Caribbean property splits into three price tiers that barely touch. The luxury tier — Turks and Caicos, St Barths, Anguilla, Cayman — starts around $1 million for anything near water and is effectively a different asset class. The mid tier — Barbados, Antigua, St Lucia, Aruba — runs $300,000 to $700,000 for a modest home. And the value tier, where this guide lives, still delivers walkable-to-the-sand houses between $70,000 and $200,000.
The value tier is concentrated in two places: the Dominican Republic, which has the deepest affordable market in the region by a wide margin, and the Caribbean mainland — Belize, the Colombian coast, Nicaragua, Panama's Bocas archipelago and Mexico's Gulf shore. The water, reefs and climate are the same; the price is 60–80% lower because the land is not on a supply-constrained island.
