The Alien Landholding Licence in St. Kitts and Nevis, Start to Finish

If you are not a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, you need an Alien Landholding Licence before you can own property here. It costs 10% of the value of the land, with a floor of EC$750, it is issued for one specific property, and on St. Kitts the government’s own published timeframe is three months. On Nevis the island administration issues its own, in two to four weeks in practice.

Everything else about buying as a foreigner is arranged around that, and our St. Kitts and Nevis property for sale section covers the rest of the purchase.

Where it comes from

The Aliens Land Holding Regulation Act is Chapter 10.01 of the laws of the federation. It dates from 1922, came into force on 1 February 1923, and defines an alien as anyone not deemed to belong to St. Kitts and Nevis under the Immigration Act, which means anyone without citizenship or a recognised belonger status. CARICOM and OECS citizens are aliens for this purpose. The Act’s only nationality carve-out is for citizens of states given land-holding rights by treaty, and none applies to the region. Banks and financial institutions are excluded from the definition.

A company counts as alien too if any director is an unlicensed alien, or if unlicensed aliens hold more than one third of its shares, votes or debentures. A local company with foreign shareholding above that line needs a licence before it buys land, and an alien taking shares or a directorship in a local company applies for a licence under section 8 of the Act for that reason.

What you can hold without one

The Act has one everyday carve-out. An unlicensed alien may hold land on an annual tenancy or anything shorter, for the purpose of residence, trade or business, up to five acres in total. A twelve-month lease needs no licence; a two-year lease does. A foreign buyer waiting on a licence can occupy the property as a tenant in the meantime, provided the tenancy is a year or less and not a purchase dressed as one.

Land inherited under a will or on an intestacy is not forfeited if, within one year of the death or such longer period as the Governor-General allows, it is sold or the heir obtains a licence. An inherited mortgage is kept without a licence, but the heir cannot foreclose or take possession of the mortgaged land until one is granted.

The licence is for one property

A licence names the land and the interest, freehold or lease or mortgage, and is operative only for what it names. A second lot means a second application. The licence cannot be transferred to the next purchaser, and it has no legal effect until it is registered in the Record Office; an unregistered certificate is not a licence in force.

Licences are granted in the Governor-General’s name and decided by Cabinet, whose post-Cabinet briefings record batches of approvals for land purchases and for directorships in local companies.

The St. Kitts route, step by step

Your attorney assembles the application and submits it to the Ministry of Sustainable Development at Bladens Commercial Development, Basseterre. The ministry, and through it Cabinet, decides. If approved, the ministry forwards an approval letter to the Legal Department, which prepares the licence certificate. You then carry that certificate to Inland Revenue and pay the fee. The final step is registration at the Land Registry, which took over land registration from the High Court Registry under the Land Registry Act of 2017. Four offices, in that order. The official timeframe for the whole sequence is three months, and real files run from six weeks to longer than that depending on how clean the paperwork arrives.

The documents are an original police certificate, a certified copy of your passport, the legal description of the land, a copy of the survey plan, a professional or bank reference, a cover letter and the fees. Companies add their statutory statements and memorandum and articles.

Two forms carry the application. The first is an Affidavit of Identity and Character, sworn, in which you declare that you have no criminal record anywhere, consent to the government investigating that claim, and acknowledge that if a record is later found the licence may be withdrawn and the property forfeited to the Crown. The second is a seventeen-item questionnaire drafted for corporate applicants, covering the company, its directors, the local company whose shares are being acquired, and the applicant’s bankers. Request the police certificate first; it takes longest to arrive from abroad and the file does not move without it.

The 10%

The fee is 10% of the value of the land or EC$750, whichever is greater. Value means the money consideration, including the price of any improvements passing with the land. The Act itself only sets a fifty-dollar stamp on the licence; the 10% is charged as ad valorem stamp duty on the licence under section 98 of the Stamps Act, which is why you pay it at Inland Revenue rather than at the ministry. On Nevis the administration charges 10% of the purchase price or the government’s assessed value, whichever is greater.

Attorneys charge a separate fee for preparing the application, from EC$1,500 upwards, on top of the conveyancing scale.

Nevis runs its own

On Nevis the application goes to the Nevis Island Administration, through its Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Housing and its Legal Department, both on Main Street, Charlestown. Developers on the island report two to four weeks for a decision. The NIA has adjusted the fee more than once: a waiver of the fee on homes and existing buildings, not bare land, ran from 1 September 2020 and was extended to 30 June 2022, and since 21 January 2025 the fee is waived for buyers without citizenship who have a Nevisian parent, grandparent or great-grandparent, with those applications processed within fourteen days. The licence is still required in every case. Ask what concession is in force in the month you sign.

Who is exempt

Cabinet can exempt a person or a company from the Act by order, and it has done so for specific places rather than classes of buyer. The one that matters most to individual purchasers is the South East Peninsula: a buyer of up to two acres there, for the purpose of building a single residence or villa, is exempt from the Act altogether under an order from 2009. Christophe Harbour sits inside a wider exemption of its own, granted to the KHT Land Holding joint venture under its 2007 development agreement.

Other orders exempt named developments, sometimes from the Act and sometimes only from the fee. The Ritz-Carlton project lands at South Friars Bay were exempted from the fee in 2018 and, by a 2022 order backdated to April 2018, from the Act altogether. Beacon Heights held a fee exemption for five years from 27 April 2020, which has lapsed. On Nevis, buyers at the Four Seasons Resort Estates, Nevis Sands and some condominium projects pay no 10% fee under concessions negotiated by the developers, but they still apply for and hold a licence.

Purchasers under the Citizenship by Investment programme buying into an approved development are not charged the fee in practice, through the concessions attached to each development’s approval rather than any rule in the CBI regulations, so check the order for the specific project. Buy an ordinary house outside an approved project, even with citizenship pending, and the licence applies until the passport is in your hand. The current CBI real estate thresholds are US$325,000 in an approved development or US$600,000 for an approved private home, held for seven years.

Condominiums have no exemption of their own. Neither does Frigate Bay, whatever older guides say; no order we can find grants one.

What it all adds up to

Take a house on St. Kitts at US$300,000, bought by a non-citizen outside any exempt development.

Stamp duty on the transfer is the vendor’s liability under the Stamps Act, and the Act makes it an offence to pass that liability to the buyer. The Act sets it at 10% of the consideration across most of the country and 12% of market value on the South East Peninsula and in any Special Development Area; only where the vendor is the Government, the Frigate Bay Development Corporation or the National Housing Corporation does the purchaser pay, at 6%. The agent’s commission, usually 6%, is also the vendor’s. A buyer should expect to pay the quoted price plus roughly 11% to 12%, and nothing from the vendor’s side.

On Nevis the structure is the same. At 10% the buyer’s total on a US$300,000 house is about US$36,000 with a 2% legal fee. During a fee holiday it is about a sixth of that.

Fitting the licence into the deal

The licence is the longest step in a foreign purchase, so the sale agreement should be conditional on it: signature, deposit into the attorney’s escrow, application, completion on approval. Vendors accept this. They do not accept an open-ended wait, so agree a long-stop date, ninety days is common on St. Kitts, with the deposit returned if the licence is refused and the vendor free to walk if the date passes.

Bank auctions are the exception. An auction sale completes on the bank’s timetable, and a bidder without a licence in hand can find the completion deadline arrives before the certificate does. Our guide to buying at a bank auction covers how to approach that.

The penalty for holding land without a licence is forfeiture to the Crown, following a High Court judgment, with the Crown’s title relating back to the time the forfeiture took place, normally the day the alien began holding the land unlicensed. Holding it through a local nominee to avoid the Act is a separate offence.

Frequently asked questions

If you are weighing a purchase and want to know how the licence timeline fits your dates, or whether the property you have in mind sits inside an exempt area, ask us before you make an offer.