One of Antigua’s best known boutique resorts, the Blue Waters Hotel, this week launched sales of eight oceanfront villas--a sign that gun-shy Caribbean developers may be ready to test the market again.  

The "Blue Waters Residences" are being sold under a buy-to-let plan. Owners will be able to use the property for up to two months a year (one month in high season, one month in low season). The resort will rent out the properties for the rest of the year.

An arrest warrant was issued in the U.S. Virgin Islands last week for missing real estate agent Rosemary Sauter-Frett, the owner of the RE/MAX Dream Properties franchise in St. Thomas.

Although it is unclear what charges are pending against Sauter-Frett, clients are trying to recover millions of dollars million in deposits, according to the St. Thomas Source. “Tens of thousands of dollars drawn” on Sauter-Frett’s accounts had bounced in recent weeks, local agents told authorities.

Construction started last month on the super-yacht marina for Christophe Harbour, the 2,500-acre resort and residential development on the southeast peninsula of St. Kitts in the West Indies.

With many projects around the region stalled, any sign of progress on a development is big news. And Christophe Harbour is one of the most ambitious resort and residential developments in the Caribbean, including a Tom Fazio-designed golf course, hotels, restaurants, shops, spa and the usual array of high-end residential properties, in addition to the 300-slip marina with berths to handle yachts up to 300 feet.

International residential purchases on the once-popular islands of Trinidad and Tobago are grinding to a halt in the wake of new regulations, industry executives say.

In 2007, the government enacted a new law requiring foreign buyers on Tobago to acquire a license. Since then, not a single license has been issued.

“The regulators have been very slow to finalize a transparent procedure for obtaining the licenses,” Nicole Ferreira-Aaron, a partner at Hamel-Smith & Co, a law firm based in Port of Spain, told Property Wire.

In a normal world this wouldn’t be news. But these days it seems worth mentioning that a condo and marina development on St. Maarten is opening this month, as planned.

Well, maybe not exactly as planned. The web site for Porto Cupecoy says the project will be completed in summer of 2009. But perhaps that’s quibbling. The project, developed by Orient-Express Hotels Ltd., will officially open next month, bucking the tide of delays and cancellations in the Caribbean.