An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The re­al es­tate in­dus­try has been grad­u­al­ly re­cov­er­ing since the pan­dem­ic, while the com­mer­cial sec­tor con­tin­ues to adapt to chang­ing work­place trends.

This was re­vealed by the pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA) Sal­ly Singh dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last week.

Singh said the res­i­den­tial mar­ket has seen a ro­bust resur­gence fu­eled by pent-up de­mand and evolv­ing lifestyle pref­er­ences, but the re­cov­ery rate dif­fers by re­gion and prop­er­ty type.

Asked what the price on the mar­ket for homes and com­mer­cial prop­er­ty is now and if it is low­er or high­er from a few years ago, Singh said res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty prices have large­ly re­mained sta­ble, with slight in­creas­es in ar­eas with high de­mand.

“In con­trast, com­mer­cial prop­er­ty prices have been more sub­dued, es­pe­cial­ly in ur­ban ar­eas where the de­mand for tra­di­tion­al of­fice spaces has soft­ened. Over­all, both mar­kets are trend­ing up­ward com­pared to the lows ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, though they have not yet reached pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els across all seg­ments. We note, for ex­am­ple, that of­fers to pur­chase are of­ten way be­low the list­ed price of the prop­er­ty, so the list price and sale price can be quite dif­fer­ent due, we be­lieve, to lim­i­ta­tions on bor­row­ing. Most ac­tiv­i­ty is in the low­er price ranges,” she ex­plained.

On whether there has been an in­crease or de­crease in buy­ers over the last three years, Singh not­ed there has been a mod­est yet promis­ing rise in buy­er ac­tiv­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly with­in the res­i­den­tial sec­tor. This trend she said is sup­port­ed by sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing re­duced in­ter­est rates, stamp du­ty ex­emp­tions for first-time home­buy­ers on prop­er­ties priced be­low $2 mil­lion, and im­proved ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing.

“In the first quar­ter of this year, To­ba­go has seen a surge in the mar­ket, with many po­ten­tial buy­ers be­ing na­tion­als look­ing to in­vest “back home” for their re­tire­ment or to find a safer home.”

How­ev­er, Singh point­ed out that this en­thu­si­asm is of­ten tem­pered by macro­eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, bu­reau­crat­ic in­ef­fi­cien­cies, reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles, high crime rates, in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges, and a lack of tar­get­ed in­vest­ment in­cen­tives.

“Ad­dress­ing these is­sues would un­lock much of the coun­try’s un­tapped po­ten­tial and help at­tract the scale of in­vest­ment need­ed for broad­er eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” she said.

As to whether the much-de­bat­ed prop­er­ty tax should be put on hold un­der the new ad­min­is­tra­tion, the AREA pres­i­dent said “While we recog­nise the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal re­quire­ments, we feel that the in­tro­duc­tion of prop­er­ty tax should be ap­proached with care. It is cru­cial to main­tain trans­paren­cy in val­u­a­tions, adopt fair as­sess­ment prac­tices, and pro­vide pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion to pre­vent plac­ing an un­due bur­den on home­own­ers. Any fu­ture im­ple­men­ta­tion must con­sid­er cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and house­hold af­ford­abil­i­ty.”

2015-2018 came pres­i­dent in 2022 now serv­ing term

‘Com­mer­cial sec­tor not de­pressed’

Speak­ing on the com­mer­cial front, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL), Richard Le Blanc, said that from his ob­ser­va­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with the con­struc­tion of East Gate Mall and oth­er build­ings go­ing up, com­mer­cial has to be do­ing well in Trinidad.

“Oth­er­wise, land­lords would not be ex­pand­ing their space. Con­trary to what the man on the ground says, when you look at the re­al­i­ty, there are still of­fice build­ings go­ing up.”

Le Blanc said when one walks through the var­i­ous malls there are just a few emp­ty spaces.

“Any mall will have some lev­el of at­tri­tion in it where old­er ten­ants, for what­ev­er rea­son, leave the mall and new in­com­ing ten­ants would be com­ing in. You would al­ways have that change out of ten­ants. You would al­ways have that. But I don’t want to be alarmist, and I don’t want to give you an opin­ion that is not sup­port­ed by da­ta. But if you look at the da­ta, the re­al hard da­ta on the floor, I don’t know that the com­mer­cial sec­tor is in trou­ble.

Asked if com­mer­cial lease rentals have de­clined, Le Blanc not­ed that com­mer­cial leas­ing al­ways fluc­tu­ates, but to say there’s a per­ma­nent drop or a sig­nif­i­cant drop would not be cor­rect.

Le Blanc ques­tioned how com­mer­cial re­al es­tate could be de­pressed when many build­ings for rent are pop­ping up in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

“What you might be see­ing is a redi­rec­tion of com­mer­cial re­al es­tate. Peo­ple, the re­tail­ers may be mov­ing out of one ge­o­graph­i­cal area and in­to an­oth­er ge­o­graph­i­cal area.”

He high­light­ed that an A-class of­fice build­ing would cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2,000-$2,500 a square foot.

On whether there is a lack of pur­chas­ing pow­er in the Port of Spain area, Le Blanc said “If there was a lack of pur­chas­ing pow­er of the cus­tomer base, that would trans­late in­to space. And the fact that you’re not see­ing that kind of emp­ty space means to me the pur­chas­ing pow­er is still there. That’s the eco­nom­ic sig­nal I am get­ting,” said Le Blanc.

HCL, a sub­sidiary of the CL Fi­nan­cial group (in liq­ui­da­tion), is the land­lord of the Trinci­ty and Long Cir­cu­lar malls, as well as the One Wood­brook Place res­i­den­tial com­plex on the bor­der be­tween St James and Wood­brook.

AREA ini­tia­tives

Ques­tioned what are some of the projects the or­gan­i­sa­tion is en­gaged in to bet­ter the in­dus­try, the pres­i­dent, who was elect­ed in 2022, said a key fo­cus is on sup­port­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Re­al Es­tate Agents Act 2020 and they are in the process of cre­at­ing a Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice (MLS) plat­form de­signed to en­hance trans­paren­cy, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to mar­ket da­ta and are up­grad­ing its AREA web­site to keep pace with tech­nol­o­gy.

To fur­ther el­e­vate in­dus­try stan­dards, she said the or­gan­i­sa­tion in­tro­duced a pro­vi­sion­al mem­ber­ship cat­e­go­ry this year, aimed at sup­port­ing new­ly li­censed re­al es­tate agents.

Ques­tioned on what AREA would like the new gov­ern­ment to ad­dress with­in the in­dus­try, Singh said while the Re­al Es­tate Agents Bill 2020 has suc­cess­ful­ly passed through both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, its ef­forts are not yet fin­ished.

“We ea­ger­ly await its for­mal procla­ma­tion in­to law by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent. Un­til that oc­curs, the re­al es­tate sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to op­er­ate as an un­reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­try, with AREA’s vol­un­tary self-reg­u­la­tion for its 250 mem­bers be­ing the sole frame­work avail­able to guide pro­fes­sion­al con­duct and best prac­tices,” Singh said

This year, AREA will cel­e­brate 35 years in ex­is­tence and Singh said to mark the oc­ca­sion, it will host a se­ries of events, in­clud­ing the Best Prac­tices Sem­i­nar 2025 on May 21, 2025, which will be open to the pub­lic.
Singh was pres­i­dent from 2015-2018 and then in 2022 she was re­elect­ed and is now serv­ing her sec­ond term.