Grenada CBI Programme · Intelligence Score
Grenada scores 69 / 100 — a best-in-class passport bought through a hard-to-exit asset.
This is a programme score, not a property score. The investable object is the citizenship, and Grenada's passport is the strongest play in the Caribbean — the only one with US E-2 treaty access and visa-free China — which is why Scarcity is exceptional. But you reach it through a government-approved real-estate share with a five-year lock-up, a thin restricted resale pool, and steep acquisition costs, so Exit and Arbitrage both come in Conditional. Buy it for the mobility, not the money: as a property investment it is mediocre; as a passport, it is elite.
Grenada, scored as a programme
Scored as a programme, not a location: the qualifying object is the CBI-approved real-estate asset (hotel-keys / shares in managed resorts such as Six Senses and Silversands), which has its own pricing, supply, lock-up and exit rules — materially different from Grenada's open property market. The three pillars are read against the citizenship: cost of the status, scarcity of the window, and how cleanly capital and the passport survive the exit.
Three pillars, one number
The MPH Intelligence Filter scores every market on three pillars — Arbitrage, Scarcity, Exit — each 0–10. The headline MPH Score is their equal-weighted average. A market is only as investable as its weakest essential pillar — here, Exit. One exceptional pillar (Scarcity) cannot carry two Conditional ones.
Rating band
Grenada sits at the very top of Watch — one point from Qualified. The two things keeping it there are both on Exit: the five-year lock-up and the restricted resale pool. Loosen either — or value the passport above the property — and it crosses into Qualified.
Grenada assessed against the three criteria
Why each pillar scored what it did — read against the programme, with the sub-factors behind it.
For a programme, Arbitrage asks whether the cost of the status is fair for the mobility it buys — and here it nearly passes. Entry from US$270k (share) or US$350k (sole) is competitive against the Caribbean CBI field, and the dirham-style USD peg (XCD 2.70:1, held since 1976) removes all currency risk, so currency_entry_advantage is high. What drags it to Conditional is cost: the qualifying hotel-share yields only modestly (returns are split with the operator), and acquisition friction is heavy — a 10% property transfer tax plus a 10% Alien Landholding License on standard purchases (reduced, but not removed, inside approved tourism projects). You are paying a premium in fees for an asset whose real return is the passport, not the yield.
Scarcity is the whole case — and it is exceptional. Grenada is the only Caribbean CBI with US E-2 treaty access (a route to live and work in the United States via a qualifying business) and visa-free China, a benefit combination no rival programme replicates, so uniqueness scores 9.5. Qualifying supply is genuinely tight: a handful of government-approved projects at any time, with the five-year hold preventing quick recycling of inventory. Demand is structural, driven by that E-2/China utility. And the window is quietly closing — the new ECCIRA regime (the regional CBI authority, headquartered in Grenada) introduces annual application caps, biometrics, interviews and a 30-day presence rule from April–June 2026, with applications filed before 30 June 2026 grandfathered out of the presence requirement. Tightening rules plus caps add scarcity pressure on top of an already unique product.
Exit is the pillar that caps the score, and the constraint is the programme's own design. A mandatory five-year hold locks the qualifying asset, and during that window it can be resold only to another CBI-eligible buyer — a small, restricted pool with no public days-on-market data — so resale_liquidity (4.5) and holding_period_flexibility (4.0) are both weak. The one bright spot is capital mobility: once the hold ends, Grenada has no capital controls and a tax-free regime on foreign income, capital gains, wealth and inheritance, so proceeds repatriate freely. The status itself is durable (citizenship is permanent), but the asset behind it is illiquid by construction. This is the trade-off you accept for the passport.
Opportunity, Risk & Confidence
The same pillar data, re-expressed as upside, downside, and conviction in the evidence.
Weighted to Arbitrage and Scarcity, the upside read lands above the headline — the Scarcity-heavy weighting rewards the unique E-2/China product even as Exit drags the equal-weighted score down.
Into the Moderate band. The decades-long USD peg and tax-free regime anchor capital safety; the live risks are illiquidity (the five-year lock-up and thin resale pool) and regulatory tightening under ECCIRA, not currency or expropriation.
Current 2026 programme sources with good depth on CBI mechanics; thinner on hotel-share yields and resale data. No MPH on-ground verification yet (50), which is the main drag.
The complete Grenada score breakdown continues for MPH members
- ✓ The report scorecard
- ✓ Grand Anse / True Blue: the prime coastal zone outperforms the CBI programme score
- ✓ Why this is a programme score, not a property score
The full detail — including the 9-line report scorecard and segment analysis — lives in the Grenada Intelligence Report, part of the MPH Intelligence Library included in every membership tier.
Explore Membership →Already a member? Open it in your portal →
Grenada property in 2026 — the three questions buyers ask
The same MPH sub-factor scores, regrouped around what matters at the deal table: can you own it, what it earns, and how you exit.
No restriction on foreign ownership; an Alien Landholding Licence is required (~4–6 weeks, XCD ~5k). Combined stamp duty and transfer tax runs ~7.5%. CBI: USD 220k real estate (5-year hold) grants citizenship and an E-2 treaty investor visa for the US — the CBI passport is the programme’s headline value. XCD is pegged to the USD (2.7:1), eliminating currency risk on the structure.
Gross yields in the resort and villa segment run 4–6% where rental management infrastructure exists, but rental depth is more limited than in larger Caribbean markets. Price-to-value relative to Barbados or St Barts is strongly positive. The yield outlook is moderate — the appreciation and passport case is stronger than the income case.
Resale market is shallow by international standards; the primary liquidity mechanism is the CBI resale pool after the 5-year hold. XCD/USD peg means exit proceeds are effectively USD-denominated. Capital repatriation is unrestricted. Holding-period flexibility (4.0) is the lowest Exit sub-factor — the 5-year hold is a real illiquidity constraint.
What’s solid, what to verify
Confidence 73 / 100 — strong on programme mechanics (thresholds, hold period, E-2 access, the ECCIRA changes), thinner on hotel-share yields and resale liquidity, where public data is limited. The time-sensitive items are the ECCIRA rollout and the 30-June-2026 grandfathering deadline — confirmed current as of June 2026, but verify on the specific project before committing.
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