In Parts 1 and 2 of this article I covered finding your plot of land, title searches, finding a lawyer, architect and construction engineer. Now you are almost ready to begin construction work…….almost, but not quite!

A range of building permissions are required before building commences. This is the owners responsibility to obtain, not the architects or the builders, but of course if either of these people have contacts in the relevant departments you can fix a price with them for doing this extra work. Some rich foreigners building here in DR do not ‘bother’ to get planning permissions. This is very unwise since at the end of the day any one of the authorities could apply for an order to demolish the building. In Spain recently and as a result of unauthorized use of green belt areas, house owners are now likely to be held criminally accountable as well. This hasn’t happened in the DR and usually lack of permissions is not seen as providing grounds for prosecution so much as a financial opportunity.

The person who builds without planning permission will get a visit from someone at one of the departments who will negotiate to ‘overlook’ the lack of plans for a ‘consideration’. Then someone from one of the other departments will arrive with the same proposition………..and when all the departments have had their bite at the cherry, the cousin of the person from the first department will come round………..There are no secrets in the DR!! Far better for both peace of mind and pocket to get all planning permissions done correctly at the outset. In 2000 all 5 permissions cost us 15,000 pesos (then just under US$800).

The relevant bodies from whom permissions are required are the local City Hall (which takes a few days), the Public Works Department in Santiago if your property is to be built on the North Coast (takes 2 to 3 weeks), the Municipal League in Santo Domingo (takes a few days), the Tourism Department in Santo Domingo (allow at least 2 weeks) and if you build in certain areas an outfit known as DEFINPRO which is the Central Banks Development and Financing of Projects and takes about 2 weeks. Each of the permissions will be stamped on the top copy of your building plans, so if you get a ‘visit’ all you need do is show your plans and off they all troop, cousins and all! Think of the plans in the same way that garlic cloves are thought of in relation to vampires……………

The other requirement for permissions is in relation to clearing your building site. Permission is needed from the Forestry Department for removal of trees, especially mahogany trees which are protected. This requires a solicitud (letter in Spanish respectfully requesting what you want) and payment of a fee. If, as in our case, you intend converting the mahogany trees to furniture, you also need a transportation permit. We stored the cut mahogany at our old house and then our carpenter collected it and took it to his workshop. He would not move any of it without a transportation permit since he knew he was at risk of the wood being confiscated at the very least and possible prosecution for illegal cutting of protected trees. This doesn’t denote very active implementation of policies to protect the DR’s natural resources so much as an opportunity for financial gain by the arresting officer! Each time the wood is moved from one location to another, you need to check that your transportation permit is still valid, or get an extension. All of this was absolutely worth the bureaucracy however, in order to be able to return our ‘trees’ to our home as dining room chairs.

The actual building of the house is an exciting if potentially hair raising time. As indicated above, hands on supervision is a must. In my case I knew nothing about building a house but I was and am blessed with common sense. If something doesn’t look or feel right - ask questions!! It was my husband who discovered the footings had been dug one meter further back than the plans signified - this despite the engineer ‘measuring’ the site!! This was not a catastrophic error and we decided to run with it after using the mistake to the best advantage to engender simpatico from our engineer - and it certainly kept him on his toes for the next week or so. At the end of the day we have a larger garden than intended at the front of the house and hardly any at the rear - but we can live with that.

There is no shortage of labor in DR so provided you keep the monthly payments coming work will move on apace. The labor force is predominantly Haitian and they work very hard indeed in grueling temperatures. They are not always well treated by the works manager or engineer if he is Dominican, because of the relationship which exists between Dominicans and Haitians in the DR. Our engineer did not treat the laborers badly, mainly because he had an inherent dislike of confrontation (even when it was needed) but I found that gestures like taking a bag of oranges to the site for distribution amongst thirsty laborers went a long way to encourage good work. It was further encouraged when they realized I spoke French. From this the Haitian laborers extrapolated that I also had Kreyol (I don’t but I understand some) and the level of blue jokes diminished markedly when I made my daily site visit.

The engineer will be the one responsible for subcontracting various tasks depending on the requirements of the plans and estimate. He will, of course, use his buddies and subcontractors he has used before. This does not necessarily mean they meet certain minimum standards! In our case, the master builder was someone we knew and his side of the construction, for example, the laying of meters and meters of ceramic tiles, was done satisfactorily. However, he had no control over the engineer’s decision on subcontracting carpentry, electrical work and window fittings to name but three.

The carpenter was a real find and we still use him for additional furniture today, 6 years after the house was completed. A true professional (no glue and nails for him!) and a really nice person, one who can be generically described as a ‘treasure’. The standard of the kitchen cabinets, built in wardrobes, doors and the like was excellent and there is a lot of mahogany in our house. Unfortunately, the Haitian laborers were not always so careful when carrying large objects through the newly fitted doorways and there was a potentially explosive situation when a laborer wearing a Sony Walkman and headphones was carrying an item through a doorway and could not hear my husbands warning not to scrape the new door.

I would not necessarily recommend this way of handling the situation unless you know what you are doing: my husband roared at the offender, removed his headphones and thwacked him over the back of the head. All of a sudden a noisy workplace was………………..absolutely silent! It helped that the carpenter was present and looked suitably crestfallen to see his new door damaged and that the master builder, who had not witnessed the incident, was likewise annoyed. But if you have an engineer who cannot confront staff for carelessness and worse, then you either have to do it yourself or put up with shoddy results. As it was, we noticed a marked attention to detail in the weeks which followed and a new found respect for my husband from the laborers. But…..it could have gone the other way.

I will not bore you with detail as to the window problems - suffice to say do not have a design with curving windows. It is above the pay grade and just too difficult to successfully achieve. But it is important to point out the custom in the DR of setting windows back from the edge of the window sills and (as we noticed) without making those same sills sloping down to the outside of the house so that rain runs off. Our sills were horizontal meaning heavy rains and strong winds would have resulted in an indoor pool inside the house when such was not part of our original design. This was one of the jobs which had to be done again - by hand! No use of an electric sander to slope off the sills here, instead the two tools closest to the workman’s heart in the DR, a hammer and chisel to knock out the old plaster and start again. Plus the ensuing noise, dust and delay. You have been warned.

Finally, in this section, a comment on the subcontracted electrician. He had worked for our engineer for years and he quite simply was homicide waiting to happen. We fired him. Electrics are just too important to put your life at risk on a daily basis. Our engineer was very hurt by our attitude since he clearly trusted this man’s work, or felt sorry for him because the electrician had a speech impediment (that did not exactly help when trying to understand a foreign language either!). The engineer insisted he had never had any complaints about the electrician before and was not amused when I asked how many previous clients had lived to tell the tale. It is probably true that the engineer had not had complaints before - Dominicans are a very uncomplaining people. And, of course, we were then responsible for finding a replacement electrician which we did. We also got the new electrician to check everything so far done by the first electrician…………..and put it right. Extra expense, of course, but absolutely necessary.

This reminds me to mention on site accidents during the building process. They are relatively common in the DR, if only of a minor nature, mostly because of the sort of carelessness referred to above. It is, therefore, absolutely crucial to check that your engineer has included in his estimate accident insurance for laborers and other workers. This is a legal requirement so it should be done automatically, but…..if you don’t see it in the estimate, ask!! Injury causing permanent handicap to a worker can be an expensive business and even though your engineer will be at fault if this is not provided, the chances are that it will rebound on you as the ‘rich gringo’. Most of the laborers are incredibly acrobatic but they work at heights and without first world protection or harnesses and serious accidents can happen through falling. Or, of course, they can come across live wires left uncovered by the electrician your engineer thinks is perfection personified ( which he would be if his job was in the execution chamber……..)

Our plumber was basically reasonable but he obviously specialised in houses for strong men (the shower taps were screwed too tight for little old me to activate them) and he had never fitted a dishwashing machine before (we had one of the first three ever fitted in Puerto Plata). Despite the dishwashing machine being positioned next to the kitchen sink so that drainage could be combined, the plumber banged through a few more holes into the wall (I did tell you about the two tools closest to the heart here, didn’t I?) to fit another drainage pipe. Not too much of a problem except that this put the machine absolutely front flush with the kitchen cabinets and so we had to abandon plans for a mahogany front door covering for the dishwasher as this would have stuck out an inch or so from the cabinets surface. By now, 6 years on, more people have dishwashing machines and plumbers are gaining more experience. But it is also a cultural thing - because labor is inexpensive in DR the maid is the person who traditionally does the washing up, so even a lot of upper middle class homes and above do not have dishwashers. If you want to import these ‘foreign’ notions be aware that it will involve you in a lot more explanation to counteract the plumber’s lack of experience with such a machine.

And given the state of play with electricians here, do not even think of having one of those homes where you sit in your den and electronically control all about you by remote control. Maybe a nice idea for some, but not here, not yet, maybe mañana (when the meaning of mañana is light years away…..)

If we were to mark a scorecard for how we found the professionals we used in the whole of the home building process:- the lawyers we used (2 different ones for 2 different transactions) were good, the architect excellent, the engineer poor, the master builder average, the carpenter excellent, the window suppliers and fitters poor and the electrician not describable in a family magazine. I should point out that we are relatively assertive individuals who believe in ‘damage control’ and will take action where we can, in advance of things going wrong. Whinging and moaning about standards of work and not doing anything about it, is not for us. We probably broke every rule in the book by firing the electrician directly ourselves, but we could see that the engineer did not want to fire him and in the DR this means he probably was not going to. The only way of avoiding any more danger was to prohibit the electrician entry to the house. Had we used the architects supervisory services (mentioned in Part 2 of this article) then this job would have landed in his lap, not ours.

We have been living happily in this house for 6 years now and we love it. The area is quiet (a luxury in the DR) and our Dominican neighbors are simply the best. We have, of course, carried out some improvements in that time, such as bitumen sealing (water proofing) of the flat parts of the roof to avoid rain leaks (as I said, when it rains here, it really rains). It should be noted that a couple of years after we moved into our new house we noticed that our neighbors were also engaged in home ‘improvements’. People here expect to do this; they do not expect a new house to be trouble free and their expectations are usually fulfilled! We have been fortunate that our improvements, particularly those which were necessities, were of a fairly minor nature.

The house had a major test in 2003 with a 6.5 earthquake……..and it passed. A few cracks, to be sure, but subsequent checking revealed these to be plaster cracks, not structural damage. Given that the previous sizeable earthquake in this locality was 50 years earlier, it is to be hoped that the house will not have a second test any time soon. We have also purchased half of the next door lot (the other half being purchased by our other neighbors) in order to avoid another house being built too close by. This area now houses the generator, vegetable and fruit garden and dogs play space.

Finally, a number of retiree expats building here in DR will intend ending their days here. The question then arises as to what happens to your house after your death - not maybe the jolliest of topics but one which needs to be considered. In our case, it is easy, since on our respective demises the house will be gifted to a charitable foundation, together with whatever money we leave, so that an apprentice school can be set up to provide training for young Dominicans to equip them for employment (not necessarily in the house building field although we have not ruled it out entirely!).

However, there are expats who are going to want members of their own families to inherit their property, and indeed Dominican law provides for ‘forced inheritance’ - 50% of the estate has to go to your offspring unless you avoid this by using a company to own your property (and if you do use a company then you are liable for company taxes, as outlined earlier). Inheritance taxes have varied during the 14 years we have lived here - it used to be 17% to 32% of the appraised value of the estate, recently it has been lowered to 3%. However, if the beneficiary lives outside of DR there is a whopping 50% surcharge on inheritance tax, so it is a good idea to either get your offspring to move to DR, at least in the short term before your death, or to take good legal advice about this. If, for example, you had an electrician like our first one, your demise could be a lot sooner than you think……………………

Ginnie Bedggood: Bedggood_bush@hotmail.com

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