B is for Barbados ... and for Bureaucracy

TRAVEL | BARBADOS | REAL ESTATE

Building a dream home in Barbados might be Paradise, but it also takes patience and perseverance.

This is the third part of a series where I look back on my family’s relocation from the UK to Barbados.

Barbados is recognized for many things. The playground of the rich and famous, it’s known for the invention of rum (others have tried to claim it but they are wrong), being part of a once-great cricket team, beautiful beaches and its British heritage.

The island was a British colony for more than 300 years, gaining independence in 1966. Signs of the colonial past are everywhere, if you care to look. There’s a Trafalgar Square, and the south coast road passes through Worthing and Hastings. It was once called Little England, and the views across the St.George valley are reminiscent of the finest examples of the English countryside.

But during our self-build project we discovered another unsung remnant of British heritage — the bureaucracy.

B is For Bureaucracy

Think Britain in the 1950s and you’ll have some idea where I’m coming from. The government is the island’s largest employer and many people dream of securing a ‘government job’, where security, longer holidays and as many paid sick days as you want make for an easy life.

The result: hundreds of people with nothing to do but push paper — and push it they do. This is a place where almost every form is filled out in triplicate or quadruplicate and where carbon copies still abound. (Side note: while things are now improving as formerly cumbersome processes move online, that hadn’t happened when we started our building project. )

Transatlantic Paperwork Can Be Costly

To purchase our land, we’d had to complete due diligence, provide passport photos and copies of bank statements. We also did a power of attorney so that someone could sign documents for us in Barbados and keep the process moving.

The power of attorney was thrown out on a technicality and a local lawyer then charged us a princely sum to prepare a virtually identical document for us. We then had to notarize the new documents in England and post them to Barbados. That took several visits at the rate of £120 an hour — clearly, bureaucracy in England wasn’t much better.

Mortgage Woes

Meanwhile the process of getting a mortgage was trickling along. In Britain , you can get a mortgage approved in days if everything stacks up. In Barbados it took, let me see, two years and counting.

First, we had to find a mortgage lender. As before, it had to be a bank comfortable communicating via email. Once we’d found one, it was time for another round of form filling. Just as we thought we were getting somewhere, our contact at the bank got promoted. Great for her, but terrible for us, because her replacement was a poor communicator, and didn’t respond to email. That’s a big problem when managing a self-build from 4,000 miles away.

Eventually, we took another trip to Barbados to finally, we hoped, sort everything out, and sign the paperwork. But the process still felt like wading through treacle. In frustration, we emailed our original contact, who managed to get things moving again. (If you’re keeping track, we were now at two years post buying the land.)

Finally, we had a mortgage account, but there was still more bureaucracy to wade through. There were questions about land tax (paid), water supply to the land (none, how could there be, as we hadn’t started building yet) and the power of attorney. I could feel another costly trip to the notary coming on. Finally, nearly three years on from the land purchase, we got the final bit of paperwork notarized — or so we thought.

Then, another problem surfaced. It turned out that the original land transfer form was wrong. Apparently, what we owned was the thin air above the land, not the land itself. Everyone admitted that this was just a clerical error (though why it had taken three years to pick it up I don’t know.

That meant the Central Bank had to change the land transfer form. They were involved because we were bringing money into the country. You have to register your foreign exchange funds if you ever want to be able to take them out again. Though we didn’t, it made sense to have the option.

We had to wait one more week to get the new paperwork processed, then the build was finally cleared to proceed. After four years to get from sight of land to start of build, one week’s delay seemed a small price to pay for finally beginning our dream.

Planet Plan It

While all the mortgage stuff was going on, there’d been another setback — a miscommunication with our original architect. It meant we had to find another architect fast. As before, we were looking for someone who’d be responsive, and the person we found was a bit of a surprise.

I know the island is small, but it was strange that our new architect had been in my class in high school. We asked for a quote and received a response by return — this was more like it!

Enter Trinity Homes, an off-the-shelf architectural design firm owned by Liz Cupples and her husband Chris, who project managed their builds. A quick look at their website confirmed that we’d be able to find something we liked and Liz guaranteed that we’d be able to customize the chosen plan.

This was more like it. Upfront costs were listed (for off the shelf designs and submission to town planning) together with the areas where there might be overruns. We checked out a couple of their homes in a nearby development, and narrowed our choice to two.

Making the Final Choice

We liked the look of the Spring Garden, which was a sprawling bungalow, but we couldn’t see how to fit all we needed into it. Plus, the alterations would overrun us by some $15,000. A far better choice was the two story Casafina, which would allow us to have our bedroom over the golf course. We would also be able to convert the garage space into a granny flat. And most importantly, we’d stay on budget.

In just over a month we had an amended plan ready to send to town planning and our mortgage lender. All we had to do now was get planning permission and start building. Oh, if only it were so simple …

Catch up on parts 1 and 2 of the series below:

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© Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall is an anti-racism writer, a professional B2B writer and blogger, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast. This is a revised and updated composite version of a story originally published on Sharon’s Writing Lab.