Americans Flocking To Buy Caribbean Luxury Real Estate

As real estate elsewhere has dropped, the Caribbean nation has seen records broken despite the global pandemic. Sales volume of single-family homes in Turks and Caicos during the first quarter of 2020 outpaced the same period of 2019, and condo sales outpaced the two previous years to date, according to a Sotheby's International Realty report. Turks and Caicos is conveniently close to the U.S. and boasts some of the world's best beaches, according to Umansky. The country also uses the U.S. dollar and has no property, income or capital gains taxes. The real estate market was already seeing big growth there last year, and it benefited from publicity around the sales of luxury homes that had belonged to Prince and Bruce Willis. Wealthy Americans looking to vacation in Turks and Caicos were more likely to rent before the pandemic, so they could spend a summer there. But the pandemic has made the rich realize they want to own a second home outside crowded cities so they have someplace comfortable to stay in the event of a similar event. The Turks and Caicos government also incentivized real estate purchases during the pandemic by offering a 50 percent cut in stamp duty, waiving custom duties on construction materials and cutting planning fees by half. Apart from Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas have also seen a very solid rise in their real estate sales.