Buying Property in Jamaica From Overseas

The duplicate title in the seller's hand is a copy of the register as it stood on the day it was issued. A caveat, a court order or a dealing already lodged can sit on the register and show nowhere on the duplicate. The National Land Agency says plainly that it is unsafe to rely on the duplicate alone. So your attorney searches the current register before anything is paid. What the search cannot show is who is living on the land and where the fence actually runs. A surveyor's report answers that.

The person on the other end of the email matters as much as the land. Before money moves, the attorney's practising status is confirmed; our article on checking a Jamaican attorney explains how. The seller's attorney does not act for you.

Then the account. Changed bank details that arrive only by email or by message are the oldest trick in overseas property fraud, and buyers have lost a whole deposit to one. Telephone a number you already know, or use a video contact you have already verified, before any payment leaves.

An agent's message is not the contract. The Agreement for Sale is. It fixes the price, the deposit, the completion date and what happens on default, and no two agreements are identical. If you are borrowing, it is read against the lender's conditions before you commit, not after. Our article on the true cost of buying property in Jamaica sets out the whole sequence and the charges on top of the price.

Many buyers sign where they live. Others appoint a trusted person in Jamaica under a Power of Attorney, which for land documents is stamped and deposited at the Office of Titles before it can be used. Not every document needs the same witness or notarisation, and a document signed the wrong way comes back and the completion date slides. Your attorney gives you written signing instructions for your country before you sign. Expect to be asked for identification, proof of your overseas address, a TRN and evidence of where the money comes from. If more than one of you will own the property, the choice between joint tenancy and tenants in common is made before the transfer is drafted, because it decides what happens to the house when one of you dies.

At completion the money and the documents change hands as the Agreement says, and the transfer goes for assessment, stamping and registration at the National Land Agency. You own registered land when the register names you. Keys handed over by a cousin at the gate prove nothing. Be wary of a seller who will not give a title reference, of pressure to pay before your attorney has read the contract and of completion promised by a fixed date before anyone has read the title.

Send us the title reference and tell us where you will be signing from, and we will tell you what the purchase involves from where you sit.