In a year in which mortgage assets for Jamaican building societies remained flat and delinquencies for the
National Housing Trust (NHT) passed the billion dollar mark, the Jamaica real estate market nevertheless showed signs of resuscitation in 2010. The
National Land Agency (NLA) reports that approximately J$43.5 billion in Jamaican real estate sales were completed in 2010, with local realtors pointing to the determination of buyers to take advantage of the Jamaican foreclosures and sales of distressed properties.
With the mortgage performance of building societies flat, the increase in real estate sales in Jamaica may be reflected on the balance sheet of the NHT, which lowered lending rates by one per cent in mid-2010 and also increased the loan ceiling to J$4.5 million per individual. To a lesser extent, the increase might also be due to some cash sales, suggests Edwin Wint, immediate past president of the
Jamaica Realtors Association, and according to Howard Johnson, president of the Realtors Association of Jamaica and CEO of
Howard Johnson Realtors Limited, his firm "saw more cash sales in 2010 than we did in the two previous years."