Property Investor information: Martinique
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Property Investor information for: Martinique
Martinique is truly "A little bit of France in the Caribbean Islands." It exudes a distinctly French feeling -- In the excellence of it's caribbean cuisine, the beauty of its language. Yet Martinique has a cachet all its own, an endearing west indian warmth in its personality, a special spice in its caribbean music and dance, its local dishes, and its way of life. It is an island with style.
Around the english speaking world, Martinique is little known. Not many North Americans or Britons visit the island. Most visitors arrive from metropolitan France on charter or Air France flights, holidaying throughout the year. Air Canada and American Eagle run limited schedules. Many Martinique business people would like to see this change to a more international vacation getaway, and there have been some active projects promoting these changes. Club Med has recently invested 60 million US dollars into a new resort on Martinique. This just opened in December 2005 and is deliberately aimed at attracting visitors from the US, facilitated through a new weekly non-stop charter flight from New York City's JFK International Airport to Martinique. The Martinique Chamber of Commerce offers French Language Immersion Programmes, which combines a resort holiday and some pretty intensive language teaching. (Then when you return to work you can announce with strong French accent Je parle francais! Nobody will understand you, but don’t worry about that, it has a lot more cachet than the ubiquitous suntan)
Over the last few years Martinique has welcomed expatriates buying both homes and businesses, especially French Real Estate Agents, some of whom do speak good English.
Martinique real estate compares favourably in price with the other well developed islands in the region, and without any of the implicit risk that is inherent in investing in the smaller autonomous countries in the eastern Caribbean. As an investment, its possibly the safest there is in the Caribbean, close or better even than the Dutch and US Caribbean islands, which have greater local governance.For example an absolutely stunning, very private 5 bedroomed villa, with private access to the Atlantic ocean and beaches, large swimming pool, bordering the Martinique Regional Park, and fantastic views across the bay is selling for just a little more than $1,000,000 US.