How Canadians Finance a Dominican Republic Property

How do Canadians finance a property purchase in the Dominican Republic?

Canadians fund a Dominican purchase one of four ways: cash sent from Canada, borrowing against Canadian home equity, developer financing on a pre-construction unit, or a mortgage from a Dominican bank. No Canadian bank will lend against Dominican real estate as collateral, so a Canadian mortgage on a Punta Cana condo is not an option. Dominican banks do lend to non-residents, generally at 8% to 10% on US dollar loans, but they usually want 30% to 50% down and take four to eight weeks or longer to approve.

Ask a Dominican lender whether a Canadian can get a mortgage in Punta Cana and you will get an enthusiastic yes. Ask someone who has actually sat through the process and you get a very different answer. On the expat forums, the same complaint surfaces over and over: “We have been working in a mortgage for 3 months. Constantly another document needed.” One long-time resident put it more bluntly: “It is very very difficult to get bank loans and or mortgages here from the banks. As expats they do not like to deal with us.”

Both versions are true, and the space between them is exactly where Canadian buyers get stuck. Financing is available. It is just slower, more expensive, and more document-heavy than anything you have dealt with at home, and for a lot of buyers it turns out not to be the right tool at all.

I own in the Dominican Republic myself, so I have been through the funding question personally as well as with clients. Here is how it actually works.

The Four Ways Canadians Pay for Dominican Property

1. Cash sent from Canada: This is the most common route, and there is a reason for it. A cash buyer closes faster, negotiates harder, and skips the Dominican mortgage process entirely. Most sellers and developers in Punta Cana, Cap Cana, Las Terrenas, and the North Coast are priced and structured around cash buyers, so you are not the outlier.
2. Borrowing against your Canadian home: A home equity line of credit (HELOC) or a refinance on your Canadian property converts you into a cash buyer in the Dominican Republic while borrowing at Canadian rates. In Canada, the revolving HELOC portion is capped at 65% of your home’s value, and your total secured debt including your mortgage is capped at 80%. Read the trade-off carefully: your Canadian home becomes the collateral for a Dominican investment. If the DR side underperforms, the exposure sits on your primary residence.
3. Developer financing on pre-construction: Most Dominican developers finance their own inventory, and the terms are often better than a bank’s. A typical structure is a reservation deposit of roughly US$2,000 to US$10,000, then 10% to 30% down, then interest-free instalments spread across a 12 to 24 month build, with the balance due at delivery. Interest-free is the headline, but the balloon at delivery is the part to plan for. You need a funding plan for that final payment before you sign, not after. The mechanics and the legal protections are worth understanding in detail, and our legal guide to buying pre-construction abroad walks through the contract side.
4. A Dominican bank mortgage: Banco Popular, Scotiabank, BanReservas, and Banco BHD all lend to foreign buyers. Scotiabank tends to be the most straightforward for Canadians, largely because it is used to reading Canadian tax returns and credit files. Expect roughly 8% to 10% on a US dollar loan and 11% to 14% on a peso loan, 30% to 50% down as a non-resident, and a term of 10 to 20 years rather than the 25 or 30 you are used to.

What the Dominican Mortgage Process Actually Looks Like

The forum complaints are not exaggeration, and they are not really about hostility. They are about a system that has no way to read you.

Your Canadian credit history does not exist in the Dominican Republic. As one poster put it, “expats have no good credit here. They have nothing. Credit from anywhere else counts for nothing here.” So the bank compensates the only way it can: with a much larger down payment, heavier income documentation, and a slower file.

Plan for the following:

• Two to three years of income documentation: Employment letters, Canadian tax returns, or business financials.
• Demonstrated monthly income: Most banks want to see somewhere in the range of US$2,500 to US$4,000 per month at a minimum, and approved foreign borrowers typically sit well above that.
• A Dominican bank account: You can open one as a non-resident with a passport and a reference letter from your Canadian bank, and USD accounts are standard.
• The bank’s own appraisal and legal review: Runs in parallel with your attorney’s due diligence.
• Four to eight weeks to approval: And often longer if a single document goes missing.

You will also read that residency is required. It is not, strictly speaking, and non-residents do get approved. But residency changes the math considerably: it typically drops the down payment from the 30% to 50% band into the 20% to 30% band. If you are already weighing a Dominican purchase against a Florida winter, and permanent residency is on the table at a US$200,000 qualifying investment, the financing benefit is worth folding into that comparison. We covered the broader version of that decision in our look at the Dominican Republic as a snowbird alternative to Florida.

Get pre-approved before you make an offer, not after. A pre-approval is what makes a financed offer credible against the cash offers you are competing with, and it surfaces problems while you still have leverage.

Getting the Money There Without Losing 3% on the Way

This is the step almost nobody models, and it is real money.

Dominican property is priced in US dollars. You earn and hold Canadian dollars. That means every payment you make, from the reservation deposit to the closing balance, passes through a CAD to USD conversion.

Your Canadian bank’s retail wire service commonly costs 1.5% to 3% in spread. A dedicated foreign exchange firm typically quotes well under 1%. On a US$400,000 purchase, that difference is in the thousands of dollars, and it costs you nothing to set up an FX account before you start writing cheques.

Two more practical points:

• Time the conversion, or lock it: A Dominican closing runs roughly 60 to 90 days from accepted offer to registered title, with 30 to 45 days of due diligence in the middle. The Canadian dollar can move several percent across that window. Many buyers lock the rate on the large payments rather than gamble on the timing.
• Send deposits to your attorney’s escrow, never to the seller directly: This is the single most important funding rule in the country. As one forum veteran put it: “Make sure your contract is written by YOUR lawyer, protecting YOU and make sure your deposit is refundable in the event your funding doesn’t happen. Pay the deposit to your lawyer only.”

Budget for the transaction costs on top of the price. The transfer tax, the Impuesto de Transferencia Inmobiliaria, is 3% and is assessed on the greater of your purchase price or the value the DGII (the Dominican tax authority) assigns to the property. Projects approved under CONFOTUR, the Dominican tourism incentive law, are exempt from that transfer tax and from annual property tax for a set period, commonly 10 to 15 years. If a developer tells you a project is CONFOTUR approved, ask for the approval documentation rather than taking the sales pitch at face value.

What Financing Changes About Your Canadian Tax Picture

Two things worth raising with your accountant before you close, not after:

1. CRA Form T1135: If the total cost of your specified foreign property crosses CAD$100,000 at any point in the year, you have a reporting obligation. A vacation home you use personally is generally excluded. A property you hold to earn rent is not. The form is a reporting requirement rather than a tax, but the late-filing penalty runs CAD$25 per day to a maximum of CAD$2,500 per year, which is an expensive way to learn about a form.

2. How you borrow affects what you can deduct: Whether interest on a Canadian HELOC used to buy an income-producing Dominican property is deductible in Canada depends on tracing the borrowed funds to their use, and it is fact-specific. Ask before you draw the money, because the paperwork trail is much harder to reconstruct later.

If the property will be rented, also understand that Dominican-source rental income paid to a non-resident is generally subject to Dominican withholding at the top rate on the gross amount, with no deductions. That materially changes a leveraged deal’s cash flow, and it is the first thing to model if you are counting on rent to carry a mortgage payment. How the property is actually operated matters here too, which we cover in our guide to managing a Dominican Republic property remotely.

Annual property tax, the IPI, is 1% per year, and it only applies to the portion of your total Dominican property value above the exemption threshold. For 2026 the DGII set that threshold at RD$10,695,494, which works out to roughly US$185,000 at early August exchange rates. The threshold is re-indexed every year, so confirm the current figure rather than reusing last year’s.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a Canadian get a mortgage in the Dominican Republic without residency?
Yes. Non-residents are approved by Dominican banks regularly, and residency is not a legal requirement. What residency changes is the down payment, typically moving you from the 30% to 50% range into the 20% to 30% range, and it generally smooths the file.

Will my Canadian bank finance a property in Punta Cana?
No. No major Canadian bank lends against foreign real estate as collateral. What Canadian lenders will do is lend against your Canadian home through a HELOC or refinance, and you then use those funds to buy in the Dominican Republic as a cash buyer.

How much do I need for a down payment as a Canadian buyer?
On a Dominican bank mortgage, plan for 30% to 50% as a non-resident. On developer financing for a pre-construction unit, the entry point is usually 10% to 30%, with interest-free instalments during construction and the balance due at delivery.

Are Dominican mortgage rates really that much higher than Canadian rates?
Yes. US dollar mortgages for foreign buyers generally run about 8% to 10%, and peso loans run higher still. That gap is the main reason many Canadian buyers borrow at home and pay cash in the Dominican Republic instead.

Does CONFOTUR change my financing?
Not directly, but it changes how much cash you need at closing. A CONFOTUR-approved project is exempt from the 3% transfer tax, which on a US$400,000 purchase frees up around US$12,000 of closing cash. Always verify the approval yourself rather than relying on marketing material.

How long does the whole purchase take?
Roughly 60 to 90 days from accepted offer to registered title, with 30 to 45 days of due diligence and a further one to two months for the title to register at the Registro de Titulos. If you are financing through a Dominican bank, add four to eight weeks for approval and start that process early.

The financing question has a simpler answer than most buyers expect: for the majority of Canadians, the cheapest capital is capital you already have access to in Canada, and the Dominican mortgage is the fallback rather than the plan. But the right answer genuinely depends on your equity position, whether the property will be rented, and whether residency is something you want anyway.

If you are working through this for your own purchase, I am happy to walk you through the numbers and the funding options side by side before you commit to anything. Reach out anytime at [email protected], or send your details through our Contact Page and we will get back to you. If you are earlier in the process, our Canadian guide to Dominican Republic real estate covers the full purchase from the start.

Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Dominican property law, tax rates, and exemption thresholds change, and your situation is specific to you. Before you buy, engage a licensed Dominican attorney to handle title due diligence and the closing, and speak with a Canadian cross-border tax advisor about CRA reporting and how the purchase fits your overall position.

About Ryan Coyle

Ryan Coyle is the founder of Connect, a real estate brokerage with more than 20 years in the industry and over $2 billion in transactions. A Dominican Republic investor himself, Ryan has built a meaningful personal position in the DR market, and through Connect’s international arm he helps Canadian buyers, investors, second-home owners, and snowbirds navigate ownership across the Dominican Republic, from Punta Cana and Cap Cana to the North Coast, with a focus on the numbers, the process, and long-term wealth building. Learn more at connect.ca.