Remittances have played an important role, but remittances alone do not build generational wealth, ownership does, Minister of State Delano Seiveright told the 11th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in Montego Bay in June, according to the Gleaner. His pitch was blunt: come home, invest, partner, build and own it.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness made a similar case to the same conference, framing diaspora homeownership as both a personal investment and a contribution to national development, and pointing to the National Housing Trust as a channel through which diaspora capital could also expand affordable housing for Jamaicans still on the island. He acknowledged something realtors have heard for years: some overseas Jamaicans are wary of investing after past experiences sending money home for construction that was mismanaged by relatives or contractors.
The numbers underneath the pitch are real. Jamaica received a record US$3.49 billion in remittances in 2025, equivalent to more than 15 percent of GDP, according to Bank of Jamaica data reported by the Gleaner, and inflows continued climbing into 2026. But a straight cash transfer and a share in an appreciating asset are very different things, which is the entire point Seiveright and Holness were making.
The pattern of diaspora buying has also been shifting. Gleaner commentary on the diaspora property market has described a move away from the older model, buy the family land, build slowly, lock it up until Christmas, toward gated communities and north-coast lifestyle towns that function as a home, a rental asset and a retirement base all at once.
For Jamaicas churches abroad, this is not a purely secular conversation. Diaspora congregations have long been the infrastructure that kept remittances flowing home in the first place, organising collections, vetting projects, and vouching for relatives. The same networks the government is now asking to shift from remittance to ownership are, in practice, largely the same networks a pastor in Brooklyn or Birmingham already has some claim on trust within. Whether that trust converts into actual title deeds is, at this point, a live and unresolved question.
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