North Coast August 14, 2026

Tax reform, tourism records, and a new resort: What’s behind the North Coast’s Real Estate growth

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Tax reform, tourism records, and a new resort: What’s behind the North Coast’s Real Estate growth
Dominican Republic North Coast Beachfront Villas

By James Oosterman, CIPS, Broker/Owner, Blue Sail Realty

For years, coverage of the Dominican Republic’s North Coast real estate market has leaned on asking prices and developer projections rather than what’s actually closing. Three shifts are underway at the same time — a capital gains tax cut, a record tourism season, and a major new resort development — and transaction data from local brokerages offers an early read on what’s happening on the ground.

On June 18, 2026, the Dominican Republic enacted Law 30-26, cutting the capital gains tax on individual property sales from a progressive scale that had topped out at 25% to a flat 10% — a change that directly affects what sellers net on a resale and what they’re willing to accept. The shift comes during the country’s strongest tourism season on record: combined air and cruise arrivals reached 6,616,671 visitors nationally through the first half of 2026, up 59.5% since 2019. Puerto Plata alone now captures roughly 90% of the country’s cruise passengers, split mainly between the Amber Cove and Taino Bay terminals.

Infrastructure investment is compounding the effect. Punta Bergantín, a roughly 10-million-square-meter tourism and residential development east of Puerto Plata, is under construction with a planned 4,500 hotel rooms across six five-star properties — including Hyatt Zilara and Hyatt Ziva properties under the Martinón Group, and a Meliá property developed jointly by Grupo Puntacana and the Escarrer family — alongside 1,500 vacation units and 2,500 mixed-use residential units. Phase one, with 2,100 hotel rooms, is targeted for completion by 2028–2029; backers project up to 25,000 jobs and 300,000 additional annual visitor arrivals once the project is complete.

Against that backdrop, data compiled by Blue Sail Realty, a Cabarete-based brokerage that tracks closings across the North Coast, offers a snapshot of how foreign buyers are responding. The firm recorded an estimated 2,050 foreign-buyer residential closings in Puerto Plata province in 2025, with the Costambar–Cabarete corridor — the stretch of coastline anchored by Sosua, Cabarete, and the beach towns between them — accounting for 68% to 72% of that volume. Closings tracked by the brokerage ran 9% ahead of the prior year in the first quarter of 2026 and 12% ahead in the second. These figures come from one firm’s own transactions and regional filings rather than an independently audited market-wide count, but they’re a useful indicator of direction.

The same data set shows closings clustering in the middle of the market rather than at the luxury end: properties priced between $300,000 and $399,000 — mostly three-bedroom villas with private pools — accounted for 31% of the brokerage’s tracked closings between mid-2025 and mid-2026, the largest single band, followed by $220,000–$299,000 at 24%. Together, those two bands account for 55% of all tracked closings — more than half the market — one of the more notable patterns in the data. Properties above $800,000 made up just 10% of volume. Buyers skewed Canadian (38%), American (29%), and European (21%), with an average age of 48; 41% said they planned to relocate to the property full-time within two years, a share that has been edging upward.

Independent data on rental performance paints a similar picture from outside any single brokerage’s own book. TheLatinvestor, a Latin America property-data publisher, puts net rental yields for Sosúa and Cabarete properties at 6.5% to 8.1%. Short-term-rental analytics firm AirROI reports occupancy across the broader Cabarete and Sosúa Airbnb market — covering the full spread of listings, from budget studios to unmanaged units — at 33.1% and 28.4% respectively over the past twelve months, with average annual revenue per listing of roughly $12,600 and $12,100. Blue Sail Realty’s own figures for a narrower set of professionally managed villas run higher — 74% average annual occupancy and a 6.1%–9.6% net yield on a typical $400,000–$550,000 villa — though those figures are the brokerage’s own, drawn from its own managed properties rather than independently audited, and shouldn’t be read as representative of the wider rental market.

None of this means the North Coast is immune to broader market risk. TheLatinvestor’s own analysis of the wider Puerto Plata market puts a possible 8% to 12% pullback in weaker resale inventory on the table if North American demand cools, and notes homes outside the strongest corridors are already selling 5% to 9% below original asking price. Taken together, the tax change, the tourism records, and the new development are unfolding alongside the market’s renewed attention, even if the data available can’t isolate how much each factor is contributing. The transaction and rental figures gathered so far offer an early, partial picture of the market — not a guarantee of where prices go next.

 

Methodology & Sources

Third-party sources cited in the article

Law 30-26 capital gains tax cut (effective June 18, 2026; individual rate cut from a progressive scale topping out at 25% to a flat 10%):

H1 2026 national tourism arrivals (6,616,671 visitors, +59.5% vs. 2019) and Puerto Plata’s cruise-passenger share (90% nationally; Amber Cove 52% / Taino Bay 38%):

Punta Bergantín project scope (10 million sq. meters; 4,500 hotel rooms; Hyatt Zilara/Ziva and Meliá partners; 2,100-room Phase 1; 2028–2029 completion target; projected jobs and visitor arrivals):

Independent net rental-yield estimates for Sosúa and Cabarete properties (6.5%–8.1% net):

Independent Airbnb market data for the broader (all-listing) short-term rental market in Cabarete and Sosúa — occupancy and average annual revenue:

Broader Puerto Plata market benchmarks (5–9% below-asking closings; 8–12% downside-risk range for weaker resale inventory):

 

Blue Sail Realty’s own data

Figures attributed to Blue Sail Realty in this piece — closing volume, price bands, buyer nationality and intent, and the professionally managed rental portfolio — are the brokerage’s own, compiled from closed sales it handled directly, public real estate registry (Jurisdicción Inmobiliaria) filings, CONFOTUR registration records, and booking and revenue data supplied by the property management companies it works with. These figures are not independently audited and are presented in the article as one firm’s on-the-ground data point, not a market-wide benchmark. A fuller published version of this same data set is available at the link below for cross-reference:

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James Oosterman is the Owner and Broker of Blue Sail Realty, a CIPS-Certified International Property Specialist with nearly two decades of experience in Dominican Republic real estate, based on the North Coast in Cabarete.

 
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