Real Estate-Backed Citizenship

The contribution buys citizenship and nothing else, and for plenty of families that is the right trade — one payment, one less moving part, capital free to work elsewhere. The real-estate route is for people who want the asset on its own merits. It costs more at the outset, it locks capital up for years, and at the end you own a property in a market with characteristics you should understand before wiring anything.

So my test does not move: underwrite the purchase as something you would want to own if no passport were attached. If it only makes sense with the citizenship bolted on, it is not an asset — it is an entry fee with a service charge.

“Real estate” covers at least three instruments here, and the difference is the whole game. Some approved options are freehold or long-leasehold title in your name, the same ownership a cash buyer gets. Others are a share in a resort scheme, or a deeded fractional interest in a specific home — a real property right that resells into a much narrower market. Grenada’s cheaper entry point is explicitly of the second kind. I tell you which one you are looking at before we discuss price.

Put the question to any seller in writing: what exactly is being conveyed, and who owns the land underneath? On leased-land resorts the follow-up is what happens to your interest if the head-lease ends. If nobody can answer that clearly, that is your answer. Deeded fractions are set out on fractional ownership, the operator-agreement version on branded residences.

Three of those need reading twice. Grenada’s $270,000 is not a single-buyer price: under S.R.O. 15 of 2024 it is a per-share minimum where two or more buyers jointly purchase a tourism-accommodation unit valued at US$540,000 or more, and a sole buyer needs $350,000. Either way a separate non-refundable $50,000 government contribution for a family of up to four sits on top, putting the realistic floor at $320,000 per share or $400,000 sole. Dominica’s $200,000 is the property alone — government fees there begin at $75,000 for a single applicant. And the holding clock starts in different places: seven years from purchase in St. Kitts & Nevis, three from the grant of citizenship in Dominica. Confirm which date governs your file, and see what “approved” actually means before assuming a listing qualifies.

These are thin markets. Few comparable sales, almost entirely cash buyers because local mortgage lending to non-residents is limited and slow, and not one of the five jurisdictions publishes a house price index or a public transaction database. Grenada is the most transparent, and even there the best figure available is a regional brokerage tally — Terra Caribbean counted 366 transactions worth roughly EC$143.4 million in the first half of 2025. A long way from what you would want before parking $300,000-plus for the better part of a decade.

The structural point matters more than any number. A unit priced at the program minimum, resold into a pool made up mostly of applicants trying to clear that same minimum, has very little headroom to trade above it. That is my read from resale conversations and listing behaviour in my own practice, not a measured figure — there is no public dataset it could honestly come from. When an agent quotes an appreciation number for approved inventory, ask which transactions it is drawn from. Marketed yields typically run 2–5%, and “guaranteed buyback” offers — commonly half the value returned after five years — are developer promises, not government guarantees. Treat recovered capital as a bonus rather than a plan.

I walk them myself, at the hour of day the brochure photographer avoided. The ones I have walked away from are the more useful half of that list. On any project I bring you, my read includes the parts a listing sheet leaves out.

Five things get answered in writing before a deposit moves. Where the deposit sits — a regulated escrow account is a different instrument from the developer’s operating account, so name the agent and the release triggers. What triggers each stage payment — certified construction milestones behave very differently from calendar dates, which transfer delay risk to you. What happens if the brand leaves — operator agreements have terms, and this region has already seen flags change on delivered projects. The remedy for late delivery — a long-stop date with a defined exit beats a penalty clause you would have to litigate offshore. The developer’s record on previous projects — delivery history here is the most predictive fact available, and it is public if you know where to look.

Two more are specific to this route. Approval lists are not static, so eligibility is checked against the current list before any offer is written. And the HOA history is worth an hour: what the service charge has done over five years says more about how a community is run than the amenity list does. The full pre-construction sequence is in my off-plan due-diligence checklist, written after watching an 8,000-unit off-plan fraud unwind.

Buyers budget for the purchase and get surprised by the ownership. Condominium fees in this region commonly run US$400 to $900 a month, community dues US$1,000 to $4,500 a year and north of US$10,000 in golf and marina communities. Insurance is repricing: after Hurricane Melissa the region’s catastrophe facility made its largest payouts ever, premiums have climbed in the more exposed markets and some insurers have withdrawn from the highest-risk islands. Get a real quote on the actual property before you sign, because on some islands insurable versus uninsurable is asset versus liability. Electricity runs roughly US$0.25 to $0.40 per kilowatt-hour.

If a resort rental program is attached, treat the projections as projections. Full-service management typically takes 20 to 35% of gross revenue, with the observed range running 10 to 50% and remote locations at the top of it. Occupancy decides everything and is the number most often misreported, because platforms measure booked nights against available nights rather than against the calendar. Ask what the same unit type actually paid out last season, net of management and low season — my team will get you that figure, and I would rather you saw it before you bought than after: why Caribbean rental cashflow is harder than it looks.

Owning the asset adds obligations rather than removing them. Rental income earned abroad is reportable to the IRS, the eventual sale is a reportable disposition, and the local side of the transaction carries licence fees and withholding rules that differ island by island. None of it changes the headline: US citizens remain taxed by the United States on worldwide income regardless of a second citizenship, and none of the five Caribbean programs has a US income tax treaty. Buy the property because you want the property. If the objective is genuinely tax, the honest answer is domestic — Puerto Rico’s Act 60 — and I will say so rather than sell you a passport that will not do it. I work alongside your own counsel on the structuring, before contracts are signed rather than after: international tax planning.