< back

i won't bore you with the details of the detailed legal procedure for buying a home in antigua. what you will find more interesting are some of the experiences we enjoyed in our hunt for a home... and to be a drama queen about it, i am calling this section:

HOW WE SURVIVED THE WILD, WILD WEST (one gunfight at a time)
note: all of these are true events, so no lawsuits please...

guilty by relation - hang 'em high
after two unreturned calls, it took a bank lawyer to get this particular realtor's attention. his lack of cooperation was made clear on our meeting. in front of other clients i was berated for the alleged actions of a mutually known person (who made this agent work a bit). this agent spent a half hour attempting to embarrass me in front of his other clients. he was late for our first appointment. it was a forecast of things to come.

plenty of (part-time) cowboys
in the middle & north end of the island (read middle income) the term real estate agent is sometimes used very loosely. while we met many well-meaning, professional people, we also met several folk who... frankly didn't know much about real estate. the extent of their knowledge was they knew of a place for sale. it wasn't uncommon for them to have no written documentation. regularly, they'd never been inside. often they led us to the door where the owner promptly took over to give the tour (where you could be sure to get a 100% unbiased opinion). sometimes it seemed like the agents' only job would be to bring us to the available house (and hopefully collect the commission).

i could tells ya, then i'd hafta kill ya...
since there is no MLS (multiple listing service) in antigua, there is no master collective of listings. rarely did an agent know more than 2 places available. in one case, an agent showed me a house which didn't fit our criteria. a week later, i discovered the house next door was for sale and did fit the criteria. too late, it was sold.

no signs please. that would be... marketing
since 'agents' didn't want others to sell their known listings out from under them, they kept their listings secret. that meant no signs. signs simply invited competition.

let's make a deal, pardner
our 1st attempt at purchasing a home was not only a disaster, it took over a month to fall apart. 3 things scuttled this deal:
1.) a poorly written agreement to purchase from the vendor's agent obligated us to hire a lawyer to rewrite a legally sound contract. the vendor's agreement had us paying out vendor's legal fees & it actually contradicted itself. it appeared the agreement was a cut-n-paste job from somewhere online.
2.) a lawyer took weeks to rewrite the offer; after much begging from us.
3.) the vendor's agent expected us to pay out 2.5% of the value of the home. when we refused, they informed us the price of the house increased by 2.5% (we discovered the vendor's agent and the vendor were allegedly related.)
from this, the deal died. while technically, it is always the vendor who pays the selling agent, i guess when newbies like us come along, the rules change.

the house is worth... what i think you can afford, stranger
one house we looked at was through an agent who could give us no information (or even gain entry, initially) beyond the price. from the time we walked up the drive, the owner sized us up & decided on a new price. on a blank piece of paper, the new price (almost $30k more was) scribbled in ball point pen.
while that poured cold water on any hopes of buying his home, huge cracks in the foundation that were being painted over just as we got there AND the owner laughing out loud when we indicated we had a fixed budget finished it there, right in the driveway.

the web. friend or foe?
both actually.
foe because it presented too many false positives.
in one case a nice place was unavailable simply because we could not connect with the agent or the owners. it was a stale posting & a dead end.
in many cases we discovered that due to a shortage of available homes; to keep realtor's sites from looking barren & to keep interest in their agencies, sites would post homes as for sale when they had already sold months (or years) prior.
the web was a friend which provided continuity. because of the disconnect of agents, one property that was "brand new on the market", was actually a place we saw online for $200k EC less only months before.

let's make a deal, #2
our 2nd attempt to buy a place was less painful but equally fruitless. the first sign it wasn't going to happen was the fact that the vendor nor their agent had any documents of information about the home. we were required to hire an engineer (at our cost) to to obtain details. the vendor's agent gently insisted they receive a copy of our engineer's report & valuation. once valuated at almost $100k less than asking price, our offer didn't interest the vendor. in the end, the vendor got a free valuation of their property & we got bupkis.

there were other experiences:

• the house we couldn't see inside
• the house we were warned by the neighbours not to buy due to its shoddy construction
• the house that was nice, but the road so impassable we'd have to buy an all-wheel drive truck to get to it (actually, there were a few in this category)
• overpriced houses that had been for sale for years
• the house that as soon as we expressed interest, they realized they really didn't want to sell
• the house that dropped in price by $200k EC (unfinished & starting to crack)
• the nice but vacant house, beginning to fall apart, but the owner wasn't interested in selling
• the house with the cistern built into the house next to the living rm. (no mention from the engineer's report. we discovered it through our photos)
• the house who's owner was dying any day. a fire sale. last chance. (he's still around)
• the house with the concrete roof: more walls for support than sq ft of floorspace
• the house with the asphalt roof (a no-no) & rotting ceilings
• the house that sat in water & we needed to walk across a board to enter
• the new house, next to 3 other available house, also for sale for 4 years
• property that had no road & was on an incline (straight up)
• the 30 minute hike in the bush, for the property we couldn't find

we saw just about every house on the island in our price range. it took close to 2 dozen agents to show them all. and we never bought. all along everyone told us we should build. presently we rent and are still looking (for land and/or homes).
many have also told us that land prices are higher due to a healthier business environment and we see it. government lands are frozen & not for sale, and antiguan land has a demand like never before.

but hey, we have some sob stories & though we faced challenges in this new environment, we got lots of help from some very solid professionals. in fact, this short list is just some of the terrific people who helped us with showings and professional advice. i've linked what i can. check out their sites or give them a call. thanks to their help, we really have a solid picture of where we should proceed from here.

Brady Stanley - Tradewind Realty, bradytradewind@yahoo.com, 268.460.1082
Trevor (Teddy) Santos - TBS Realty, 268.562.7653
Telly Cornelious - independent, 268.775.2848
Avenel Bird - ABI Realty, 268.460.9707
Bedi Hurst - independent, 268.770.4697, 268.774.2488
Cosbert - National Estate Services, 268.723.5800

•••