Cayman Now Or Later

There is a lot to be said about investing early in a real estate market cycle and reaping the rewards of steady capital appreciation and increasing rental income over time. The difficulty is knowing when is the best time to invest, while choices are still available and consistently strong growth lies ahead.

To buy now… or wait a bit longer? Considering the explosion of long term growth that Grand Cayman will be starting to experience later this 
year, which should continue over the next 10 years, could now be the best time to invest?

As we slowly move back into a vibrant and more open economy by late Summer and into the Fall, the pent up demand of new residents and the expected surge in tourism will easily power a real estate boom for the next several years. After that levels off, we have a huge surge of
development completing along the Seven Mile Beach corridor and West Bay.

These developments include Hilton Kailani Hotel, Watermark Residences, Grand Hyatt Resort, Stone Island, Indigo Hotel, Lacovia, Dolphin Point, Seranna, and many others yet to be announced - all supporting more new residents and tourism increases, as they complete. This
new wave will be the fuel for another real estate boom.

From the years 2000 to about 2012, capital appreciation and real estate sales prices in Grand Cayman were relatively flat, as was development activity. From 2012 until now, we have seen some good increases in sales prices, but not significant over a 20 year period of 2000 to 2020/21.

Since we are coming out of a low price base over the last 20 years, with Cayman now ranking as one of the best places to live and visit in the world, current sales prices are still in a reasonable range. Hence, our very limited supply of existing properties.

With more and more new residents and overseas visitors soon to be experiencing the Cayman lifestyle, this will stoke more demand for our real estate. Inevitably, the result will be that prices will be steadily driven higher over the next 10 years, due to a low supply of properties and consistently high demand. That dynamic has already started.

So, to answer the question posed at the start of this article, we are already in the early stages of an unprecedented real estate boom in Grand Cayman. It would seem that now would be the best time to start investing and not miss the better prices. This is especially true for pre-construction developments, where in most cases, some choice is still currently available.