AN HONEST APPRAISAL OF THE CAYMAN MARKETPLACE – COLDWELL BANKER
Review
In our last report we predicted slowly clearing skies and some sunny weather. That happened as predicted with a notable increase in business over the Winter Season.
General Outlook
Summer is here in Cayman. It came early this year and descended upon us right after Easter. It is very hot as early as we can remember. We are hoping it is also a rainy summer to help keep the water cool, so as not to add to storm potential. The Real Estate Market also has some heat in it. As described in our last report business began to pick up last October and that trend continued through our Winter Season which was up 47% in # of sales and 18% in sales volume YTD over 2013.
Condos
The number of Condo sales increased 9% YTD over last year and the average price increased 11%
Tourism
Air arrivals continue to increase. Thus far each month in 2014 there have been more air arrivals than we saw in the corresponding month of 2013. For example April 2014 was up 23% over last April. We are also seeing an increase in Cruise Ship arrivals for 2014 (9% in April).
The breakdown of where our air arrival tourism customers come from is as follows for a typical winter month: USA 75%; UK & Europe 10%; Canada 6%; all others 9%. Over the years, this shows an increase of our customer base from Europe and a decrease from the USA. However, the US remains by far our single biggest customer base.