Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

International Real Estate

House Hunting in … St. Lucia

A SIX-BEDROOM VILLA IN CAP ESTATE

$2.5 MILLION

Set on 2.85 acres of manicured, sloping parkland, this home is in the Cap Estate neighborhood of Gros Islet, a community in the northwestern part of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Villa Atlantis, as the single-story, 8,000-square-foot house is known, was built in 2007. It is a short drive from the main road, at the end of a gated driveway with a roundabout. A travertine veranda wraps around three sides of the house, which has six bedrooms and five and a half baths — and views.

“On a clear day, you can see down to the tip of one of the Pitons, 20 miles away,” said Christos Poravas, the chief executive officer of St. Lucia Sotheby’s International Realty, which has the listing. The Piton mountains are to the south; to the north is a golf course and the hills of Cap Estate.

A flight of coral steps in front of the house narrows as it approaches an arched portico and double doors. The foyer has a high ceiling, a travertine tile floor and Tuscan-style arches leading to a central courtyard with a water feature in the middle.

The kitchen has a white wood plank ceiling; a center island with a cooktop and a double sink; a double wall oven and microwave; a stone-tile backsplash; granite countertops; and two Sub-Zero refrigerators that match the white cabinetry. French doors open to a 4,000-square-foot covered veranda that branches into wings, with a 60-foot infinity pool in between. The dining room opens to the veranda and pool deck, and also leads to a great room with stone walls, a 15-foot tongue-and-groove plank ceiling and several sets of doors.

The 1,300-square-foot master suite off the foyer has a wood floor and two sets of doors opening to a Juliet balcony with views of the Caribbean. The marble master bath has two vanities, a pedestal tub, an open shower and double doors to the veranda. Of the four bedrooms on the other side of the foyer, two share a bath and two are en-suite.

There is another en-suite bedroom next to the kitchen, and a television room off the courtyard close to the family bedrooms. A staircase leads from the master-suite hallway to the laundry room and a two-car garage.

Half a dozen beaches are within a five-minute drive; the closest is Reduit Beach. Rodney Bay, a tourist area with a marina, supermarkets, boutiques, nightclubs a casino and restaurants, is a 10-minute drive. Hewanorra International Airport near Vieux Fort in the south handles international flights from Europe and North America; to the north, near the capital city of Castries, intra-Caribbean flights use George F.L. Charles regional airport.

MARKET OVERVIEW

St. Lucia, which has more than 160,0000 residents, was spared by the hurricanes that devastated the islands of Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. Martin in the fall.

“Tourism is the engine that drives real estate” on the island, Mr. Poravas said. But compared to places like Barbados, St. Martin and Antigua, he added, St. Lucia “is still very much an up-and-coming destination, a much smaller market in its early stages of development.” And while the market is up from last year, he said, it is still slowly recovering from the global economic downturn nearly a decade ago.

Though there is no multiple listing service, Mr. Poravas said he has a couple dozen listings, from $500,000 to $10 million. The “vast majority of transactions” he sees are by vacation-home buyers, he said, adding that it’s a buyer’s market.

Two-bedroom, two-bath apartments in townhouse condominium developments with pools, near the water in Rodney Bay, start at $350,000 to $400,000, said David Farrin, managing director of Doubloon Real Estate. Most are furnished and have marina slips nearby.

Farther south, in the Unesco World Heritage Site between the Piton mountains, five new homes are planned at Sugar Beach, a Viceroy resort with 96 hotel rooms. Two waterfront lots have been sold; the other three will have 4,300- to 8,000-square foot homes starting at $8.25 million, said Penny Strawson, the property director. Between 2012 and last December, 22 hillside homes of 2,500 to 4,000 square feet, priced between $3 million and $6 million, were built and sold there.

Heather Flossiac, managing director of Bellevue Properties in St. Lucia, said there are “a wide variety” of new houses and condominiums in the north and south areas of the island, with prices ranging from $166,000 for a single-family home to $9 million for a villas in a high-end resort.

WHO BUYS IN ST. LUCIA

Some 60 percent of his foreign buyers come from Britain, Mr. Farrin said, with about 25 percent from the United States and the balance mostly from Canada. Ms. Strawson said some of her buyers are from Italy and Slovenia.

Most foreign buyers tend to come from places “where we have direct flights,” Mr. Poravas said, including London, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte, N.C. Some buyers also come from other parts of the Caribbean, he said.

BUYING BASICS

After putting a 10 percent deposit on a property, foreign buyers are required to obtain a permanent, nontransferable alien’s landholding license, granted for a specific property. A local attorney must register the license and prepare the contract.

The application fee for the license is 1,500 East Caribbean dollars (or about $550). The license itself costs E.C. 5,000 (about $1,840) for properties of less than an acre or E.C. 10,000 ($3,680) for properties larger than an acre. A license takes four to six weeks to process.

If the buyer is an international company, an alien’s landholding license is not required, Mr. Farrin said.

WEBSITES

Official tourism site: stlucia.org

Official government site: govt.lc

LANGUAGES AND CURRENCIES

English, Creole; Eastern Caribbean dollar (1 E.C. dollar = $0.37), but United States dollars are widely accepted

TAXES AND FEES

Unless the seller is an international company, there is a stamp duty of 2 percent of the purchase price. Attorneys’ fees range from 3 to 5 percent of the purchase price.

Property taxes are 0.25 percent of the assessed market value.

CONTACT

Christos Poravas, St. Lucia Sotheby’s International Realty, 758-452-0280; stluciasothebysrealty.com

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT