Antigua and Barbuda is divided into the parishes of Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mary, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, and Saint Philip on the island of Antigua and the dependencies of Barbuda and Redonda.
Absolutely yes, foreigners are eligible to buy as many properties as they want in this Caribbean island nation. In fact, the country welcomes investment from overseas buyers and has set up an economic citizenship program to promote foreign investment in the nation.
Buying Land In Antigua
There are no restrictions on foreign buyers acquiring land or building. The only thing to note is that foreign buyers must first apply for a Non-Citizens Land Holding License. The License costs 5% of the property price.
The government of Antigua & Barbuda owns 55% of the land in Antigua. The remaining 45% is privately owned. Currently, land ownership is prohibited on the island of Barbuda. The Land Department under the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Marine Resources is the main governing body.
All overseas purchasers must apply for a Non-citizens Landholding Licence [NCLHL] (unless applying for Citizenship by Investment) in order to buy land or property. An application for a NCLHL CANNOT be made until after a contract has been exchanged and only applies to that specific property. The costof a Non-citizens Landholding Licence is 7% of the value of theproperty and usually takes 3 to 4 months but the government have indicated this will speed up.
Most houses are serviced by a septic tank, a legal requirement, fresh water storage such as cisterns are also required by law. Government electricity and water are usually connected or available nearby as are cable TV, landline telephone and broadband. Although the electricity supply is generally reasonably good, a standby generator is useful particularly at the time of severe storms which can damage the electricity supply infrastructure. Cellular telephone coverage is island wide. More remote properties may be accessed by little more than a dirt track but most houses have access to adequate roads. Although all property is supposed to have access to the main highway, check that the road outside a property is part of the public road network and not someone's private drive
Short term or holiday rentsrange from under US$100 per night for a basic apartment to a lush fullystaffed villa at several thousand US$ per night and there are many finevillas which can be a great alternative to staying in hotels. Most ofthese rental villas have swimming pools and close proximity to one ofAntigua's great beaches. Villa rental also provides an opportunity forowners to get an income out of their second homes while they are notusing them. Due to the imposition of Antigua & Barbuda Sales Tax on short term rentals, we no longer offer a short term rental service.
Thereare also many long term rental properties available and, dependent uponsize and condition, can be had for less than US$500 per month. A longterm rental can be a serious alternative to purchasing property as thelandlord is responsible for the upkeep and there are no risk of changingproperty values.
Squatting in the island country of Antigua and Barbuda in the West Indies is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. Historically, native Barbudans were seen as squatters and after Hurricane Irma in 2017, Prime Minister Gaston Browne offered people he termed squatters the chance to buy their land.
The island country of Antigua and Barbuda in the West Indies, in the Caribbean. It was formerly a British colony and Barbuda was leased to the Codrington family from 1680 until 1870. In this time, communal land ownership developed on Barbuda since the Codringtons were absentee landlords. The Crown saw the island as crown estate and since the inhabitants refused to pay rent, regarded them as squatters.[1] In contrast, Antigua was mainly used for sugar plantations.[2]
Antigua and Barbuda became an associated state in 1967 and gained independence in 1981. After independence, the country was ruled from Antigua, and 1,500 native Barbudans continued to insist that they owned the island. The national government, backed by 75,000 Antiguans, instead decided the island was owned by the state and could be exploited for tourism.[1] The Barbuda Land Act of 2007 enshrined the right of Barbudans to own their land collectively and enabled them to challenge development projects.[3] The act was amended in 2016 by the government so that development projects costing under $40 million did not need to be reviewed.[4]
The debate over land ownership returned in 2017, when in the aftermath of the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma Prime Minister Gaston Browne suggested that Barbudans could buy their plots of land for $1 and thus help the relief efforts. He termed the current situation "squatting", whilst a member of the Barbuda Council called the government's plan "an opportunity for disaster capitalism and cultural genocide".[5] The following year a proposal was made to extend the plan to Antigua, where squatters who had lived on their plots for ten years or more could buy them for $1 per square foot.[6] Areas where squatters were encouraged to take benefit were Ball Beef, English Harbour, Falmouth, Hospital Hill and Moss Pond.[6]
In the capital St. John's, squatting is widespread due to the lack of affordable land or housing. Adverse possession can be achieved by continuously occupying privately owned land for fifteen years.[7] As on other Caribbean islands, squatted informal settlements and slums have substandard living conditions.[8]
Up until the recent changes, land in Barbuda was held in common: It could not be bought or sold, and though developers could lease land for 50 years, their projects needed to win the consent of a majority of Barbudans. It was a rare example of participatory economic planning and successful land redistribution to freed slaves and their descendants.
But the Land Act was resented by foreign investors and wealthy Antiguans, and the latest push to alter the law first reared its head just days after Hurricane Irma roared through Barbuda. The island had been hit by storms before, but never like this: Upwards of 90 percent of the buildings in Barbuda were damaged, and all residents were evacuated to Antigua.
Shortly after the storm, Browne declared the island unfit for habitation. Eventually, the prime minister began to allow small groups of islanders to return to Barbuda for a few hours each day to pick up their lives before getting back on the two-hour ferry to Antigua. But it would be three weeks after the storm before the mandatory evacuation order was lifted.
The Barbuda Council is demanding documentation to support recent claims that more than 300 residents have indicated an interest in obtaining official ownership of the lands they currently occupy for EC$1.
Many Barbudans have long maintained that they already own their land communally and that the 2017 legal amendment introducing the freehold sale of land overturned a centuries-old tradition and threatens their cultural identity.
In a statement yesterday, she said, Were the signatures verified as actually belonging to living Barbudans? Have any Barbudans actually signed any contract to obtain a $1 title deed for Barbudan land?
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GONZALEZ: Antigua is mountainous and touristy with about 98,000 residents. That's where the government is. Barbuda is flat - like, flat-flat. Like, it looks flat like a penny. Wow, I've never seen an island that flat before.
GONZALEZ: Goats and sheep. It's the kind of island where wild donkeys just walk into your home. The houses are all, like, pastel turquoise with grey, mint green with peach, peach with orange - and where no one wants lobster anymore.
GONZALEZ: You put some sand and some stone down just to show that something's going to happen on that land soon, so don't take it, because in Barbuda, land isn't something you buy and sell; it's something you just have.
GONZALEZ: Barbudans say they don't just own the plot of land they put a fence on. They own and share the whole island collectively - all its resources, all the land. They use it in common. That's what it's called.
GONZALEZ: Only Barbudans have this right. People on the neighboring island, Antigua - they can't claim land in Barbuda, even though it is the same country. You have to be born in Barbuda and have a grandparent born in Barbuda, or a parent. That's the only rule.
GONZALEZ: All right. Once upon a time, no one lived on Barbuda. Even when the Caribbean was all Indigenous populations, they would just come to Barbuda to hunt and fish and then go back to the other islands they lived on. Barbuda was never inhabited.
GONZALEZ: Like a supply island, because Codrington had all these sugar plantations in Antigua, but the soil in Barbuda was too shallow and too thin to grow sugar. So Codrington sent enslaved people to Barbuda to grow food and raise livestock to supply people in Antigua - workers in Antigua.
GONZALEZ: The whole island was made up of 500 enslaved people at its peak and one white manager and his family, sometimes maybe no more than a handful of other white workers, too. So schools and churches and all the other things that Antigua had, they didn't really get built in Barbuda because there were no white people.
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