From land-title delays and developer financing to mortgage costs, rents and community rules, a week of news reveals the pressures reshaping Jamaica’s housing market.
Billions in insurance settlements, a deepening land ownership debate, expensive rebuilding decisions and an expanding north coast property market have exposed a difficult question: Is Jamaica building communities that ordinary Jamaicans can afford, maintain and call their own?
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica is building a new north coast. Thousands of homes are rising across St Mary, St Ann,…
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s property market is sending mixed signals. Buyers are gaining negotiating power in Kingston and St Andrew.…
New homes, contested land, rising rents and billions in pension savings made this a revealing week for Jamaican property. Beneath the individual headlines was one persistent problem: demand for secure, affordable housing is running considerably faster than the country can supply it.
Property Market
Contrasting cases in Trelawny and St Thomas reveal the difficult relationship between land ownership, informal occupation and development in Jamaica.
Jamaica is not an unusually expensive place to build by Caribbean standards. It is expensive in Jamaican wages, and a few concentrated supply chains for cement, steel and approvals help explain why.
Jamaica’s biggest hotel landlord is not Sandals but a family from Mallorca. We traced who owns the island’s resort rooms, from Spanish dynasties and Mexican groups to American private capital and a half sold Sandals.
Seventy four years of mining have dug up less than one per cent of Jamaica, yet bauxite still shapes who owns the land across the middle of the island. We mapped the holes, the leases, the owners and the unfinished repairs.
Mortgages & Money
Fifty years after Michael Manley created it, the National Housing Trust holds J$378.8 billion in assets, has sent J$148.2 billion to the Government budget since 2013 and spends only about half of what it collects on housing. Who the Trust serves, who it misses, and how it compares with Singapore and Mexico.
RENTING
A practical examination of Jamaican rental rules on increases, deposits, utility bills, repairs and lawful possession.
Diaspora & Migration
Britain promised to put right the wrongs done to the Windrush generation. Seven years after compensation began, about a third of decided claims have produced a payment, at least 66 claimants have died waiting, and the Home Office is still marking its own homework. A full accounting of what happened, what didn’t, and what could have been done better.