safe

More important question is how are you going to be able to afford a B & B there. Are you aware of what housing costs in stj? B&B's haven't really taken off in the caribbean. You will see small hotels that will have a ton of small studios or 1 bedroom cottages, but a B &B is rare. I know stt has a few, stx has at least one but havent heard of one in stj. The idea of renting a room inside someone's house has never appealed to me.

stj is very safe and extremely expensive. Whatever you buy there you can sit on it and you will make money.

hi, thank you...we have no problems with money the only issue we had was being safe.
I have been looking and see 3 B&B's on St. John and they are so pretty, but what we would do is us not live at the house (3 bedrooms) but live close by.
The three B&B I see on St. John looked to be booked up at least now thru June 🙂

Thank you

Oh, so all the local people are friendly to new people who want to make their life on the beautiful island?

Jennifer, St. John is very safe. The majority of crimes here are third degree burglaries (when the homeowner is not home) and grand larcenies, usually involving someone breaking into a car to steal something like a laptop, or stealing a purse or beach bag from the beach while the owner of the bag is in the water. The lesson here is do not leave valuables in your car and don't take valuables with you to the beach.
I think how the locals will treat you is based on how you treat them. If you are friendly and greet everyone with a "good morning" or "good afternoon," they will likely be pleasant to you.
Locals may stay distant or be testy at first, as they see many people come and go, but once they realize you are here to stay, they will become more open to being friends. This is all my opinion based on what I have experienced in the almost two years I've lived on St. John.
Good luck in getting your B&B started, and please don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.

If you dont live there what makes it a B & B? Isnt it just a small hotel then? Honestly curious but no need to respond if you dont want to.

On a side note there are not many locals on stj other then the ones that work there and take the ferry home. Or rather that is the more likely scenerio. Locals and newcomers are mostly priced out of stj. Good Luck.

On Sunday, under the "what are the price/ rental / ROI trends and projections" thread, Puffer wrote, "There are villas on St. John in the $900,000 to $1.1 Million range that have dropped their asking price by as much as $196,000 (about 20%) over the last year. And the shakeout looks to get worse before it gets better." I too have observed this happening and would not assume that, "Whatever you buy there you can sit on it and you will make money."

As to safety, the answer is "it depends." If you don't flaunt your affluence and don't spend a lot of time out after dark, your chances of becoming a statistic greatly diminish. It is always smarter to go jogging or to beaches with a friend. Many folks do hang out at bars at night and don't use the buddy system at the beach and live to tell the tale but you sounded interested in minimizing your risk.

Friendliness is reciprocated but you have to learn what constitutes friendliness to West Indians and what does not; saying "Hi" to a clerk is not perceived as evidence of good manners in the same way as saying "Good Morning/Afternoon/Night, How are you?" Overall, society here is more formal and it can takes awhile for West Indians to befriend Continentals.

Hi-

Kind of, but I have been looking up B&B's for a long time and a lot of people just live in another house on the property or near by. What we would like to do is also have a little boutique and some activities so your right it may be more like a little hotel.
I just hope we can keep busy 🙂
I need to really look into marketing now?
What location on the island do you think would be the best, where do most people want to stay? I think walking distance to the beach and to town, is there a name of the area I should be looking in?

Thanks again
Jennifer

dntw8up we never agree on real estate. Real Estate in stj will always be a safe bet. You can only build on about 25% of it and it is definitely a jewel in the Caribbean. The market may have had a minor set back there but over the haul (5 to 10yrs ) you will definitely make a profit. Once a house gets in the million dollar range, negotiations go from asking for 10 of thousands of dollars off the price to 50k to 100k. I don't find that that unusual. And when prices go down as much as 20% on a house (at least here in stx) it is usually because someone was living in dreamland or an inspection revealed there is a serious problem with the house. But finding a house on stj for 900k to 1.1 million is fairly cheap by that island's home prices, so i'm sure there are some fixer uppers in that price range.

Hi Jennifer,

My husband and I are planning to move to STJ when our house sells and he is finished with his tour overseas. Your idea sounds like fun; I wish we had the same financial position! Have you visited the island much? We have been several times and have felt pretty safe but I don't think I would do much walking alone. We hope to live in Cruz Bay which is the main town with the ferry dock and local restaurants/shopping. I have been corresponding with a woman who saw my post about moving to STJ. I am in the process of getting her thoughts on safety and such and she has a child. (we do not) I just want to be able to walk to the market and into town during the day by myself. I don't tempt fate here in Mass. I live in a very small, peacefull town on a quiet road. In November, at noon time, a woman was mugged and had her neck crushed even after she gave them her jewelry. We were all shocked. What's more I was on the road 5 minutes away jogging wearing several pieces of expensive jewelry. Just goes to show no place is predictable no matter what time of day. Feel free to pm me and maybe I can get you some answers when I get them. I am going down for a week in June with my mother to check out more daily living activities. Have fun!

Sarah

Me thinks you need to take a trip to St John. My impression is you've never been there since you mentioned walking to the beach and to town in the same sentence. Take a trip and look around.

A Bed and Breakfast is more like a small hotel with more personal service. My family was involved in one. It's not like renting out a room-- it is usually a separate building with a several rooms and bathrooms and a small dining room to accommodate all the guests at various times in the morning. Full amenities like towels, soap etc are provided. Breakfast was made to order for guests only. Services like what to do in the area were offered as well as arranging activities etc etc...like a hotel, just small with a few rooms and small staff and breakfast service. I think there is a demand for these types of small places in the USVI, rather than the large disney-esque resorts. In STJ, one could be especially successful. Though STX would also be a perfect place to open some more small, family run B&B's to combat the mass commercialization that the proposed resorts might bring.

Mass Commercialization?? From where? A couple of resorts? Do you realize that the 3 large hotels on this island are under 200 rooms? And they have a hard time staying full in the off season. Please don't encourage anyone to sink their savings in a B & B on stx. We simply do not have the tourism. We have hovensa.

There are 5 new resorts planned all in the 500+ room range complete with golf courses and casinos to open within the next ten years. If those places come, yes, there will be a commercialization of the island.

There are several small hotel owners on island who do manage to stay pretty busy throughout season and off-season. Many travelers who dislike places catered completely towards tourism like STX because it isn't real touristy. There is a demand for small, luxury hotels in "off-the-beaten-path" locations--which STX has to offer for such travelers.

Oh Betty, I see now I was wrong! Forgive me. Once the casinos are built, those types of people won't want to come to the Vegas of the Caribbean anymore. Keep the small charming hotels away!! Bring in the big resorts and the golf courses to suck away at the water supply and the casinos to further gambling problems, crime, prostitution, and all that jazz that casinos seem to trail in their mist to our community!! What was I thinking? Sorry again.

Oh yes, we have all been ...I loved in Puerto for two years so St. John is a place we would visit every 5 or 6 months.
So, yeah we would walk to the beach from anywhere??????

I have found 3 B&B's there in St. John and they are very busy, which I was glad to see.

We are not going to live at the B&B, so it will be like a small hotel with a boutique and actaivites planned.
I have been all over the Caribbean and so have my parents and we all just fell in love with St. John so we thought this would be the perfect place 🙂

I have opened 3 large Spa at resorts, the golden door and one of them was at the El con in Puerto rico.

lol...never said i do or don't want the large resorts. But you are mapping out stx future on what might happen. If 2 of those large resorts get built on stx it will be a miracle. It takes too long for things to get built here, time is money. Most of these corporations do not understand the type of red tape and hassle stx will put them thru. There are simply much easier places to built in the Caribbean. Any equity they made by buying cheap land on stx (relatively speaking) will be out way with the amount of time and effort it will take to get anything built here.

How are they going to suck away the water supply? Most of our water here comes from the sky? Are you Maui Girl in disguise and claiming the big resorts are adding to global warming? A large resort will probably just desalinate their own.

With the amount of crime we have on the island having some large resorts that depend on tourism might be just the thing to kick the police department in the butt and get them to do a honest day's work.

There are no small "luxury" or boutique hotels on stx. If you think there are you are roughing it way too much on this island.

There are small hotels however. And you are correct there are some small hotels that manage to stay busy and make a little profit, but those are rare and have more to do with the owners owning the property for a long time, knowing the island and the culture well, offering cheap rates, having low mortgages and having 20+years of repeat business and a hell of alot of hustle.

No I am not Maui Girl. Never even been to Hawaii unfortunately. Golf courses tend to need a lot more water than the sky offers, especially in the rainy season. I suppose they could desalinate--but that is really expensive--especially if they want to keep the equipment hidden and do it on site. Golf courses also put a lot of strain on the local environment what with pesticides, run-off, excessive watering, unnatural grooming, destruction of local habitats for many critters and plants. They sure won't help those DPNR beach reports we get every few weeks!

I didn't say there were any small luxury hotels--but from what I hear from tourists today and from the past, there would be a small demand that could keep a few of families afloat, if they had to right know-how.

Casino's don't tend to encourage a "community clean-up" in terms of crime. They actually tend to encourage more crime. I wish the police would get into gear and who knows if the resorts might help them--then again, the cycle of crime and corruption might be encouraged as areas of the US and world have seen happen in the wake of casinos.

You know though, it does seem these resorts are pretty serious. I'm not their biggest fan in particular. And I know how difficult it is for them to build like you said, but they seem to be hustling to break ground. Only time will tell.

Jennifer
You have been attacked by the "know it alls". Everyone has an entertaining position on what will work on St John. If you keep up with the news (as you should) you will find that due to a very bad decision by the USVI senate an unpopular development was approved. (Serinusa) sp.

I think a B&B would work very well on St John. The big question would be the price of real estate. If you have to pay two million dollars for a usable property, then you can never get your investment to pay a profit. If,as some suggest, real estate costs are declining you might be able to get into a property that you could use as a B&B and maybe even make a profit.

Go ahead and try to make it work. I would much rather see a B&B than the mega building that is proposed by the big bucks developers.

I'm not following!!! You're saying that when you were on STJ you walked to the beaches from everywhere? is that what you're saying? I'm very confused. Most of the beaches that I know quite well, are well....quite a walk.

I agree that a B&B would work well on STJ and it would be welcomed. Question is the cost of property and the current mansionization of the island.

My Question is with regards to it's place within walking distance to beaches.

I suspect you're talking more about a Guest House rather than a B&B.

" there are not many locals on stj other then the ones that work there and take the ferry home"

where do you come up with this stuff???

jennifer you need to do a serious pmv, visiting STJ a few times on a vacation trip is no basis for even thinking about business venture and investment.

Hey, lay off a little guys. Here we have an experienced businesswoman with family support and proven successes in the same industry and in the Caribbean behind her. She knows the area and has finances to back her. She wants to develop in a small way to create a facility that might actually be sustainable and attractive. Jennifer, I say go for it! If you're scouting for land/location, that can serve as a PMV. I have far less knowledge about this type of business than you; it might be true that given the cost of land you'll never get rich off it. But I bet you'd have a load of fun, and I'd love to see the enterprise you come up with.

"...an experienced businesswoman with family support and proven successes in the same industry and in the Caribbean behind her...." does not automatically and in any respect translate to anything remotely similar in the USVI. Without a very intensive pmv, jennifer and her family could lose everything if they're not extremely careful.

Those who are giving her what could be perceived as "negative advice" are trying to inject reality so unless you have extensive personal experience in both living here longterm and running any sort of a business here, your hoorah and "go for it" stance count for little.