Every broker in the Caribbean will tell you their market is growing. Here are the figures that were actually published for 2025, where they came from, and — just as important — what they do not tell you about Cap Cana.
What was published for 2025
Three numbers came out of the Dominican government this year that are worth knowing before you look at a single listing. All three are national or regional. None of them is a Cap Cana price index, and I will come back to that.
- 11.6 million visitorsThe Dominican Republic closed 2025 with its highest visitor count on record, ahead of the 11,192,047 counted in 2024. Tourism revenue was reported at US$ 11.3 billion.
- More than 11 million passengers through Punta CanaPunta Cana International Airport moved more than 11 million passengers in 2025, up 9.9% on 2024, across 35,092 flights — a 15.6% rise in operations. That airport is fifteen minutes from the Cap Cana gate.
- US$ 5,032.3 million in foreign direct investmentA national record and the fourth consecutive year of growth, up 11.3%. Tourism took 26.3% of it and real estate a further 15.7%, which between them is over forty cents of every dollar that came into the country.
Why the airport figure is the one to watch
Arrivals and investment are national numbers. The one that bears directly on a property inside this gate is the airport, and specifically the 15.6% rise in flight operations rather than the 9.9% rise in passengers.
Passenger growth can come from fuller aircraft on routes that already existed. Operations growth means more flights — new routes, new carriers, more frequencies. For an owner who intends to rent, that is the difference between the same visitors arriving more cheaply and a genuinely wider pool of people who can now get here on a direct flight. It is also the number that moves slowest in reverse: an airline can fill a plane less, but it does not drop a route it has just launched.
If you are buying to rent, read the routes, not the totals. Ask which cities gained a direct flight to Punta Cana this year and whether anyone in your building is already renting to that market.
What none of these figures says
This is the part that usually gets left out. Not one of those three numbers is a measure of what a home inside Cap Cana is worth, or of what it sold for last year.
There is no published price index for this community. Sales here close privately, between a buyer, a developer or an owner, and two lawyers. There is no MLS that every broker reports to and no public register of closing prices you can pull a chart from. Anyone quoting you a precise appreciation rate for Cap Cana — a clean 8% a year, 12% since the pandemic — is estimating, and you are entitled to ask them what sample they estimated it from.
National tourism growth is real and it matters. It tells you the demand side of the rental equation is getting stronger. It does not tell you what the villa you are looking at will be worth in 2030, and treating it as if it does is how people overpay.
What I can tell you, from the catalogue in front of me
What I can give you is the supply side, because I track it. These are counts from my own list as it stands today, not a forecast:
- 43 developments under way or recently deliveredOf those, 16 are scheduled to hand over in 2028 or later. That is a long pipeline, and it is the single most useful fact on this page.
- 1,554 units declaredAcross the developments that publish a unit count. The real figure is higher, because a dozen do not publish one at all.
- 13 of the 43 carry CONFOTURFewer than one in three. The incentive is not automatic and not universal here, whatever a sales office implies.
- Entry prices from US$ 128,160 to US$ 1.4 millionMedian entry price across the developments that publish one: US$ 315,000. Entry price means the smallest unit in the building, not the one you are being shown.
- 41 resale and ready homes, median US$ 315,000Ranging from US$ 128,160 to US$ 1,850,000. The bedroom mix is telling: 16 one-bedrooms and 15 two-bedrooms against seven homes of three bedrooms or more.
How I would read that pipeline
Sixteen developments delivering from 2028 onward, against a two-bedroom-heavy resale market, says something specific: a lot of small rental-grade inventory is arriving at roughly the same time, and most of it competes for the same visitor.
That is not a reason to stay out. It is a reason to be precise about which building you buy in, and to ask a question that nobody asks in a sales office: how many units of my exact size and layout are being delivered within a kilometre of this one, in the same eighteen months? If the answer is two hundred, your rental yield has two hundred direct competitors on day one. If it is twenty, it does not.
The scarce end of this market is the opposite: three and four bedroom homes, of which there are seven in my entire resale list. Families who want to live here rather than visit are competing for a very small number of properties, and that is a different market with different dynamics from the one the tourism figures describe.
The practical version
The country had a record year and the airport had a better one. That is genuinely good news for anyone who will rent out a unit here, and it is the honest reason to look at Cap Cana now rather than in five years.
But “the market is growing” is not a price, and a national arrivals figure is not due diligence on a specific building. Ask for the delivery schedule, the competing supply, and the resolution number if CONFOTUR is being offered. Those three will tell you more about your outcome than any headline published this year.
Figures published by the Ministry of Tourism, Punta Cana International Airport and the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic for the 2025 calendar year. Catalogue counts are my own, as of this article. Ask me for the source if you want to read them yourself.
