Why work from homers are buying in Barbados

Life in the world’s newest republic is sweet. It’s peak season in Barbados, and another wave of Covid hasn’t stopped the rum sundowners flowing on the Caribbean island’s sugar-sand beaches. Given half the chance, many of us might well prefer to spend January wafting between beachfront restaurants and sun loungers, as the packed front-end of planes heading there during December have proved. Many of the island’s predominantly British holiday home owners have been heading to their properties on the West Coast of the island – and there will be no doubt a few villas changing hands too.

‘In the early stages of the pandemic there were a few nervous owners worrying whether there might be any rental guests to help cover their running costs but in the end they needn’t have been concerned as the rentals market has gone crazy,’ says Edward de Mallet Morgan of Knight Frank’s Super Prime desk. There were a few motivated sellers back then, but now prices are beginning to creep up rather than down – and he’s busier at the ‘$20m plus’ end than he’s been for quite a few years.