Properties listed in Las Terrenas

Basic procedure to buy a house in the Dominican Republic:

1. A “Contract of Sale” or “Purchase Agreement” is made and signed by the parties of interest and the required deposit, usually 10% is placed in the Escrow account. This will reserve the property for you and, in essence, take it off the market.
2. Most properties are held in Dominican Corporate names, which give you two major advantages. One is, not having to pay any transfer taxes. You simply transfer the Corporation which contains the only asset, the property you are buying. The second is the avoidance of any inheritance issues.
3. If a property is not held in a Dominican corporation, then you will need to pay a transfer tax. Currently, the tax approximately is 3% of the appraised value. This value is a government calculation and does not necessarily reflect the true value of your purchase (usually far less that the actual cost). At this point, it is highly recommended that you have your Attorney form a Corporation for you to avoid this tax in the future if you decide to sell and to provide you with the inheritance benefit. The costs today to form a Dominican corporation are approximate $1,200.00.
4. Closings are normally within 30-60 days depending on the agreement of buyer and seller. All buyers’ funds should be in the Escrow account 3 days prior to closing. On the closing date, both buyer and seller will sign the appropriate documents, or someone you appoint can act on your “Power of Attorney” to handle the closing for you.
5. Your Attorney will record the sale with the Registrar of Titles, and typically it will be in the new owner’s names within 30-45 days. Legal fees are 1% of the actual sales price.

Further information about taxation, permanent legal residency, inheritance taxes, incorporation of a Dominican company and other legal matter you find at Guzman Ariza, Attorneys.

Internet services: now, 2017, on a very good level. Several wireless providers like Silkglobal and HotSpot. If a property has access to a fixed telephone line you can also do Claro tv and internet. works perfect.

There are also the small internet boxes from Claro and Orange. Not perfect...

TV-services: depends where you are you could hook up to local cable at 11 usd per month. If not SKY TV satellite system starts at 25 usd per month. Or just take a fast internet connection with Netflix.

Mobile phone service: Claro and Orange are the largest ones in the country. Both also have now 4g speed data packages.

Forget about the national post service. Does not work! There are several services in Las Terrenas which handle packages. You can order in fact everything you want for example per ebay and ship it to Las Terrenas. CPS Las Terrenas is one from these offices. Mailbox in the Plaza rosada is another and similar office.

You will find several banks and atm machines in Las Terrenas. Atm's give funds in pesos in general with a max. from 10,000 pesos per day. In general open at 9am and close at 4pm. Saturdays 12pm.

Here a link from Google Maps with several bank and atm locations .

If you want to open a bank account here, in general banks are asking for id, letter of recommendation from your own bank. Sometimes more. You can have accounts in pesos, dollars and euro's. All banks offer online services, credit and debit cards.