Dominican Republic real estate Punta Cana villas and Bavaro Beach villas designed, built, sold and rented.

Dominican Republic real estate will double in 12 to 18 months.

The opportunity

Background

Forget for one second that you are reading this.  In fact, I sincerely urge you to do this before even contacting me.  Buy a ticket, get on a plane and disembark in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  The cheapest place you can get a rental car is at National/Alamo.  They will even pick you up at the airport and save you the $33.00 taxi fee.  A full week with a small car will cost $230.00 to $255.00.  After your done with the rental car, drop it off and they will take you back to the airport.  Use an American Express so that you do not have to pay the insurance fee synonymous with car rental agencies.  You will probably end up at el Cortecito Hotel if you did not go for an all-inclusive vacation package.  That's o.k., this is a fact-finding mission anyway, not a vacation.

Now drive to the main part of BavaroPunta Cana near el Cortecito and Plaza Bavaro.  Just look at building after building and villa after villa.  Construction workers everywhere.  Tourists zipping back and forth on scooter taxis called motoconchos or in regular taxis.  As you pass by all of these developments, you'll notice that the prices rise the closer you get to el Cortecito.  Some building developments display prices while most will not.  They will display a phone number though.  You will notice that as you get closer to el Cortecito, the prices increase for the few building developments that do display pricing.  This is simply because many develops use real estate brokers to deal with all of their sales, while only some may employ an in-house sales representative which will be on-site during working hours to show you the villas or apartments and give you literature.

By now you should have passed at least 30 to 40 realtors and building after building of villas and apartments either finished or under construction.  The fact that there are so many realtors in such a concentrated area should tell you something.  There is always property changing hands here, be it a parcel of land bought by a developer from a land owner, an apartment or a villa sold by a developer to a buyer or an apartment or villa sold from one buyer to another.  The point is, they all eat because of the continuing influx of investment capital into Bavaro and Punta Cana.  By the way, Bavaro and Punta Cana are one and the same.

Now pick any five of the real estate agents or sales representatives that you have seen and simply ask this?  I want a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom villa or apartment for $75K.  They will tell very well and proceed to drive AWAY from Cortecito and back toward the airport.  Why is this?  Because to get just a 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom villa in the heart of Cortecito is no less than $132K in preconstruction.

Why the difference in price?  Simple.  For the last decade, tourists have been flocking to BavaroPunta Cana from all over the world to buy an investment, vacation or retirement property.  Seeing this, many developers began buying up property and pushing ahead with construction projects throughout the BavaroPunta Cana area.  These sales were coupled with promises of beach access through a particular hotel which seemed like a freebie to the buyer on the part of the developer.  What the developer and/or real estate agent failed to disclose to the unsuspecting buyer was the fact that even though the beach shore area from the shoreline and 60 Meters inward is considered PUBLIC beach accessible by all people, the neighboring resorts and hotels had long before purchased the surrounding lands.  The reasoning behind the land purchases is rather straightforward.  You see, even though the hotel goliaths cannot own the beach, by purchasing the land surrounding the beach they ultimately control who accesses the beach through their hotel.

The developer simply worked out an arrangement with the nearest hotel closest to the beach.  This allowed the developer to get top dollar from the investor.  As the years passed, most of those investors saw the hotels change ownership and rescind all previous arrangements, but could not take legal action because they never got the hotel access arrangement in writing.  Not to mention that their property values increased past the original purchase price anyway.  Do make sure you GET IT IN WRITING.

So what happened to these initial investors that initially made these purchases?  When their hotel beach access was rescinded, they had only one choice.  To use THE ONLY REAL PUBLIC ACCESS to the beach which is located near el Cortecito.  Many of those investors found that even though they were close to the beach, since their hotel access had been rescinded, they had to get in the car and drive to the REAL public beach access in BavaroPunta Cana.  New rules had just come into play.  Developers responded by buying up as much of the property that was available next to el Cortecito.

With all this knowledge and insight, turn and ask all five of the real estate agents to find you a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom villa or apartment just blocks from the real PUBLIC beach for $95K.  You will probably be escorted back to the airport while all five tell you the same thing.  That is impossible senor.  A 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom is no less than $132K preconstruction.  Why?  Because only a few big developers have the capital to construct these buildings and they want to make a 200% return minimum.  Construct for $75K, sell for $155K minimum.  They have the money to do this and as such, the market prices of villas and apartments in the Cortecito area are very uniform.  A small amount of developers control the lot.

This is where I come into play.  After much frustration with the status quo in the U.S., I began researching international investments and began reading John Schroder's the Dominican Republic Report.  John Schroder is a former Wall Street investment banker who now lives in the Dominican Republic.  His area of expertise include tax free offshore investing, offshore trusts, corporations and international real estate,.  His website, Ascot Advisory deals with all types of international real estate investments and tax havens.  You can read up on the whole reason for my decision to come to the D.R. and the story of my first crazy trip here.

I began by buying an apartment just blocks from the beach about four years ago.  I was one of the first individuals to buy in White Sands Golf and Beach Resort.  Like all others at that time, I was promised unlimited access to Ocean's Resort, a 5-star resort hotel 2 blocks from our apartment.  After two years, the apartments were all sold.  Beach access through Ocean's Resort was pared back to buying a day pass for $25.00 to spend the morning and afternoon eating and drinking.  Not a bad deal, but what if I just wanted to use the beach area by going through Ocean's Resort?  No go.  We were the lucky investors though because our developer did in fact have another development called White Sands Apartments right in front of our and right on the beach.  If the developer had not had that land, I would have never bought the apartment.  Moving on.

I used this apartment as a base of operations while I searched for prime location next to the real PUBLIC beach and actually began negotiations with the owner of el Cortectito, who at that time, owned most of the land surrounding the real PUBLIC beach.  I was able to acquire a nice piece of land the size of 750 M.  This is just over a tarea, which is 629 M.  My next mission was siphoning through the hundreds of people who say they were or knew a good engineer, architect, lawyer, electrical contractor, plumbing contractor and so forth.  This was not easy.  In fact, I was ready to just say forget it on several occasions.  I would compare this phase with buying a new car from a dealer.  Now multiply that twenty or thirty times.

Anyway, I finally accomplished what I set out to do and I found out that it does not cost $150K to develop a villa.  In fact, it's about half that.  So why were the prices so high?  Because as I said, it's very new and the ones privy to this information are the developers which have usually been local in nature.  Now you are seeing foreign developers moving in and taking aim these properties.

I am just minutes away from new billion dollar investments.  What happens when these guys need to expand?  They gobble property.  Any purchase here will double within a year from completion and will triple in value over the next five years.  The rents they command are absurd.  I couldn't even think about constructing a 6-unit villa building in Miami.  But once you construct a 6-unit apartment building here, your considered rich.

Anyway, I am using my knowledge, expertise and contacts that I've developed as project manager to build villas at wholesale for people since my mentality has always been to share the wealth.  There is money here for everyone.

Anyway, good luck in all your endeavors and e-mail with any questions you may have.

See you in the D.R.,

Raul Martinez Jr.
Project Manager
Bavaro Beach Properties

See project photos