Luxury development characterizes Turks and Caicos

We are here with Robert Greenwood, President of the TCI Real Estate Association. Thank you for the interview. Turks and Caicos has become a popular destination for Hollywood stars and high-net-worth individuals. The real estate sector is one of the main promoters of the island, along with tourism and financial services. With excellent opportunities for foreign investors, especially because of the U.S. dollar currency, and the lack of income, state, corporate, or real estate taxes, in your opinion what makes the Turks and Caicos Islands special and what sets it apart from other Caribbean islands in terms of real estate opportunities?

That’s a very good question and a question that can’t be answered in just one short sentence so I’ll endeavor to share with you what I share with our investors, with our buyers. We are very well known by the ultra-high-net-worth investors, be it on private islands like $60 million on Water Cay or Parrot Cay for example. We’re also a jurisdiction that offers real estate that’s very accessible to a majority of higher-net-worth individuals who have disposable income, whether at the $900,000 range or the $350,000 range. We’ve got a broad spectrum that we can offer our investors here.

One of the reasons they’re attracted to the Turks and Caicos Islands is the accessibility from most of the major gateways in the United States: Austin, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, or Houston. From New York, you can be ankle deep in snow in the morning and knee deep in turquoise waters by cocktail hour. We have direct flights here. New York I think is just over three hours. You’ve got two flights in the season directly from the UK, so accessibility and ease of getting to the Turks and Caicos is huge. A lot of our original investors were in the baby boomer era, so they’re a lot less willing to sit on a plane for 5.5 hours. It’s actually quicker for most to get here than it is to get to their cottage, so that’s a huge, huge factor.

The next reason is how beautiful the island is. It’s extremely low density, quiet, has a very, very low crime rate, and I think it’s some of the best diving and best turquoise waters in the world. I’ve been to most Caribbean islands and lived in several and it certainly has got the most beautiful ocean and the beautiful beaches. We have eight actual islands that you can visit, each with a different personality, and Cays and so on, so it’s a wonderful place to come just for the lifestyle.

As you mentioned, the U.S. dollar makes it very, very easy for our North American buyer. We are a tax-free offshore jurisdiction so there is a lot of attraction there. It is English speaking, so again that makes it extremely easy. It’s all about the ease of a place to go on vacation. If they speak English, it makes it all that much easier.

When it comes to investment in real estate, your real estate purchase is guaranteed by the British crown. Therefore, you can be safe in the knowledge that your investment is protected. We use one of the oldest systems that one can use to hold real estate and that is the Torrens land system. It’s been used for centuries and is a very secure and safe way to hold real estate. There is no need for title insurance, when you get the title to your piece of property, it is yours and that is backed by her majesty’s government. That gives people real peace of mind, especially in this day and age when confidence is a huge part of if or why somebody invests in a particular country. That gives great comfort to our investors.

I think the last factor that I’ll put in there is that we’re at the beginning of the life cycle island. There are many islands that we know in the Caribbean that have developed, gone through a long development cycle. We have not. The people who need to know us know us. We don’t have commercials; we don’t have leaflets. We’re a beginning-of-life-cycle island, so the opportunities abound here, in both investing and business opportunities. It’s low density and it just makes a perfect place for developers, investors, and home owners alike.

What are the challenges related to the real estate sector and how is the association helping to address them?

 The Turks and Caicos Real Estate Association has been set up for almost twenty years now. It’s a voluntary association that was set up to bring in line the many brokerages around the island to where we could have a multiple listing service like you find in North America. It has made it so much easier for buyers and sellers alike to be able to display or share their properties through their brokerage or agent and then have it out to the masses.

The thing that we need to do now as an association, one of the fundamental overriding tasks that we have, is to continue to promote the Turks and Caicos even through the economic down time. Nothing changes, we just have to keep the drive going and the marketing going out to the general public to say, “we’re still here, we’re still what everybody wants and we’re going to be here when the economic situation stabilizes,” which it has.

We need to attract development—we need to bring in development to the Turks and Caicos Islands. I know the government is working hand in hand with many developers. I’ve actually enjoyed several meetings with the premier and his team to promote new developments here.

With our company Christie’s here, we have three developments that are looking to break ground. We have the Ritz and are working on the third Turtle project right now and there is one other that I can’t mention that is likely to happen and that’s just my one brokerage. I’m sure there are other brokerages out there that are also doing the same. If you look at a couple of the higher-end brokerages, they’re doing these small enclave luxury developments that are associated with brand hotels as a niche market. They’re private villa enclaves, but associated to a high-end hotel like the Grace Bay Club, which has been very successful at attracting investors.

We need to attract the investors so the money can then be put through stamp duty into the Turks and Caicos Islands coffers and then when they come here, they start the smaller businesses, the restaurants, bars, tourist taxis, you name it.

Moving to the relationship you have with investors, you are the first link to the island for many investors. They trust you and they listen to your advice. Where do the majority of buyers come from?

I can break down buyers into several groups, but predominantly they are from Canada and the United States because of the proximity and also because of the airport. For the longest time we could only really get short-haul traffic from North America because our runway was not long enough to take any other kind of aircraft.

For Europeans, it’s a longer distance to travel. They can go to Spain and Italy and all these other destinations so we have less of those at this point but that’s also changing as well and I think it will change dramatically. The European high-net-worth individuals that come to the Turks and Caicos are bored with going to Spain and Italy—it’s a new adventure for them, a new place to go. We’ve actually prepared for them by extending the runway to accommodate long-haul traffic and expanding the airport to accommodate the volume. Today it is mostly North Americans with a lower percentage of Europeans and Central and South Americans.

What have been the main achievements of the Real Estate Association and what are the main challenges that real estate companies and brokers are facing?

We’re such a small island and so the accomplishments that have been achieved need to be shared among everybody in the Turks and Caicos. It is thanks to the quality of the services. From the minute they arrive on the island, on the airplane, in the taxis to the service at restaurants and bars, every bit of that is shared among the entire Turks and Caicos. When we received the Travelers’ Choice award for best island in the world for 2015, it is not to be assumed by any one person—that is an island award shared by everybody from the galleries across the road, coffee shops, that’s everybody.

The Real Estate Association obviously does a lot of work in marketing, in relationships with high-net-worth individuals. My partner right now is in Monaco going to the yacht show. She’s coming over with a 340-foot giga yacht for the first time, which will be a really great accomplishment for the leeward marina here. We’re going to start attracting that kind of business. So on an individual basis, yeah, the Real Estate Association has done quite a bit.

What are our challenges? To continue doing what we’re doing, to get more inventory, to branch out to more gateway countries. Brazil is going to be a big factor and Turkey possibly could be a big factor with what they’re now doing with their new hub airport. So we are looking to branch out and we do an extremely good job of educating our agents with training, testing, and licensing. Turks and Caicos is a very, very different jurisdiction because we’re a vacation jurisdiction where people are buying their second, third, or even fourth vacation homes. These are luxury purchases so I’ve never had anybody bang my door down and say, “I must buy my third vacation home.” Well that’s not true, one person did, but there’s always one.

The average time on the market here is over a year, that’s just how it is. These are luxury purchases and they are high-dollar purchases that require disposable income. So it’s educating the buyer demographic on a completely different kind of real estate market so they get it. The minute they come in and start using a calculator to calculate square footage for value, they’re lost. The value of a property here is based on amazing lifestyle, how easy it is to get here, beginning of life cycle, offshore tax-free jurisdiction, capital appreciation because we are a beginning-of-life-cycle island, it goes on and on and on. So that’s kind of how I look at comparing that.

In your opinion, what measures should be taken in order to promote greater investment and what message would you like to send to real estate investors?

There are exactly 1,048 properties on the market as of today. Given the island’s beginning-of-lifecycle phase there’s a lot of land still available. We’ve only just begun. You go to North Caicos and Middle Caicos, even Northwest Point on Provo, there are acres and acres of beachfront available. We’ve built up around Grace Bay, arguably the most beautiful beach on the island and then out—that’s the natural progression of development. When I first came here in 1979, Club Med came and that’s what started it. Then slowly it came along. We’ve got a lot more of the Turks and Caicos left. The same thing we’ve always told real estate investors is that we are one of the best islands in the Caribbean. We are a beautiful by nature group of islands. It is safe and secure for you and your investment. We’ve always promoted this island by word of mouth and that’s what’s kept us exclusive—not reclusive but exclusive—and the people that need to know us know us. We don’t ever want to become exploited to the point where it’s overrun and undervalued. We don’t want to dilute the brand and the brand is the Turks and Caicos: that is the brand.

You have an extensive background in the real estate sector, you have over thirty-five years of personal experience on the islands. Your background in the condo and resort industry gives you a unique insight into the islands’ real estate sector. Can you give us some examples of incredible places that are for sale right now and that you have sold in the past?

Emerald Cay is an absolutely amazing property down in Chalk Sound. It was originally on the market back in the heyday for $75 million. We represented that property that eventually sold but the property itself is really second to none. It has its own swing drawbridge; just the carpentry in the library took 4.5 years to finish. The owner flew to Brazil, went through the forest, picked the tree he wanted and that one tree made up every piece of the interior of that three-story award-winning library.

Donna Karen’s house on Parrot Cay is currently on the market, which is absolutely stunning—a stunning island and stunning property. It’s just understated elegance. This property just gets better and better and better and the beaches of Parrot Cay are just amazing and there’s hardly anybody there.

I’ve grown up here, I’ve been honored to be given a wonderful home. I am a citizen of the Turks and Caicos and my dearest friends are from the Turks and Caicos and I think the beauty of the island is made up not just of the waters and the ocean but also the people. I think that is a huge factor that goes into this entire discussion. Why are we the best island in the world? One of the major factors is the people.

It’s not always the opulence of a property or the notoriety of a property, we’re dream managers. We have people that come here and they’ve worked and worked and worked and they’ve been able to amass enough money to buy a dream vacation home. It’s really our job as a brokerage to manage their dream of owning in paradise, in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Thank you so much.