In short: Yes! How? Let’s elaborate.
Premise
You are in the market to purchase a property in Aruba, ideally, a house. To get the most value out of your investment you should eye a fixer upper, this way allowing some leeway with material prices options and ultimately the selling price, thus choosing to control the economics of the property either vertically or horizontally.
Continuing we will highlight some key points that you should take into consideration, including negative issues, as a foreign Aruba real estate investor. By no means, this is intended to be a definitive list but rather some pointers and highlights what you might come across during venture with your Aruban flip.
How
The purchase of a property for a foreigner is actually relatively simple. Non-residents, or foreigners, are allowed to purchase, hold, sell a property without restrictions. Taxes and services (if applicable) can be all paid through online banking.
There aren’t any restrictions for hiring contractors to renovate the recently purchased house, and putting it back onto the market.
Difficulties and Solutions
Flipping a property in Aruba will draw similar issues as anywhere else, namely: location of property, contractor’s good standing, and renovation budget (choice in the quality of materials).
The drawbacks when undertaking this venture from a distance will bring additional challenges and difficulties to the mix, but none are insurmountable.
In order to mitigate issues relating to your absence, there are several good practice measures that can be taken into consideration to reach the objectives.
Construction phase
Firstly you need to schedule a travel for the important parts of the construction namely:
- base construction
- joining of the walls and roof, so-called “horizontal beams”
- roof construction
- details/final touches
Building materials
The single biggest expense in the renovation budget in Aruba are material cost. This island ships virtually everything in, this means a critical view on quality/price is extremely important, this cannot be done by the contractor, this must be done by the investor.
Some import fixtures, appliances, and furniture in order to mitigate some cost, but this can be time-consuming and isn’t very cost effective after taking into consideration import duties, transportation, storage, and insurance. Aruba has several local big box store, top quality caliber hardware stores that sell lumber, fixtures, hand and power tools, fasteners etc.
Contractor
After having secured the financing for the renovation, perhaps the single biggest important factor to determined the successful completion of the renovation is the choice of contractor.
Contractors in Aruba are perhaps the same as contractors elsewhere, in the sense that you will have to do your due diligence to vet the company or person you are about to hire. How to go about this? The old-fashioned way, by asking around, or asking on online, on Facebook perhaps. The fact is that there aren’t many resources online or otherwise to access to get relevant information.
There are three types of contractors on this island:
- The legacy contractor
- The medium sized contractor
- The independent contractor
Legacy Contractor
The legacy contractor is mostly hired by big companies or the island government for major infrastructural work, although they some do residential work as well. There are perhaps two such contractors in Aruba at the time of this article and are for the most part reputable.
Medium Sized Contractor
The medium sized contractor has been coming up since the late 1990s and early 2000s that have grown to be the go-to contractor for most medium sized projects. There a handful of such contractors in Aruba and are for the most part are reputable.
Independent Contractor
The independent contractor is actually the most common and the most hired one of the bunch. These contractors are actually the least expensive, but also the most complicated one of the three. The reputation of this type of contractor ranges from the highest category to con-artistry.
This is the type of contractor you need hire to remodel your house for your flip, as this is the most cost effective one of all.
How to “contract”
The legacy and medium sized contractor are typically well funded and have proven procedures and contracts, including during disputes. However, the independent contractor typically has neither, which means that you should be sure to have a contract that protects your interests.
Arguably the best way to do this is to control the disbursement of funds during the construction. The alternative is taking disputes to court after the fact, which will result in a waste of time. Should you win the dispute, it’s highly unlikely you will be able to collect.
Conclusion and Offer
The narration in this article is “introductory information about flipping”. There’s much more info about this topic share, but it would be beyond the scope this article is intended.
Today’s offer is a fixer upper, mostly a cosmetic one and doesn’t require nearly as much work as described above. Depending on your intentions, the only major work this property requires is the construction of a small pool.
Bakval Fixer-Upper
Today we are pleased to present: Bakval Fixer-Upper (BFU). This house is located in Bakval, which is only a couple of blocks away from ritzy The Ritz-Carlton Aruba and Aruba Marriot Resort.
BFU dates back from 1990. Although this house needs some renovations, its lends itself to interesting possibilities.
The “Bakval” area is located in the greater Palm Beach urbanization. It borders world famous beach, Palm Beach, and Tierra del Sol Golf Course Community.
BFU is only 2450 feet (745 meters) away from the beach (Palm Beach) and is located conveniently on the on a road that is connected directly to above-mentioned resorts.
This area his vastly becoming the vacation rental capital of the Aruba as the neighborhood is changing and many new units are coming to the market.
Whether you choose this property to renovate, flip or keep it for personal use, it has a lot of potentials.
BFU has 4 generous bedrooms, 3 baths, a sizable patio, front porch, living room, dining room, and kitchen. The house is approximately 1700 square feet (158 square meters).
The asking price is US$ 350,000.
Below you find a visual tour and further below a contact form.
Inquire about BFU
For availability and or any additional information about BFU, please fill out below contact form:
Disclaimer: This article explains the specifics about material choice, contractors, difficulties, and solutions. However, it is by no means intended as a guide or to-do list, but rather as an indication as to some of the issues you could expect, or to look-out for. It goes without saying that you will have to do your own investigation to reach a satisfactory conclusion of your ventures.
