Homebuilding in the DR the inexpensive (Dominican) way

[jaguarbob]

does anyone have any idea when the cost of materials will come down,now that construction is slowing to a crawl here in thr DR?I want to finish my house and the cost of barila and cement is outageous,am holding back to see if prices come down.
bob

[Vintage]

i would love to build a home there
can u tell me for a fairly decent house how much canadian dollars would you need?

would 35 thousand be enough from start to finish? my husband has land

[track]

Originally Posted by Vintage

i would love to build a home there
can u tell me for a fairly decent house how much canadian dollars would you need?

would 35 thousand be enough from start to finish? my husband has land

Check for yourself, visit Supercasa.com

SuperCasas.com - Homes for sale Dominican Republic, condos, villas, caribbean real estate - super-casas

[Bayx-**]

Originally Posted by Vintage

i would love to build a home there
can u tell me for a fairly decent house how much canadian dollars would you need?

would 35 thousand be enough from start to finish? my husband has land

Just make sure you find a trust-worth builder which is almost impossible here. I personally don't recommend anyone to build in this country. I believe that buying a house rather than building might be wiser.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but it is reality here. I know by experience that the budget could double and even triple, most of the time if you end up in the wrong hands. And let’s not forget the amount of trouble and headaches that one must encounter.

Good Luck!

My personal opinion
Bayx

[mariaobetsanov]

Quality is a misssing , short on re-bars, low psi concrete mixture and low experience. still will not meet the shabiest us standard. most construction here will not make in aa mild 4.5 tremor first check what happen in Pueto Plata on the last mild tremor. I am living here (California)and there (Santiago) been here and not had any damage due to the strick goverment regulations, and go state goverment. any one with or without any knowdlege iin calculating stress factor does work and claim to be a contractor. A mixture control is usually a ignorant man with a hose and meassuring by eye without any control, micture is really hit and run.

[jrhartley]

in tropical climates the rebars rust- thus dropping concrete on your 'ead

[arv]

I am new to this site so as a way of introduction I will give you a little background info. I am Canadian, my wife is Dominican (married legal for about 6 months now) and we live at the base of pico Diego, for now in a rented house. Some will recognize the house if ever at pico Diego, it is white and orange on the right side of the road leading to the mountains. I am retired and my wife does many things including selling books and cds to learn other languages, selling many other things and now guiding tourists. Many of her family work at or for pico diego, I am not sure of all the details, they all speak Spanish so fast that I miss a lot of it. My work in Canada was all construction, houses for myself and big concrete and steel projects for oil and gas plants. I came here to let my retirement income go a little farther.
We are looking at different pieces of land now. The two price system is evident here as well as elsewhere in the DR. We are very careful when buying anything to make sure we are not paying too much. The big ferrateria here is Ochoa, (8A) with most things priced on the shelves so you know others are paying the same price but I still have to try to negotiate a better price( I think the local contractors get a discount but am not sure how much) and possibly a line of credit that is not too much interest.
The land here is sold or measured by the terea (629 square metros). Normal bare land with no services sells for about 240 pesos per sq metro so prices go up from there depending on things like water, road, electricity, view, etc. Most of the land here is without title so before buying that too has to be completed, I have a good and trustworthy lawyer in Puerto plata and my wife is well known and respected locally by everybody including the local lawyer. I could use some help understanding if these numbers are correct or not, these are what have been told to me so maybe not exactly accurate. We are looking at one property that is 5 terea and I am not sure of the exact size, it looks pretty big to me, that is all I need to know. The price is 750,000 RD for all or 150,000 RD to buy one terea at a time. We are looking at another building lot (about 420 sq metros) with all services in the town of los cocos and we think the price is about 200,000 RD but not sure yet, the owner lives in New York and we are dealing with the relatives here. I leave most of the talking for my wife; she understands how to negotiate here better than I do.
Many things I am not sure about here, to start with do I need a permit to build. It looks to me like I can just build without any permit which suits me just fine. I am not going to hire a maestro, all the construction will be done by her family with me and her supervising.
We met with the people selling the lot in los cocos last night and the man gave my wife the price of almost 600,000 RD. He claims that the land in the area is like gold so they have priced it accordingly, I think they just figure I am rich and stupid so just might pay, this is normal here. I think the two price system is more complicated than it seems at first. The people here would lose face if they did not charge me extra for whatever they are selling, everybody knows everybody else’s business it is just a small town. I believe that they feel that they must charge extra or their peers will laugh at them so this makes things more complicated. Some have gotten used to the idea that I am not going to pay too much for anything so with a little more time we will find the land we want for a reasonable price.
A good example is when my wife rented the house we are now living in she did this without the owners ever seeing me or knowing of me. The rent is 3,000RD per month, very reasonable for this area. At the same time she asked how much to buy the house if she likes it and the price was 600,000RD. We moved in and two days later they changed the price to 30,000USD which is about 1,000, 000RD. They did not try to raise the rent which surprises me so even here there are limits too what they will do. I have estimated that the house is worth about 300,000RD, the lot is very small and the house would need many upgrades and changes to make it suitable for us and it has no title. So the search for a suitable piece of land or an existing house continues. We intend to own many different houses and such in this area for rental so we have many options to consider when looking and our time is not wasted. This is our plan for investments, rent houses, buy and sell, build or renovate, it seems to me to be a good plan once we figure out how things are done here.
I believe in sharing information and have experience on other boards. I do not have an internet connection in the house yet so have to use the one in los cocos. I would like more time to read thru the old posts so as not to ask questions that have been answered already but it will take more time.
Just one more thing about financing in this country, I just bought a 300,000RD used car with only 10,000RD down and financed the rest locally. The interest is high but my situation is such that I will pay the entire loan off in three months so the total interest is really not much. Others have told me it is impossible to do this but the car is in front of my house and my wife is learning to drive, so if you want something bad enough….. Have a good day and bye for now.

[Chip]

If you plan on buying property here do your research first, as you can get taken a variety of ways for sure - incl paying too much or buying a property that is not owned by the seller. As far as building a home, as this thread states, doing it yourself is the most economical by far - you just need to get in touch with a reputable maestro to do it.

When you are ready I can put you in touch with a couple of friends of mine, one is a realtor and the other is a maestro and I will ensure you that you will only pay Dominican prices. They have already done work for other DR1'ers. Take care.

[americanized]

I'm about to finish the house I started building middle of last year, when building materials where at all time high. Considering finishing was on the really high-end, and the project was directed by a civil engineer (albeit a friend of mine, but a cost nonetheless), total construction cost per square meter came at about RD$17k.

This cost could have been easily reduced by 25%, had I choose lower-end finishing in many aspects (not bad at all), and possibly even more had I built today.

Building is always cheaper than buying. And you do things as you wish.

My two cents.

[Luperon]

Originally Posted by americanized

I'm about to finish the house I started building middle of last year, when building materials where at all time high. Considering finishing was on the really high-end, and the project was directed by a civil engineer (albeit a friend of mine, but a cost nonetheless), total construction cost per square meter came at about RD$17k.

This cost could have been easily reduced by 25%, had I choose lower-end finishing in many aspects (not bad at all), and possibly even more had I built today.

Building is always cheaper than buying. And you do things as you wish.

My two cents.

Did the 17k include appliances, AC, underground water cistern, battery backup system etc? Its hard to judge without knowing what exactly is included.