When COVID-19 arrived, panic travelled faster than the virus itself. Across the globe, economists, commentators and armchair experts were convinced that housing markets would collapse under the weight of lockdowns, job losses and uncertainty. Jamaica, many assumed, would be no different.
They were wrong.
Not only did the Jamaican housing market fail to crash — it behaved exactly as it usually does. It paused. It settled. It stood still for a moment. And then, quietly, it carried on.
That alone should tell us something important: Jamaica’s housing market does not move like other markets. It never really has. And trying to analyse it through the same lens as the United States, the UK or Canada will almost always lead you to the wrong conclusion.
This blog is about why that is. It is also a wake-up call — especially for working and middle-income Jamaicans who are still waiting “for prices to come down”.
Because history tells us something uncomfortable: they rarely do.
