The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A south-west New Providence development was yesterday said to be filling a “ten-year void” in the middle class housing market after clinching $13m in lot sales during its first three months.

Ryan Knowles, also founder and chief executive of Maison Bahamas Real Estate, told Tribune Business “there’s a good chance” one-third of Windsor Lakes’ 173 total lots will be sold by year-end after “blowing through expectations” following the initial launch.

Speaking ahead of the project’s first buyer ‘open house’ tomorrow, he forecast that the value associated with the first 48 lot closings is “probably north of $20m” given estimates that around half the purchasers will likely opt for the “home package” construction offered by Windsor Lakes developers.

Armed with all the necessary environmental and planning approvals, Mr Knowles told this newspaper that Windsor Lakes’ developers - former Chamber of Commerce chair, Robert Myers, and Bahamas resident, Michael Huttman - are “moving quickly” as they seek to complete all the necessary infrastructure and “horizontal work” by 2024’s year-end.

Affirming that vertical construction would begin in earnest in early 2025 with amenities such as the clubhouse and pool, he added that ground will be broken on the community’s first two model homes in summer 2024.

With lot prices starting at $205,000 and going up to $400,000, and home packages costing between $895,000 and $1.2m, Mr Knowles said Windsor Lakes represented the first development to target “upper middle class” Bahamian buyers since Charlotteville emerged almost 15 years ago.

“I think we’ve blown through expectations,” he told Tribune Business of demand to-date. “It’s always a little difficult to predict how sales are going to go. We launched in August and we have sold 48 lots in the space of three months. I would say we’ve exceeded expectations with over 48 lots, over $13m, in sales.

“Bear in mind that we’re also selling home packages, so the $13m might include that. We’ll probably be north of $20m when the home packages are launched. We want to get the infrastructure in place first, but I would imagine half of the people who have purchased lots will go for home packages. There’s going to be a great response. We’ve just gotten started.”

Disclosing that the average lot sales price to-date has been around $285,000, Mr Knowles voiced optimism that the project will drive “badly needed” inventory and supply for a middle and upper middle class Bahamian market that has been starved of such opportunities over the past decade amid ever-increasing focus on the foreign multi-million home segment.

“There’s been a bit of frustration for buyers in the market that options are limited to relying on the resale market almost entirely,” he told Tribune Business. “Normally in a hot market a lot of supply comes in and you have a lot of community options to choose from.

“In Nassau, we haven’t had that. We’ve had the same sort of supply in this segment for the past ten years. If you look at the high end, it has had a lot more development with Aqualina, One Cable Beach and GoldWynn, but as far as the middle market we’ve not seen anything for ten years.

“It’s beyond needed. It fills a void in the market. The fact we’ve sold 48 lots in three months is incredible, and we’ve seen a cross-section of buyers. Most of the buyers are Bahamian. We do have foreign buyers as well, but most are Bahamian. We have entrepreneurs, household names who most people would recognise, all the way to first-time buyers building their homes,” Mr Knowles added.

“The developers are filling a void that is needed.... It’s really badly needed. It’s incredibly important to our supply. We haven’t seen this kind of development since maybe Charlotteville, which was maybe 15 years ago. What we’re finding is a number of buyers are being priced out of communities like Sandyport and Charlotteville in some cases.

“The pricing has gone through the roof, and people are not getting great value in those communities any more. Because our start-out pricing is ‘early bird’ pricing, you can get a lot on the lake for $300,000, which is great compared to what you’d pay in somewhere like Sandyport, which is $500,000 these days just to get in.”

Mr Knowles said the Windsor Lakes developer had slightly reduced the number of available lots to 173 after several buyers had sought more real estate, with this number broken down into 136 single and 37 multi-family. “It’s an 18-24 month build-out,” he added. “We’re already six months or so into it. We have another 18 months to go before we are finished.

“By the end of 2024 we will have all the horizontal work done, all the infrastructure and roads will be in, so people will start building houses in early 2025. The clubhouse, pool, all those things will go in. Before the end of this year you will see the community starting to take shape.

“We will break ground on the first two model homes by the summer of next year. We’ve got the construction crews going, we have the tractors out there, the key equipment guys are moving everything around. It’s moving quickly.”

Besides residential options, Mr Knowles said Windsor Lakes’ storage units are expected to be fully rented out by year-end 2024. “The first phase of the storage facility will be completed by the end of the first quarter next year,” he added. “That will be the first thing built.

“We’ve seen increased demand for the storage facility. We’ve sold a number of those units and have others for rent. It’ll be completely rented out by next year. Water is already in one of the two lakes, and the largest is under construction.”