Anguilla Real Estate For Sale...
We Buy!

 
 

A trip to buy Anguilla real estate! Hmmm...

What's the first thing you would want to do after a wonderful, 5-week, our-oldest-daughter-is-going-to-college-so-it's-now-or-never family trip to Italy?

Book a trip to Anguilla 3 days later?

Right!

Let's go buy Anguilla real estate!

Only Yuki and I were able to make the trip. Nori was registering for college and Janice had too much work.

So the youngest and the oldest in the family were Anguilla-bound!

And what a wonderful 4-day trip it was.

I told her she could pick all the restaurants. We ate at all her favorite spots. Yuki tends to stick with the "tried-and-true," so this was a great trip for her. No adventuresome new restaurants, just her "golden oldies," including such past favorites as...

• Picante -- their house special tacos, rare steak inside both hard and soft shell, with all the toppings, were fantastic
• Arawak -- the banoffee pie is not to be missed
• Le Bon Pain -- still the best croissant in the Caribbean (yes, including the French islands!)
• Le Bar -- their stunningly delicious hamburger will be missed (yes, they close Sept/2005).

Yuki was in Anguilla restaurant heaven. So was I, actually. But we didn't come to eat. We came to buy Anguilla real estate. So...

Jackie met us at Blowing Point and drove us immediately to the land. It was a bit tricky getting there...

• right at the brown house
• down the bumpity lane, left at the blue house
• across the grass, don't follow the road
• right at the goat (really)
• take the left fork not the right
• and so forth until you reach the sea.

Anguilla is still like that. I hope it will always be so.

I spent two hours walking the land. And I spent three more hours the next day. (It's a good thing Yuki's memory is better than mine, or we'd have had trouble finding it without Jackie.)

I walked and photographed it far from the East, and from the West. From above, from all around. But I had trouble getting "inside."

The land itself is covered by dense scrubby vegetation and at first seemed impenetrable. But I found a way in from behind and found a superb plateau, set well back and up from the Caribbean.

An excellent building site!

Here are a few of my favorite photos...

View From The Shore

View To St. Martin

View To St. Barts
(Triangular Peaks -- Cliffs Are A St. Martin Island)

View To Open Caribbean

Our Land From Above/West

Our Land From East
(Red arrow points at our jeep, where Yuki is reading Harry Potter)

Yes, this was the land we wanted. Next step...

I dropped into the Land And Surveys office and paid $5 to be sure there were no liens on the land. It's a good idea to do this if you're on island -- if not, ask Jackie to confirm.

This is just a matter of dotting your i's. I've grown to know the vendor of this land very well. He's a wonderful man. So it's not a matter of trust. But you never know when someone may have put a lien on the land, even unbeknownst to him.

$5 can save you a lot of needless grief.

Final steps?

1) Sign the purchase agreement and leave the 10% deposit check with Jackie. You can retain a local real estate lawyer to review the agreement if you like. I didn't feel the need.

2) We met an excellent builder. Builders are busy, busy, busy. But he committed that he could start in about one year. Luckily, the government is relaxing the "must build in 18 months" rule since builders are so hard to find.

3) Catch the final Champion of Champion boat races. Yes, we were just in time for the most important boat race of the year. Here they are, taking off from Sandy Ground (UFO, the boat on the left, won again)...

4) Fly home on Day 4. And that's it!

We own Anguilla real estate (well, almost). The family is planning the house. Once we have our thoughts organized on this, we'll hire an architect from Anguilla. (I was told some folks hire architects from where they live. But that makes no sense to me. Your design must address all the issues of living in the Caribbean and match the materials that local builders.)

We are on our way!