Maybe it was never really about tourism and hotels. Maybe the Baha Mar development has always been about the real estate.
In a deal agreed to by the corrupt Perry Christie administration, the owners of Baha Mar walked away with one of the sweetest deals in the history of Bahamian real estate, including a major section of the best beach property on New Providence Island.
Now, Baha Mar has announced that they will be selling over 300 luxurious apartments and villas located in the hotels they have yet to build. These are intended to be upscale homes for full-time residents with occupancy expected to begin if, and when, the resort is completed in December 2014.
The accommodations will be offered first to international investors, and if there are any left, later to Bahamians.
The move is hailed as a game-changer in the Bahamian property market.
Hailed as “The Baha Mar Collection”, the properties will include everything from a $1.2 million one-bedroom apartment to a $6 million, four-bedroom villa on the beach.
The mega-resort is currently appointing sales agents around the world, including in China, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Qatar, the US and Canada in an aggressive sales and advertising campaign in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism.
Unable to secure financing through conventional means, the developers turned to the Export-Import Bank of China, who are financing the $2.6 billion resort. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation is building the resort. By this time next year, more than 4,000 Chinese workers will be living in a Man Camp on Cable Beach, much to the shock and horror of Cable Beach residents.
Unsurprisingly, Patti Birch, President of the Bahamas Real Estate Association, said the Baha Mar Collection is a “good idea”.
Only twice before has the real estate industry in the Bahamas scored so big.
The first time was when Bahamian real estate agents, supposedly led by Harold Christie, conspired to murder Harry Oakes and clandestinely seize thousands of acres of land in the Bahamas before Oakes’ family even knew they had owned the land.
In the Bahamas, there was, and still is, no land registry. Property titles are like lottery tickets, whoever has the title owns the land. There is also an incredibly corrupt process called quieting titles. This meant that real estate agents could merely wait a few years before quietly quieting the titles and the land was theirs.
It is believed that several major players in today’s Bahamian real estate industry benefitted extensively from the theft of Mr Oakes’ land.
The second big real estate boom was when two small time swindlers stole a safe full of titles from a dying man whose foreign-born wife was not empowered to stop the theft.
The titles were divvied up among major real estate agents in an deal that would keep the whole affair from going public.
One of the thieves, a sitting MP at the time with a wife who was a magistrate, threatened the widow with deportation if she did not comply to his unreasonable demands to halt court actions against him.
That man is now, according to business magazines, one of the wealthiest black Bahamians. His partner in the crime has become one of the nation’s wealthiest pastors.
Some question whether the Baha Mar development will ever become anything other than condos and luxury homes. With the tourism market in the Bahamas slowly eroding, it appears that luxury real estate may be the only way to go.
