An additional cost of buying property in Aruba

[jfltdoc]

Not typically mentioned when one buys property and moves to this sunny island of Aruba is maintenance. Beyond the typical costs of maintaining the property (e.g. plumbing, electrical, painting), one needs to realize that for large appliances such as refrigerators and washers that there may be additional expenses over time that you normally wouldn't account for. These are:

1. Manufacturer warranties on new appliances that may be more than a year typically won't apply in Aruba.
2. Some appliances are S. American/C. American versions that do not have an equivalent in the US, so parts sometimes cannot be ordered (e.g. LG refrigerators) in the US.
3. Make sure all of your major appliances have surge protection. Due to the high probability of power outages, you might end up with a TV or refrigerator "fried". This has happened to us now twice in 5 years. The second time an Elmar (electricity company) employee was outdoors in the neighborhood, changing some equipment, and caused a momentary power surge. It broke two TVs and a refrigerator. We were reimbursed a total AFl 225, or US$ 129. That didn't even cover one TV, let alone all of the damage. Needless to say we are not at all happy with Elmar.

Just keep this in mind when considering moving here.

[schexc]

Where we live in Upstate NY, we have frequent power outages, so we have a whole house surge protection device installed at the panel and also secondary units at all devices that have internal processing circuitry. Although we don’t have surge protection at the panel here on the island. We do have surge protection devices on all devices. It’s just best practices. Good advise.

[hineskl]

Agree, I will add to the list as we have found over the years.

We use surge protectors on all outlets in the house and all appliances. We also had a surge protector installed at the panel a couple of years ago. It was not very costly and works better than the outlet style protectors.

Slowly over the last years we have swapped out most of the stuff that they use during construction that is low quality and poorly manufactured that they buy by the ship load when they are building from China. The facets on the sinks, the connectors to the toilets, the lights and fans. All of these will fail as they are very poorly manufactured. The windows and doors are also very poor quality and will all be switched out next summer.

We have found that we use to purchase and ship down everything, but PriceSmart and some other local stores on the island are now a good choice for things like appliances and TVs and much faster. Our home has had 2 out of the 3 AC units replaced over the past year. I was told by our original property manager that this would be very expensive when they went out. So we were pretty apprehensive when we heard that the AC unit in the guest room went out. Our management had it replaced in a day with a larger unit for under a thousand with labor.

[Stanley]

Agreed, keep in mind that for example if you are used that you need to paint your home in the US once every 6 years, expect that here on Aruba you should the same home every 3 years. We have a fantastic climate, but things tend to last a lot less time on this fantastic climate. Absolutely something to keep in mind before deciding to make a move here..

And yes, always use a voltage regulator with expensive appliances and electronics.

But at the end of the day, I prefer to paint my house more often and deal with a broken tv because of voltage problem by elmar...than to live in a colder climate