estate developer in Barbados and other Caribbean islands.
Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Terra Caribbean, Hayden Hutton, said in a media event, “One of the notable trends in the vacant land segment during the period is the general shift away from larger lots in the 15,000 square foot range to smaller lots in the 7,500 square foot range. This has had a substantial impact on those land developments which contemplated larger lot sizes, with many having to reduce prices substantially to compete.”
Chief Executive Andrew Mallalieu added, “So without population growth, which we accept we do not have, and without wealth creation, which we have not had significantly in the last decade, what we are seeing is a stagnation in the local prices of real estate.”
