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Only as much as it can Cape with

7th March 2008 | back to article listings BACK    print this article PRINT

If the talk of the property industry in the last year has been Cape Verde, the issue of how much property can be crammed onto those little volcanic islands in the sun may become an issue before too long.

Or perhaps it won't. According to Simon Walker, sales director for real estate website Off Plan Property, this is exactly what will not happen to the Atlantic archipelago.

He suggested that the sort of countries that were involved in developments there would ensure that the situation was well managed and that lessons were learned from places where overdevelopment had occurred, such as areas of the Spanish costas. Moreover, he suggested, building could be "filtered" out as investors started to spread out to other nearby destinations.

As well as this, Mr Walker argued, the environmental concerns which may have been absent when too many tower blocks began to litter the costas were in evidence now: "I don't think it will be oversubscribed. There are limitations there … And with the green side of everything they [developers] don't want to be seen as destroying such countries."

Such news should be welcome enough to investors, who would hate to see the beauty and variety of the islands spoiled by overdevelopment, pollution or too many crowds. But that is not all the good news, Mr Walker suggested, for UK investors will have an advantage over eurozone buyers when it comes to buying in Cape Verde, due to the predominance of transactions in the dollar, currently very cheap when exchanged from sterling.

He stated: "Most of these countries deal in US dollars when buying property, so the English purchaser has the benefit of the exchange rate."

There is no shortage of those looking to extol the virtues of Cape Verde, including one notable promotional angle of flagging it up as an alternative to the Caribbean, not least because it has the advantage of being in the same time zone as the UK and only five hours flying time away.

All this was mentioned again by Easier property today, which suggested that in addition to the 15 per cent rise in prices last year there will be a 25 per cent increase in 2008. For the attention of buy-to-let investors, it mentioned that the islands have a year-round season, which one may see as another advantage over the hurricane-prone West Indies.

In one way 2008 should be a big year for Cape Verde come what may. The World Trade Organisation has said that after a successful negotiation process, the accession of the country to the body is in line to be ratified on June 30th. Cape Verde is booming; all the more reason for developers not to kill the goose which lays the golden egg.

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