The Dominican Republic's economy in 2026: what a property buyer should know

In 2011 we wrote a short overview of the Dominican economy. It drew on the CIA World Factbook, with figures “mostly updated until 2009”, and ended on an optimistic note: once the global crisis passed, the country “will be rising at its best”.

That turned out to be right. This is the long version, with the numbers that matter if you are buying, renting or running a business there.

Then and now

	Our 2011 article (figures to ~2009)	2025–2026
Largest employer	Services, overtaking agriculture	Services, more so; free zones employ ~200,000 people in 858 companies
Growth	GDP dipped in 2009 (global recession)	5.0% in 2024, 2.1% in 2025, 3.6% forecast for 2026
Size	—	~US$127 bn GDP, ~US$11,060 per person
Exports to the US	”nearly 60%“	48.6% of exports
Remittances	”about a tenth of GDP”	US$11.87 bn in 2025, still about a tenth of GDP
Trade deal	CAFTA-DR in force since 2007	Still the framework; free zones make 58.8% of exports
Tourism	”growing”	Record 11.68 m visitors in 2025

Two things stand out. Remittances are still about a tenth of the economy, exactly as in 2011. And the US remains the dominant partner, though less dominant than before. Gold and free-zone manufacturing have widened the export base.

Tourism: the number behind every beach-town listing

Tourism is why most foreign buyers look at the Dominican Republic at all, and why short-term rental yields exist. In 2025 the country received 11,676,901 visitors, a record and 4.3% more than in 2024:

• 8.86 million arrived by air. Punta Cana airport took about half of them, Las Américas (Santo Domingo) 28%, Cibao (Santiago) 12%, and Puerto Plata about 4%.
• 2.82 million came on cruise ships. The Dominican Republic is now the Caribbean’s third cruise destination. Most north-coast cruise traffic lands at Amber Cove and Taíno Bay in Puerto Plata, and the new Cabo Rojo port in the far south-west is growing fast.

In 2026 arrivals were running about 7% ahead of 2025 through August, against a government target of 12 million.

What it means for property: demand for holiday rentals is real and growing. But it is concentrated on the Punta Cana–Bávaro corridor, and the supply of rentable units has grown even faster. That is why we publish net yields after all costs, rather than the gross figures in sales brochures. See STR yields by zone.

Remittances: the quiet pillar

Dominicans abroad, mostly in the United States, sent home a record US$11.87 billion in 2025, up about 10%. That is close to a tenth of the economy. Remittances pay for a large share of local housing, including the mid-market apartments in Santo Domingo and Santiago that many investors overlook. Through August 2026 they were up another 6.5%.

The peso, inflation and interest rates

• Exchange rate: about RD$59.5 per US dollar in late September 2026. The peso strengthened roughly 8% in the first seven months of the year, which is unusual. If you earn in dollars and pay local bills in pesos, your costs rose this year.
• Inflation: 5.13% in August 2026, at the top of the Central Bank’s 3–5% target range.
• Policy rate: 5.25% (August 2026). Local mortgages for foreigners exist, but rates are well above US levels. Most foreign buyers pay cash or use developer payment plans.
• Public debt: about 58% of GDP, with a fiscal deficit of about 3.6–3.8% of GDP. That is manageable, but it is why the 2026 tax reform happened.

The 2026 tax reform, briefly

Law 30-26, signed on 18 June 2026, changed more than 20 taxes. For property owners, the headline is the capital-gains tax on real estate sold by individuals. It fell from a progressive rate of up to 25% to a flat 10%. The gain is still calculated as the sale price minus the inflation-adjusted purchase cost. Companies still pay 27%.

Three things did not change:

• the 3% transfer tax at purchase;
• the annual 1% IPI property tax on value above the exemption;
• the CONFOTUR tourism exemptions.

The details of a reinvestment exemption (for proceeds reinvested in a home within six months) are still waiting for regulations.

What the 2011 article got right, and what it missed

We wrote that the economy was “going in the right way, not really fast, but surely”. Since 2010 the country has been one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America, and poverty has fallen steadily. The World Bank estimates 13.4% of people lived below its upper-middle-income poverty line in 2025, down from 14.0% in 2024.

What we missed is the inequality the original article mentioned in passing. It is still visible: in the gap between resort corridors and rural towns, in power outages, and in informal work. For a buyer, that shows up in very practical ways: backup power, water storage, security, and the quality of local building.

Figures are as dated and sourced below. This is research, not investment advice.