^^ Above, Beautiful Eastern Shores is an inconic neighborhood of Abaco and offers a unique prospect to waterfront at the front door and back door.  Watch the sunrise on one side and set on the other.  check out this listing here: http://www.hgchristie.com/properties/abaco/house/AS12220/immaculately-restored-waterfront-eastern-shores-home-with-2-docks–pool/

So how are things looking for 2014 in the real estate market in the Bahamas.  Looking at the news from the news from the US there are mixed messages, new builds are up, sales of existing homes is steady with potential decline in the near future.  The economy seems to be a roller coaster.  Who knows?  Europe seems to have dug out of the hole and showing strong improvement especially in the largest cities.  It is hard to extrapolate what is happening there to what is happening here.

Compared to my post back in 2012 when i started this blog, things here are leaps and bounds better.  Prices holding steady, sales volumes slowly creeping up.  And all around every agent and broker I talk to, the inquiries, calls, walk-ins, tire-kickers are at much higher levels than last year and sky high over the doldrum years ff 2010, 2011, 2012.  This general improvement is reflected in hotel bookings, boat rental booking and vacation home bookings for this year which I have gleaned from various stakeholders here in Abaco.  A general overall improvement in the economy bodes well for real estate.

The elephant in the room is the current sitting government who while seeming to have good intentions are not making the best decisions for the country, in my humble opinion.  the massive dredging exercise in Bimini will forever change the way of life there, perhaps for the worse.  It will definitely wreak havoc on the marine environment.  The looming disaster of VAT or at least increased taxes in some form will not be beneficial either, but we shall see.

The snapshot of the Bahamas Real estate Market right now – there are currently 2,148 active property listings on the Bahamas MLS.  Last year sales volume reported to the BMLS was 362 for 2013.  that equates to 30 sales per month which leads to the prognosis of a 71 (5.9 years) month supply of real estate listings.  Compared to the US national average 5.2 months supply of home inventory, this does not paint a very pretty picture for a seller, but an excellent one for a buyer.  Indeed many real estate professionals have been investing heavily in real estate.  The healthy balance in the US is considered to be 6 months by experts.

(As a side note, of the 2,148 listings, 1042 are homes, condos, duplexes, while 994 are for undeveloped land)

Further to that, for the 2014 year to date, May 15 there have been 130 sales reported to the BMLS, which extrapolates to a yearly volume to 312, which would be significantly less than 2013.  However the months of April and May are typically the high season for sales in the Bahamas, followed by a bump in September (see my previous post on best selling months here).  By July I expect the year’s sales volume to show marked signs of improvement over 2013.

As the Bahamas MLS continues to establish into the culture of real estate in the Bahamas things will change and most likely for hte better although I still believe the market is adapting to having information readily available that was just not there before.  In closing while inventory is actually higher than in the past, the sales volume is increasing and the months supply is actually dropping and the things are vastly better than they were in 2011.  Compare to this post i wrote for the HG Christie Blog back in 2011: http://www.hgchristie.com/blog/mls-market-update-first-quarter-2011-by-dwayne-wallas/