Here’s what I think sustains sharply rising property prices:
1. Flipping properties (buying low, patching up to make pretty, then selling high) to naive buyers.
2. Common gutter greed to get more than property is worth.
3. Monopoly control of raw building materials.
4. Locked-in attitudes about sticking to popular building materials (fear of building with diverse cheap materials like compressed industrial polystyrene and industrial hemp).
5. Purchasing through mortgage loans (paying the price for two or three houses under most mortgage compound interest rate “schemes”).
6. Developing and constructing through mortgage finance “schemes” (see 5 above).
7. High legal and government fees to transfer or sell or change use of property (built-in system obliges involvement of third parties in property transactions so they handsomely profit from transactions.
The high-priced real estate market is also used to launder money. “They do not put a price on their properties for you and me to buy, they put it for those who want to launder money,” a keen observer said to me.
It’s amazing how people who charge high rates to rent their property or sell property fume when they themselves are faced with paying the same rates and prices they charge. While they wish to rent or sell high to maximise profits, when the coin is reversed so that they’re faced with renting or purchasing property at high cost, they resent people who charge high prices. This is a pervasive hypocrisy in this country.
This double standard attitude is an example of why Trinis are just a large gang of people constrained to share space on an island. And deeply rooted in their psyche is a depressed numbness for the plight of others. What concerns them is getting an easy life for themselves at the expense and downfall of others.
B Joseph