Jamaica Property Sales Near J$99.3 Billion in 2025 as St Andrew, St Ann and St Catherine Lead Market Activity

Kingston, Jamaica — 12 June 2026

Jamaica’s real estate market generated nearly J$99.3 billion in property sales in 2025 despite the economic disruption caused by Hurricane Melissa, according to data from the Realtors Association of Jamaica. The figure, reported by the RAJ using its Multiple Listing Service data, reinforces the view of real estate as a resilient pillar of Jamaica’s economy — one that retained its activity even as the hurricane impact created headwinds for broader economic output in the latter part of the year. The RAJ’s data confirm that the cautious optimism with which the industry entered 2025 was well-founded: underlying demand absorbed external shocks and kept the transaction market functioning at a level that most sectors would have considered strong by any historical comparison.

Parish-by-Parish Breakdown

The parishes of St Andrew, St Ann, and St Catherine accounted for the largest share of total property sales over the year. St Andrew’s dominance reflects Kingston’s continued position as the primary residential and commercial property market in the island, with demand concentrated in the new-build apartment sector, townhouse developments, and the upper-middle to luxury residential market in neighborhoods such as Cherry Gardens, Beverly Hills, Norbrook, and Havendale. St Ann’s strong showing reflects the ongoing growth of the north coast resort residential market, where tourism-related investment in villa properties, resort-style condominiums, and rental investment units drove transaction volumes. St Catherine, anchored by Portmore and the Greater Bernard Lodge development corridor, contributed a large volume of transactions driven by NHT-financed affordable housing completions and private developer activity.

A notable finding in the RAJ data was that several parishes recorded higher revenues in 2025 compared to 2024 despite recording fewer total transactions — a pattern that indicates rising average transaction values rather than increased volume. The parishes in this category included St Catherine, Westmoreland, St Ann, and St Mary. Higher average transaction values across fewer deals can reflect a market in which affordable inventory has been absorbed and the remaining stock skews toward higher-value properties, or one in which Hurricane Melissa disrupted the completion and listing of lower-priced units while higher-priced transactions — less dependent on contractor availability and more dependent on buyer confidence — proceeded.

Urban and Tourism Drivers

The RAJ’s analysis attributed the market’s 2025 performance to a mix of urban residential demand and tourism-related investment. Urban demand — driven by Kingston’s growing professional class, diaspora buyers seeking primary residences and investment properties, and households upgrading from rental to ownership — sustained the transaction pipeline across the traditional urban parishes. Tourism-related investment — driven by the continuing growth of Jamaica’s short-term rental market, villa ownership by non-resident buyers, and the expansion of resort-adjacent residential development in the north coast corridor — contributed a disproportionate share of high-value transactions and maintained St Ann’s position among the top-performing parishes.

The Hurricane Melissa impact, while significant for the broader economy, did not fundamentally interrupt either driver. Urban residential demand held as the population continued to grow and household formation continued. Tourism-related investment also held, in part because international buyers were less directly affected by the hurricane’s domestic economic impact than local wage earners, and in part because the holiday rental market in Jamaica — particularly the north coast — had demonstrated resilience through prior disruptions and maintained its investment case for overseas buyers.

Real Estate as an Economic Anchor

“J$99.3 billion in property sales in a year that included a major hurricane is a remarkable result, and it says something important about where Jamaican real estate sits in the national economy,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “This is no longer a market that is optional or peripheral. It is a core driver — of employment in construction and professional services, of consumer wealth through home equity, of government revenue through transfer tax and stamp duty, and of financial sector health through mortgage portfolios. The fact that the market held close to J$100 billion in a difficult year tells you that the fundamentals are structural, not cyclical. That is a very different — and much stronger — position than the market was in even a decade ago.”

The RAJ’s J$99.3-billion figure for 2025 follows a multi-year trend of expanding transaction values in the Jamaican market, driven by price appreciation, new development completions adding inventory at higher price points, and the gradual deepening of mortgage financing that has expanded the pool of buyers able to transact at market prices. Whether the 2026 market sustains the momentum toward the J$100-billion threshold will depend on post-hurricane recovery activity, the trajectory of mortgage rates as the Bank of Jamaica’s easing cycle continues, and the pace at which major supply pipeline projects — including Greater Bernard Lodge, the Trafalgar Road corridor in Kingston, and the north coast resort residential developments — deliver completed units to market.