A top re­al es­tate ex­ec­u­tive has called for greater gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion con­cern­ing bu­reau­crat­ic ap­provals in a bid to re­duce the gap be­tween con­struc­tion costs and af­ford­abil­i­ty in the res­i­den­tial re­al es­tate mar­ket.

De­spite dis­tinct­ly high lev­els of de­mand, de­vel­op­ers are dis­cour­aged due to these de­lays caused by red tape and the in­crease in the cost of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als. These have dri­ven con­struc­tion costs up, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly di­min­ish­ing sales as a re­sult of the widen­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty gap, said Jean Paul De Meil­li­ac, the CEO of Ter­ra Caribbean Trinidad.

He told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Thurs­day that T&T has seen a sig­nif­i­cant slow­down in new res­i­den­tial projects, as many de­vel­op­ers find it dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy new de­vel­op­ment at cur­rent sales val­ues.

“They’re not build­ing. There’s too much risk in it. When they look at the num­bers and every­thing, they’re not build­ing,” said Jean Paul.

“I see it as my du­ty to in­form the pub­lic of where the chal­lenges are and to lob­by the gov­ern­ment to ease the process, ease the bu­reau­cra­cy in the ap­proval process, and in­cen­tivise de­vel­op­ers. There’s very lit­tle de­vel­op­ment hap­pen­ing now. Very few de­vel­op­ers are build­ing res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties be­cause they know they can’t sell it at the end of the day. The peo­ple can’t af­ford it,” he said.

In Ter­ra Caribbean’s T&T Res­i­den­tial Prop­er­ty Snap­shot for the first quar­ter of 2026, the re­al es­tate agency not­ed: “A res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty cost­ing $1 mil­lion to build in 2020 re­quires ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.3 mil­lion in ma­te­ri­als alone to­day—be­fore labour or pro­fes­sion­al fees.”

The re­port al­so point­ed out that the in­crease in the price of ce­ment by Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, the sixth con­sec­u­tive an­nu­al price in­crease from the com­pa­ny since 2021, fur­ther in­creased con­struc­tion costs.

The re­port stat­ed T&T ranks third high­est in the Caribbean for con­struc­tion cost es­ca­la­tion (BC­QS 2025), while achiev­able sales val­ues re­main among the re­gion’s low­est.

“As you see there, from 2020 to date, prices have in­creased by 30 per cent. And that’s be­fore pro­fes­sion­al fees and labour. That’s ma­te­r­i­al alone. Ce­ment went up 15 per cent last year alone. But that’s on­ly a part of the is­sue,” said Jean Paul.

He said an­oth­er ma­jor is­sue is the lack of in­fra­struc­ture, mak­ing ac­cess to new land on which to build hous­ing de­vel­op­ments more dif­fi­cult.

Jean Paul al­so high­light­ed the bu­reau­cra­cy in­volved in com­plet­ing a hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

“So put your­self in the shoes of a de­vel­op­er. Buy a piece of land to­day, pay X amount of mil­lions, and bor­row it from the bank. Start to pay in­ter­est. He goes to get ap­provals now to find out what he can build and out­line ap­provals. Then he goes, and he pro­duces this tremen­dous plan for what he’s go­ing to build. He now has to get ap­provals from each of the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies be­fore he starts to build,” said the prop­er­ty ex­ec­u­tive.

He ex­plained these costs of­ten have to be passed on to the end buy­er, and with most of the pub­lic strug­gling to se­cure mort­gages in ex­cess of $1 mil­lion from banks, new prop­er­ties are al­most au­to­mat­i­cal­ly priced out of reach.

As such, he called on the gov­ern­ment to in­crease in­cen­tives for de­vel­op­ers to bring these costs down.

“So whether it’s a tax re­bate on some of the in­te­gral con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als or it’s a tax in­cen­tive on the prof­its in the first few years, it re­al­ly means the bu­reau­cra­cy needs to be re­vis­it­ed so that pri­vate en­ter­prise can work, “he said.

He point­ed out that con­tin­ued in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly roads and ac­cess points, is vi­tal for open­ing up new lands for po­ten­tial res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment.

“We should em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of in­fra­struc­ture. Con­tin­ued in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, roads and ac­cess, and how much of a dif­fer­ence that makes. You know, the high­way go­ing south has made a huge dif­fer­ence. That by­pass has made a huge dif­fer­ence,” he said, “As we open up these cor­ri­dors for peo­ple to trav­el, we open up ac­cess to new lands for po­ten­tial new de­vel­op­ment. And make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to move about, dri­ving pri­vate en­ter­prise and con­struc­tion on the whole. So, it’s im­por­tant to fo­cus on that point.”

Ter­ra Caribbean di­rec­tor Chris­t­ian de Meil­li­ac, not­ed that many de­vel­op­ments in cen­tral and east Trinidad have in­deed been boost­ed due to im­proved ac­cess roads.

“There is great op­por­tu­ni­ty. I mean, there’s still val­ue in land out there,” he said, re­fer­ring to in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in San­gre Grande, “You can still buy at a rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive price com­pared to more es­tab­lished ar­eas. The in­fra­struc­ture is im­prov­ing. So, the By­pass Road now that pass­es Va­len­cia, and you can get to San­gre Grande much more eas­i­ly. There are more shops and restau­rants in Grande.

“So, it’s a far more ap­peal­ing place. And sim­i­lar­ly, I think, with work from home, peo­ple are able to work from Ari­ma. So, with­out a job in town, there’s less re­liance on hav­ing to come to Port-of-Spain.”

It was al­so not­ed that the de­vel­op­ers of­ten had to seek out part­ner­ships to cre­ate some­what af­ford­able op­tions, with prof­its be­ing split, as was the case with sev­er­al res­i­den­tial apart­ment high-ris­es which had been built re­cent­ly.

Jean Paul ex­plained, “But that project, much like West Hills and North Hills, and there are one or two more in the East, the names which I for­get at the mo­ment, is a type that they’ve cre­at­ed a dif­fer­ent struc­ture where they work with a landown­er. So the de­vel­op­er doesn’t ac­tu­al­ly buy the land and start to pay the in­ter­est from the be­gin­ning.

“The landown­er owns the land al­ready. So they say, ‘Look, you bring a piece of land that’s $3 mil­lion, we will bring the steel and con­crete to $3 mil­lion. We cre­ate this at $6 mil­lion, and the run­ning costs are less. We sell them out, and you get half of the prof­it. It’s a joint ven­ture that is less re­liant on the banks.”

He said there have been pos­i­tive signs that the is­sues in the sec­tor had been ac­knowl­edged by the gov­ern­ment, as there has been progress in terms of digi­tis­ing some of the pro­ce­dures for ap­provals.

The Ter­ra CEO added that the Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein had al­so recog­nised the chal­lenges faced in the process and had giv­en pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tions about ad­dress­ing them.

How­ev­er, he was un­sure it would be ad­dressed in next week’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view.

On Thurs­day, the Pub­lic Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T al­so ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment had an­nounced plans to ad­dress lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form of con­struc­tion and build­ing ap­provals, which has been called for by pri­vate sec­tor play­ers for many years.