Jamaica’s Private Rental Market: Rising Rents, Tourism Pressure, and a Rent Board That Caps Increases at 7.5 Per Cent

Kingston, Jamaica — 5 February 2024

Jamaica’s private rental market is under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. Demand from tourism, diaspora arrivals, and households priced out of home ownership is pushing rents upward in urban centres and tourist parishes. Landlords are responding to the same inflation-driven cost increases affecting all property owners — higher insurance, utilities, maintenance, and material costs. And the Rent Assessment Board, which governs regulated tenancies, caps permissible annual increases at 7.5 per cent, a figure that has struggled to keep pace with Jamaica’s inflation rate in recent years.

The rental market occupies an uncomfortable position in Jamaica’s housing economy: it is the primary housing option for the significant portion of the population that cannot access homeownership — too much income for indigent housing, too little for a deposit and NHT loan qualification — and yet it is chronically under-regulated, under-documented, and under-researched. Jamaica does not have a comprehensive, publicly accessible rental price index for the island. Rental affordability data is anecdotal rather than systematic.

The Rent Assessment Board’s Framework

The Rent Assessment Board provides the legal framework for regulated tenancies in Jamaica. The board’s guidelines limit annual rent increases to 7.5 per cent with the board’s permission. In practice, many rental relationships in Jamaica — particularly in the informal market — operate outside the Rent Board’s framework entirely, with rents set by private negotiation and annual increases driven by market conditions and landlord preference rather than regulatory caps.

The JIS has published tenant and landlord guidelines through the Rent Assessment Board, setting out the rights and responsibilities of both parties in a regulated tenancy. These include the landlord’s right to recover possession under specified circumstances, the tenant’s right to a written tenancy agreement, and the process for disputing rent increases or tenancy terminations through the board.

Tourism and the Short-Term Rental Effect

Jamaica’s booming tourism sector has created a parallel rental economy that competes directly with long-term residential supply. Properties in Montego Bay, Negril, Ocho Rios, and increasingly in Kingston have been converted from long-term residential tenancies to short-term vacation rentals, reducing the pool of accommodation available to residential tenants and placing upward pressure on the rents that remain.

A landlord who can earn significantly more per night from a tourist than per month from a resident tenant faces a rational economic incentive to exit the residential rental market. This dynamic has accelerated with the growth of online rental platforms, which have dramatically reduced the transaction cost of entering the short-term market. The result is a structural reduction in long-term rental supply in the parishes most exposed to tourist demand.

“The rental market is where Jamaica’s housing gap is most acutely felt in the short term,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “People who cannot buy are renting, and the supply of decent, affordable long-term rentals in urban Jamaica is not growing fast enough to match demand. The conversion of residential stock to short-term tourist accommodation is a real factor in that equation. It is not a problem easily solved by regulation — but it is a problem that needs to be named.”

What Tenants Should Know

Tenants in Jamaica are best protected when they have a written tenancy agreement that specifies the rent amount, the duration of the tenancy, the notice period for termination, and the conditions under which the landlord may seek possession. Oral agreements are legally enforceable but difficult to prove in a dispute. The Rent Assessment Board provides a tenancy agreement template and mediates disputes between landlords and tenants at no charge to the parties.

Tenants facing rent increases above 7.5 per cent in a regulated tenancy have the right to dispute those increases through the board. Tenants facing illegal eviction — removal without proper notice or court order — have recourse through the board as well. Understanding those rights is the first step toward exercising them.