What $300,000–$400,000 Actually Buys You in the Caribbean

Four years ago I put my own second citizenship together for a flat $100,000. If a client walked into my office today and asked me to repeat that exact deal in Antigua & Barbuda, Nevis, or Grenada, I'd have to tell them it doesn't exist anymore — not at that number, and not close to it. The figure that actually clears in 2026 is $300,000 to $400,000, and even inside that range, the three islands hand you meaningfully different things depending on the route you take.

I still get people quoting me $150,000 or $250,000 numbers they read two or three years ago. Those numbers were real once. They're not anymore, and the gap between what people expect to pay and what they actually need to wire has become one of the more common surprises I manage on first calls.

The short answer

In 2026, $300,000 to $400,000 is the realistic budget for citizenship-by-investment real estate, or for a donation route covering a larger family, across Antigua & Barbuda, Nevis (St. Kitts & Nevis), and Grenada — a range that simply didn't exist before these governments agreed to a shared US$200,000 price floor in mid-2024. In Antigua, real estate now carries a flat minimum of $300,000, whether one buyer takes it or several split it. In Nevis, the same money splits between a $250,000 donation covering a family of four and a $325,000 approved-development real estate minimum. In Grenada, $300,000-$400,000 covers either the National Transformation Fund donation plus fees for a larger household, or a fractional real estate interest plus the government's additional contribution. None of the three is objectively "better" — they carry different hold periods, different physical-presence obligations, and different exposure to the political pressure now bearing down on every Caribbean CBI program.

The three budgets side by side

Everything below unpacks this table. It's the comparison I actually draw on a notepad when a family sits down and says "we have $350,000 — where does it go furthest?"

Two warnings about that last row. It is government-facing money only — the contribution plus the processing and due-diligence fees each program publishes. It is not your all-in bill, and the section further down on what the budget doesn't cover is the part that surprises people. And "family of four" here means two adults and two children under 16; add a teenager or an adult child and every number in the table moves.

Why the number moved from $250,000 to $400,000 in the first place

Short version, because the full price history and the ECCIRA rollout live in their own article: this isn't island-specific inflation, it's coordinated policy. On March 20, 2024, the prime ministers of Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, and St. Kitts & Nevis signed a Memorandum of Agreement setting a US$200,000 regional price floor under every citizenship-by-investment route; St. Lucia joined that June. It took effect July 1, 2024, and it banned the informal discounting and buy-back guarantees that had let agents quietly underprice the "official" numbers for years.

That floor was the response to sustained pressure from Washington, London, Brussels, and the OECD over lax vetting and reputational risk. It hasn't stopped there. In September 2025, all five governments signed the treaty creating the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority (ECCIRA) — a single regional regulator headquartered in Grenada — and every country enacted enabling legislation by October 2025. ECCIRA is expected to go live roughly 30 days after the fifth ratification is deposited, which most reporting places in early-to-mid 2026, though timelines like this have already slipped once. I cover the full price history and the ECCIRA rollout in detail here if you want the mechanics behind every number in this article.

The practical result: $300,000-$400,000 isn't a marketing range someone picked. It's what's left once discounting is banned and three separate governments each independently raised their thresholds inside the same eighteen months.

Antigua & Barbuda: $300,000 is now a flat number, not a per-person one

Antigua's real estate route used to reward buyers who brought in partners — a co-investor structure priced around $200,000 per person, with $400,000 for a sole purchaser. The 2024 amendment regulations replaced that with a flat minimum of US$300,000, regardless of whether one family or several unrelated investors are behind the purchase. That's the number to budget against if Antigua real estate is your route in.

The donation side moved even further. The National Development Fund (NDF) jumped from $100,000 to $230,000 in a single move around August 2024 — a 130% increase. Read the structure carefully, because it isn't the tiered contribution most comparison tables show: per the CIU's own published schedule, the $230,000 contribution is flat regardless of how many people are on the application. What scales with family size is the processing fee — $10,000 for a single applicant, $20,000 for a family of four or fewer, and $20,000 plus a further $10,000 for each dependent from the fifth onwards. So a family of six pays exactly the same $230,000 contribution as a single applicant; what rises is the processing line, not the contribution. Get that fee quoted in writing for your specific household before you budget, because the published wording leaves the count itself open to more than one reading. There's also a less-discussed third option: the University of the West Indies (UWI) Fund, which requires a minimum family size of six at $260,000, plus $10,000 in processing for each additional dependent beyond that — and it includes a one-year tuition-only UWI scholarship for one family member, the only citizenship option in the region with an education benefit built in.

What most sales conversations gloss over is Antigua's physical-presence rule. It's the only one of the three programs here with an actual residency obligation, and the number has changed — so be careful which figure you're working from. For years it was five cumulative days on-island within the first five years after citizenship is granted. The working figure is now 30 days within the first five years: the Citizenship by Investment Unit applies it administratively, and the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026 that would write it into the Act was presented to Parliament on 14 July 2026 — as of August 2026 I cannot confirm that Bill has been passed and assented to. Antigua moved ahead of the wider ECCIRA framework, which is still rolling out program by program across the other four islands. Thirty days over five years is two holidays, not a relocation, but it is a condition: skip it and citizenship can be revoked along with the entire investment. If your grant predates the amendment, confirm which figure your own file was approved under. Every applicant and dependent aged 16 or older now also sits for a mandatory due-diligence interview.

This is one of the more common recalibrations I walk clients through — someone arrives having priced the real estate route against the old per-co-investor structure, and the conversation shifts once the flat $300,000 minimum is on the table instead.

Nevis: the same budget splits between citizenship and Four Seasons-anchored real estate

I'm based here, at the Four Seasons Nevis office with St. Kitts & Nevis Sotheby's International Realty, so this market is the one I watch most closely. St. Kitts & Nevis's Sustainable Island State Contribution (SISC), which replaced the older Sustainable Growth Fund in 2023, requires US$250,000 for a main applicant or family of up to four, plus $25,000 per additional dependent under 18 and $50,000 per dependent 18 or older. Due diligence runs another $10,000 for the main applicant and $7,500 per dependent 16 and up.

Real estate tells a different story than Antigua's. St. Kitts & Nevis actually lowered its approved-development threshold, from $400,000 to $325,000, effective October 25, 2024 under SR&O No. 43 of 2024 — the one price cut anywhere in the region since the 2024 reforms. A separate private-home option (a single-family dwelling rather than a share in a development) was cut at the same time, from $800,000 to $600,000. Resale on the real estate route isn't permitted until a seven-year hold — the longest lock-up of the three islands in this article, so if liquidity matters to you, weigh that against the lower entry price.

Interviews are mandatory here too, conducted virtually, in-country, or at a Board-approved location, with processing officially quoted at 120 to 180 days. There's also a deadline attached to this program that has nothing to do with buying in — it applies to every St. Kitts & Nevis passport already in circulation, including ones issued years ago. It's the most time-bound fact in this article and it gets its own section, immediately below.

If Four Seasons-anchored real estate is on your shortlist, I've written about why I think the premium is worth it, and separately about why so many of my American clients land on St. Kitts & Nevis specifically rather than the other four programs.

The St. Kitts & Nevis biometric deadline: 31 July 2027, and it's retroactive

If you already hold a St. Kitts & Nevis passport acquired through the program, this section matters more to you than anything else on this page — and it applies whether or not you bought through me.

In April 2026 St. Kitts & Nevis launched its National Biometric Enrolment and Passport Modernisation Programme, with collection beginning 14 April 2026. It is not forward-looking only. It reaches back to every citizen who acquired status through the program, including people naturalised a decade ago who haven't thought about their file since. Every CBI holder must complete biometric enrolment by 31 July 2027 or the passport stops being valid for international travel.

The published fee schedule:

Each figure is inclusive of both the biometric capture and the passport upgrade, so it isn't a deposit against a larger bill later.

Three practical notes. First, for a family of four this is real money layered on top of an investment already made and long since budgeted — treat it as a cost of ownership, not an afterthought. Second, the government has signalled that at least one physical visit will eventually be required to collect the document, though the exact process was still being finalised as the rollout continued; confirm the current procedure with the CIU rather than relying on a date you read anywhere, including here. Third, if you're applying now rather than renewing, the enrolment is simply part of the process — the retroactive reach is what catches existing holders out.

The single most useful thing most existing holders can do after reading this article is put 31 July 2027 in the calendar with a reminder twelve months ahead of it.

Grenada: the same money, a different structure — and one persistent misconception

Grenada's National Transformation Fund contribution is US$235,000 for a single applicant or family of up to four — up from a prior $150,000/$200,000 baseline, effective July 2024. On the real estate side, full sole ownership of a government-approved project unit starts at $350,000. A share starts at $270,000 (up from $220,000), but S.R.O. 15 of 2024 makes that a per-share minimum available only where two or more individuals jointly buy a tourism-accommodation unit valued at a total of at least $540,000, in a project that has already had 20% of its proposed construction cost invested as equity — so it is not a price a lone buyer can pay. Either way an additional, non-refundable government contribution of $50,000 for a family of up to four sits on top, which puts a lone buyer at $400,000 all-in and keeps a Grenada purchase inside the same $300,000-$400,000 band as Antigua and Nevis.

Grenada's most-cited selling point is its bilateral E-2 Treaty Investor Visa relationship with the United States, dating to 1989 — the only Caribbean CBI country with that relationship in force. It's real, and it's genuinely unusual. What most marketing leaves out: since the "AMIGOS Act" provision in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act, anyone who acquires treaty-country citizenship through investment must demonstrate a continuous period of at least three years of genuine domicile in that country — a legal-ties concept, not simply a day-count of physical presence — before qualifying for an E-1 or E-2 visa. A freshly purchased Grenadian passport does not fast-track you into a US business visa next year — it requires establishing genuine domicile first, which most donation-route buyers never intended to do. I'd rather a client hear that from me before they wire funds than discover it afterward.

On the upside for anyone who dislikes travel obligations: all applicants aged 17 and over complete an online due-diligence interview, and neither a pre- nor post-citizenship visit to Grenada is required — a real contrast with Antigua's 30-day rule.

It's a conversation I have more often than any other Grenada question — someone comes in already picturing the E-2 pathway as a fast route to US business residency, and the three-year domicile requirement is usually what resets the timeline in their head.

What the budget doesn't cover

Everything priced above is government-facing money — what the program charges you. It is not the number that leaves your account. The gap between the two is the single most common surprise on a first call, and putting it in front of you before you commit rather than after is most of what I'm actually for.

Budget separately for:

• Authorised-agent fees. Every one of these programs requires you to file through a licensed local agent. That agent charges a fee, and it is rarely quoted in the same breath as the contribution.
• Legal fees. A retainer for the application itself, and on a real estate route a second, separate engagement for the purchase — two different pieces of work, usually two different bills.
• Closing costs on the real estate routes. Stamp duty, registration and conveyancing on the way in, and again on the way out. On a seven-year hold in St. Kitts & Nevis you pay transaction costs twice around an asset you can't sell in between.
• Document costs. Certified and apostilled vital records, police certificates from every country you've lived in, translations, courier. Small individually; not small in aggregate for a family of four with an international history.
• Annual carrying costs on anything you actually own. Homeowners' association or resort fees, property tax and insurance, maintenance, and — if the unit sits in a rental program — management. These run for the whole hold period whether or not the property earns a dollar, which is why I'd read why Caribbean rental cashflow is harder than it looks before you underwrite an income offset.
• Currency and wire costs. These figures are quoted in US dollars and usually paid from somewhere else. Two or three international wires at an unmanaged spread is a line item, not a rounding error.
• The biometric enrolment above, if you're buying into St. Kitts & Nevis. It applies to the passports you're about to be issued as well as the ones already out there.

I'm deliberately not putting a single number on that stack, because it genuinely varies by family size, nationality, route and island, and an invented figure would be worse than none — I price it per file. What I will say plainly: if you have exactly $300,000 available and the program's headline is $300,000, you don't have enough. Price the whole stack before you choose the island, not after.

The caveat that applies to all three: this isn't a guaranteed forever passport

The five programs sit under live EU and US regulatory pressure — including a Commission demand to phase them out by 2028 that has not been acted on — which I keep current in one place rather than repeat: the regulatory-status section of my audit of all five programs.

None of that means don't apply. It means don't buy in on the assumption that visa-free EU access is contractually guaranteed for the next decade. If mobility is your primary reason for spending $300,000-$400,000 here, build in the possibility that the map changes before your passport does.

So where does $300,000–$400,000 actually make sense

If you're optimizing for the lowest total spend with the least ongoing obligation, Grenada's online-only interview and no physical-presence requirement make it the lightest-touch of the three, with the E-2 caveat clearly understood going in. If you want real estate anchored to a globally recognized brand with strong resale demand, Nevis's $325,000 approved-development threshold — inside a Four Seasons-adjacent market — is hard to beat, provided you're comfortable with a seven-year hold. If you're a larger family and want the best per-dependent value, Antigua's fund options price competitively, but you take on the region's only current physical-presence obligation in exchange.

I walk clients through this as a values exercise before it's a spreadsheet exercise — what you're actually solving for shapes which $300,000-$400,000 makes sense, far more than which island has the prettiest brochure. For the full donation-versus-real-estate decision tree, I've written two case studies on exactly that trade-off, and for an honest side-by-side of all five Caribbean programs — not just these three — see my full audit here. If you're American, the calculus is usually about optionality rather than tax savings; I cover that distinction here. For a straight comparison table across jurisdictions, start with the comparison page, or book a call if you want to run your specific numbers with me directly.

Key takeaways

• $300,000-$400,000, not $250,000, is the realistic 2026 budget for citizenship-by-investment real estate or a family donation across Antigua & Barbuda, Nevis, and Grenada.
• Antigua's real estate route is now a flat minimum of $300,000 regardless of co-investors; its NDF contribution is a flat $230,000 whatever your family size, with only the processing fee scaling upward for families of five or more; it's the only one of the three with a physical-presence obligation, now 30 days within the first five years.
• Nevis lowered its approved-development real estate minimum to $325,000 in October 2024, under SR&O No. 43 of 2024, even as its donation route rose to $250,000 — but carries the longest real estate hold period, at seven years.
• Grenada's real estate route effectively lands in the same band once its additional government contribution is counted, and its widely marketed E-2 visa access requires three years of prior domicile — not immediate access.
• Every existing St. Kitts & Nevis CBI passport holder must complete biometric enrolment by 31 July 2027 — US$2,500 for the first adult, US$2,000 for a second adult, US$1,300 per child under 16 — or the passport stops being valid for international travel.
• None of these figures is your all-in bill: agent and legal fees, closing costs, document costs and annual carrying charges on the real estate routes all sit outside the government-facing number.
• All three sit inside a region under active EU pressure to phase out citizenship-by-investment by 2028; budget the dollars, but don't assume permanence.

Frequently asked questions

Is $250,000 still enough for Caribbean citizenship by investment? Not in Antigua, Nevis, or Grenada as of 2026. Each program's donation and real estate thresholds moved higher following the region's 2024 price-floor agreement, and $300,000-$400,000 is now the realistic range depending on route and family size.

Which of the three — Antigua, Nevis, or Grenada — has the cheapest real estate route? Nevis currently has the lowest approved-development minimum at $325,000, following an October 2024 reduction. Antigua's flat minimum is $300,000. Grenada's sole-ownership route starts at $350,000, or $400,000 once its additional $50,000 government contribution is added; its $270,000 per-share route lands in the low $300,000s on the same basis, but only where two or more buyers jointly take a tourism-accommodation unit worth at least $540,000.

Does Grenada's E-2 visa access mean I can do business in the US right after buying citizenship? No. US law requires demonstrating a continuous period of at least three years of genuine domicile — a legal-ties concept, not simply a day-count of physical presence — in the treaty country after acquiring citizenship through investment before qualifying for an E-1 or E-2 visa. Grenada's treaty is real, but it isn't an immediate shortcut.

Which program has a physical-presence requirement? Antigua & Barbuda — the only one of the three. It requires 30 cumulative days on-island within the first five years after citizenship is granted, up from five — applied administratively, with the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026 that formalises it presented on 14 July 2026 and not confirmed enacted as of August 2026. Grenada and St. Kitts & Nevis impose none. The equivalent 30-day standard is still rolling out program by program across the other Caribbean programs under the ECCIRA framework; if your Antiguan grant predates the amendment, confirm which figure your own file was approved under.

What isn't included in the $300,000–$400,000? Authorised-agent fees, legal fees for the application and separately for a property purchase, closing costs and stamp duty on the real estate routes, certified and translated documents, international wire costs, and — on anything you actually own — annual homeowners' association or resort fees, property tax, insurance and maintenance for the whole hold period. The headline figures are government-facing money only.

I already hold a St. Kitts & Nevis CBI passport — do I need to do anything? Yes. Biometric enrolment under the National Biometric Enrolment and Passport Modernisation Programme is retroactive to existing holders, with a deadline of 31 July 2027; miss it and the passport stops being valid for international travel. Fees are US$2,500 for the first adult applicant, US$2,000 for a second adult in the same family, and US$1,300 per child under 16, inclusive of the passport upgrade.

Will these prices keep rising? The trend since 2024 has been upward or flat, with Nevis's real estate reduction the one clear exception. Given continuing EU and US pressure on these programs, I wouldn't plan around prices coming back down.