Business View Caribbean | August 2022

86 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 8 contractors) into the market and lots of people tendering. Everyone wants the job, so you have to have the best or second best price. You wind up with an 8 or 9 percent margin and 5 percent of that is held until you achieve what’s called practical completion. It’s a very difficult business proposition in a climate with all these rising construction costs.” GH Construction has completed two housing developments up to this point, and the firm is now going into the second phase of its most recent development called Golden Acre. There are five modern townhouses that are going to come on the market this fall in that location. It’s a more lucrative way of doing business for GHC because they partner with real estate companies in Barbados that pre-sell everything off plan. This is not something GHC was doing before because the type of projects they were tendering on were larger. For example, in the past three or four years, the company has completed houses that were $15 million, $6 million, $5 million, and a $45 million residence – so a minimum of $5- $6 million. “But when you’re doing townhouses, they’re in the $1.1 million U.S. range,” Hopkin explains, “so it’s not nearly the same and there is risk inherent with housing developments, as well. You may not sell anything, depending on the economic climate, which is what happened in 2008/09. We had to hold onto nine townhouses for the better part of a decade.” The high-end townhouses built by GHC are almost always purchased by British and Canadian investors as rental properties. According to Hopkin, “They are mostly middle to upper middle class buyers who always had a dream of owning a property in the Caribbean. The British especially have a love affair with Barbados, it gives them piece of mind and feels like home to them and historically it’s a place of value, where they’d like to retire.” GH Construction will be starting the five townhouse block this year and they plan to