House Hunting in Barbados: Alfresco Living in the Eastern Caribbean

The three-bedroom guest cottage is open to the pool and has rooftop solar panels for heating hot water. Bedrooms with pickled pine wood ceilings and en suite baths are on either side of a sitting room and kitchenette. The cottage’s lower level, accessed down a garden staircase, has a living room/game room and the third bedroom suite.

The Sugar Hill Resort Community has two communal pools, four lighted tennis courts, a clubhouse, a fitness complex and a restaurant. The sale may include a membership to the neighboring Royal Westmoreland golf club’s 18-hole course, Mr. Blandford-Newson said. The property is a five-minute drive from shopping, dining, galleries, beaches and water sports in Holetown, Barbados’s second largest town, and 10 minutes from Speightstown, a more laid-back hub with local charm. Grantley Adams International Airport is about a 45-minute drive.

Market Overview

Barbados, with about 287,000 residents, was among the first Caribbean islands to grasp its “marketing potential and leverage the environment created by the pandemic for a lot of people who were very mobile and could work remotely,” said Edward de Mallet Morgan, a partner at Knight Frank.

In July 2020, the Barbados government introduced the “Welcome Stamp,” a visa allowing foreign individuals or families to work remotely on the island for a maximum of 12 months. Initially, most of the digital nomads who paid $2,000 for an individual visa ($3,000 for a family) stayed for three to six months, renting apartments or houses near the beach or overlooking golf courses in holiday villas owned by expatriates.

“A lot of people enjoyed it, loved it and started buying properties that had languished on the market for a long time,” said Chris Parra, the chief executive of One Caribbean Estates, the Christie’s affiliate in Barbados. On average, he said, early visitors “testing the waters” spent in the $1 million range.