While Bahamians, especially on New Providence, are reeling at the costs of real estate, persons in cyberspace are being invited to purchase “your very own piece of Paradise…”
Paradise in this case is a “one square foot of land on the Island Harbour Beach Estate on Little Exuma” and is being offered by a site that bills itself as home of the “planet’s most original gifts”.
Clearly it is what one realtor called something for “cocktail comment” but it raises the more serious question of people being able to buy Bahamian land even if only for “cocktail chatter”, outside the requirements of the Bahamas Real Estate Association (BREA).
Meanwhile at another site all and sundry are invited to purchase land in Exuma at prices that HG Christie confirmed were current prices. And these prices are a fraction of the prices being asked in New Providence for land of a similar size.
That site also states that interested persons can “reserve a plot” by “email[ing] us”. What is alarming is that the Bahamas Real Estate Association (BREA) came into existence, in part, to ensure that real estate could be sold in The Bahamas only through properly authorized Bahamians.
A realtor noted that the problem facing the BREA is that it did not have some one working specifically toward advancing the association’s goals.
“We are all working so no one can give the time needed,” the realtor, who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “The suggestion has been made to the board many times that they hire a capable manager to protect our interests but nothing has been done.”
He said there was someone at BREA’s office at the Chamber of Commerce but that the person there took care of administrative matters as opposed to taking the initiative to protect Bahamian realtors.
“Someone who is buying land for the first time does not have to contact the investment board,” the realtor said, “but they have to do so for the second purchase.”
The realtor said he did not see the value of that since it means that non-Bahamians could purchase Bahamian land online from non-Bahamian realtors, thus violating the legislation that established BREA.
Minister of Financial Services and Investments Allyson Gibson met with the association recently and promised to get them involved in the more than $1 billion worth of investment slated to come on stream.
The Minister was referring to many of the major developer projects in which developers hire non-Bahamian companies to sell their resorts and high-end properties.
The realtor said he had no problem with that arrangement since very few – if any – Bahamian real estate companies had the resources to market properties such as Atlantis’ 500-unit condo hotel residences in Paradise.
“If you said only Bahamians could sell such developments then we would still have to go out and hire the same companies that are experts at selling these kinds of developments,” the realtor said.
He said what is important is that once they have established a “lifetime supply” of clients only Bahamians could then resell the units.
At the meeting the Minister did not indicate how or what measures would be undertaken by the government to inform the world about the laws affecting the buying and selling of land in The Bahamas.
By: C. E. HUGGINS, Business Editor, The Nassau Guardian
