Most buyers arriving from North America or Europe assume a home inspection works here the way it works at home: you call a licensed inspector, they arrive with a clipboard and a moisture meter, and three days later you get a 40-page PDF. On Sint Maarten, that assumption breaks down almost immediately — there is...

A lot of buyers assume an appraisal is optional paperwork you can skip if you trust the seller’s price. On the Dutch side of Sint Maarten specifically, that assumption is wrong — and Island Dreams Realty walks both buyers and sellers through this process regularly enough to know where people usually get surprised. This guide...

Both timeshare and full ownership get sold as “owning a piece of Sint Maarten,” but they’re not the same purchase. Island Dreams Realty deals exclusively in full ownership property, so it’s worth being upfront that this guide has a point of view — but the numbers behind that view are real and worth understanding before...

Closing on a home in Sint Maarten is the easy part compared to figuring out who to call first. Island Dreams Realty walks new homeowners through utility setup regularly, and the honest answer is that the order you do things in actually matters here more than it does back home. This guide covers electricity, water,...

A building permit in Sint Maarten today means something it didn’t in 2016. Island Dreams Realty represents buyers evaluating both new construction and older resale properties across the island, and the construction era of a home is now one of the first questions worth asking — not the last. This guide walks through what actually...