An­drea Perez-Sobers

A steady stream of Trinida­di­an in­vestors is look­ing north to Bar­ba­dos, not just for sec­ond homes, but for stronger re­turns, US-dol­lar in­come and a re­al es­tate prod­uct they say is in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to find at home.

That shift was on dis­play on Thurs­day evening when Bar­ba­dos-based Alt­man Re­al Es­tate Group part­nered with lo­cal en­ti­ty Hart and Co Re­al Es­tate Ltd to host an in­vestor-fo­cused show­case at the Brix Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, in­tro­duc­ing two ma­jor de­vel­op­ments to the lo­cal mar­ket.

At the cen­tre of that push is Zoe Hart, CEO of Hart and Co Re­al Es­tate Ltd, who has spent the last two years po­si­tion­ing Bar­ba­dos as a vi­able out­let for Trinida­di­an cap­i­tal.+

Build­ing a Bar­ba­dos bridge

“Two years ago, I de­cid­ed that I was go­ing to do what I could to bring the Bar­ba­dos re­al es­tate mar­ket to my Trinida­di­an in­vestors,” Hart said in a one-on-one in­ter­view.

“I have spent a lot of time in Bar­ba­dos, and I have fam­i­ly there, and it just re­al­ly stood out to me, not on­ly from the beau­ty and the beach­es and the lifestyle, but al­so from the amaz­ing in­vest­ment po­ten­tial, which some­times in the Trinidad mar­ket we are lack­ing at the mo­ment.”

That as­sess­ment is not the­o­ret­i­cal.

Hart said client in­ter­est has been build­ing or­gan­i­cal­ly, dri­ven by ex­po­sure and cu­rios­i­ty about re­turns out­side T&T.

“The trac­tion has been amaz­ing. When I went on hol­i­day to Bar­ba­dos, my clients saw me and would al­ways ask when I would come back. There are a lot of clients that tru­ly want to make US dol­lars, and the re­sponse has been very good,” she out­lined.

Re­turns and re­al­i­ty at home

Hart was di­rect in her as­sess­ment of lo­cal con­di­tions, point­ing to struc­tur­al con­straints that are push­ing in­vestors to ex­plore al­ter­na­tives.

“I will be hon­est, it is a bi­ased mar­ket at the mo­ment, and it has been for a cou­ple of years.

“We don’t re­al­ly have a mar­ket right now where in­vestors are tru­ly mak­ing mon­ey on their prop­er­ties, and we are def­i­nite­ly not get­ting the USD re­turns. The ex­pat mar­ket is quite low. So this was a very good av­enue for us,” she said.

At the same time, Hart not­ed that buy­ers are not pure­ly re­turn-dri­ven.

“Every­body who has in­vest­ed with us so far and pur­chased the prop­er­ty, I will tell you that they buy it for the lifestyle fac­tor, as well as to rent it and put it in the ac­count,” she added.

A mea­sured ex­pan­sion strat­e­gy

While the Bar­ba­dos push has gained trac­tion, Hart sig­nalled that ex­pan­sion in­to oth­er Caribbean mar­kets will be de­lib­er­ate rather than ag­gres­sive.

“I high­ly be­lieve in grow­ing your mar­ket. So I’m tak­ing it very slow, very steady, and I pre­fer to be an ex­pert in any mar­ket that I work in,” she said.

When asked whether the com­pa­ny is seek­ing re­gion­al ex­pan­sion, she in­di­cat­ed, “Right now, Bar­ba­dos is my fo­cus, and we re­al­ly want to be on the ground there. We want to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing, form­ing re­la­tion­ships and find­ing clients there.”

Bar­ba­dos de­mand dri­ving de­vel­op­ment

For Sir Paul Alt­man, CEO of Alt­man Re­al Es­tate Group, the pace of de­vel­op­ment in Bar­ba­dos is be­ing dri­ven by one fac­tor: de­mand.

“If you were to go to Bar­ba­dos right now, you would be shocked at the amount of de­vel­op­ment hap­pen­ing, and it is be­cause they gen­uine­ly have the de­mand,” Hart said, re­in­forc­ing the con­di­tions un­der which Alt­man’s firm is op­er­at­ing.

Alt­man, who has been in­volved in re­al es­tate since re­turn­ing from uni­ver­si­ty in 1970, de­scribed a mar­ket that is ac­tive but not with­out con­straints.

“Our chal­lenge is that we don’t have enough prod­uct most of the time. And there are dif­fer­ent tiers of pric­ing. So we tend to be in the mid­dle to up­per in­come stream of prod­ucts. And you can’t al­ways have what you want avail­able,” he said.

Sell­ing what is not yet built

That im­bal­ance be­tween sup­ply and de­mand is shap­ing how projects are brought to mar­ket.

“It’s much eas­i­er to sell a built prod­uct than to sell a prod­uct that is com­ing out of the ground. So I guess the chal­lenge is some­times a tim­ing chal­lenge.

“But when­ev­er it’s done, it’s worth­while be­cause it makes sense,” Alt­man said.

De­spite these chal­lenges, he point­ed to con­tin­ued in­vestor con­fi­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly from T&T.

“I think that, with­out doubt, Trinidad has sort of adopt­ed Bar­ba­dos as a play­ground. As a play­ground that works for them be­cause it af­fords them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not have to trav­el far, but to feel very wel­comed be­cause they have so many Trinida­di­an in­vestors that don’t on­ly come there to buy prop­er­ty, but to do projects, to be in com­mer­cials,” Alt­man added.

The projects on of­fer

The show­case event fo­cused on two de­vel­op­ments: The Pier­head and Ocean Blue Bar­ba­dos, both po­si­tioned with­in the mid-to-high end of the mar­ket.

Alt­man de­scribed The Pier­head as a large-scale mixed-use project in Bridgetown.

“That project has 178 apart­ments and about 50,000 square feet of com­mer­cial space, restau­rants and shops. And it will al­so have a beach club that is un­be­liev­able,” he said.

He added that the de­vel­op­ment in­te­grates his­tor­i­cal el­e­ments in­to its de­sign.

“We are go­ing to re­pur­pose some of the orig­i­nal ma­te­ri­als in cre­at­ing the new build­ing so it looks like it was there for many, many years. Ocean Blue is equal­ly ex­cit­ing. It’s about 40 units,” he added.

He not­ed that Ocean Blue pric­ing starts at around US$400,000 and ris­es to just over US$1 mil­lion, while The Pier­head starts at about US$600,000 and goes up to near­ly US$2 mil­lion.

Re­gion­al link­ages and in­vestor flow

Alt­man said the long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos con­tin­ues to sup­port cross-bor­der in­vest­ment.

“We have long recog­nised the strong syn­er­gy be­tween Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to in­vest­ment and re­gion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he said, adding, “It is a plea­sure to be here with you this evening as we con­tin­ue to build on that re­la­tion­ship.”

That re­la­tion­ship, he sug­gest­ed, ex­tends be­yond res­i­den­tial pur­chas­es.

“My com­pa­ny doesn’t on­ly do res­i­den­tial; we get in­volved in every type of re­al es­tate,” he said.

Hilton Trinidad in fo­cus

Alt­man was al­so asked about the fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre but de­clined to spec­u­late.

“I nev­er com­ment on things that might hap­pen. If it clos­es, then you can ask me that ques­tion.”

He did, how­ev­er, un­der­score its sig­nif­i­cance.

“I think the Hilton is an im­por­tant part of Trinidad. I would love it to be res­cued.”

And if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be in­volved in its fu­ture, he was un­equiv­o­cal.

“I would ab­solute­ly love to come and be a part of the Hilton re­de­vel­op­ment,” Alt­man said.

Pressed on how de­vel­op­ers are nav­i­gat­ing fi­nanc­ing con­straints, Alt­man point­ed to a mod­el in­creas­ing­ly used in ho­tel-backed re­al es­tate—one that blends pri­vate own­er­ship with tra­di­tion­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty op­er­a­tions.

“All of these ho­tels now have a site to them where they can de­vel­op apart­ments or units for sale,” he said.

“So if it needs to be fi­nanced, why don’t they build a part of it as units for sale, which then come in­to the rental pool as a ho­tel part of it.”

The ap­proach, he ex­plained, al­lows de­vel­op­ers to raise up­front cap­i­tal while main­tain­ing the in­tegri­ty of the ho­tel prod­uct.

“Sell off the units and then put them in the rental pool so no one knows the dif­fer­ence. It’s a part of the ho­tel. They can raise mon­ey that way,” Alt­man added.