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BUYING a home in Jamaica has typically meant chasing paperwork across banks, attorneys, and sales offices, with no clear view of where things actually stand. ALTRUHOMES, the residential arm of ARC Properties, is trying to close that gap.
At Wick Hall Estate, ALTRUHOMES’ 221-unit development on 36 acres in Spanish Town, St Catherine, buyers now move through a digital platform built by Hidden Leaf Group that folds property selection, financing, documentation, and signing into one online journey.
The timing matters. Jamaica’s housing deficit remains above 150,000 units, a number that hasn’t moved much even with more than 41,000 units currently at varying stages in the development pipeline. Standalone homes are especially scarce, since land economics keep pushing developers toward higher-density schemes instead. St Andrew, St Ann, and St Catherine — the parish in which Wick Hall Estate sits — accounted for most of the roughly $100 billion in property sales recorded across Jamaica last year, which tells you demand for well-located, well-built homes hasn’t slowed down.
Kevaughan Mahon, principal of Hidden Leaf Group, built the platform after watching the same inefficiencies play out for years. Buyers were bouncing between sales agents, banks, and paperwork spread across systems that didn’t talk to each other, with little sense of progress at any given point.
“We had to connect property selection, customisation, financing, documents, approvals, and signing into one journey that felt effortless to the buyer,” Mahon said.
The harder part, he added, wasn’t the engineering. It was getting stakeholders across the purchasing chain to agree to redesign a process that had run the same way for years.
A buyer can now discover a home on the platform, personalise it with add-ons and semi-furnishing options, start a mortgage application through integrated banking, upload the required documents, and move toward signing — all on the developer’s website. The system also flags missing documents and incomplete steps before they cause delays, so the sales team can step in early rather than scramble later.
Mahon said the goal is to cut the back-and-forth between banks, attorneys, and sales offices that has stretched out closing timelines for years. He cited the example of one buyer who, he said, could only work through the process outside normal business hours. On the platform, the buyer explored homes, made selections, and uploaded documents entirely on his own schedule. According to Mahon, there has been strong buyer demand since the platform launched in March, and Wick Hall Estate remains on track to hit its phase one sales targets.
Ashley-Ann Horne, CEO of ARC Properties, sees the platform as part of where Jamaican real estate needs to head. In her view, buyers have waited long enough for the property industry to catch up to what they already expect from their banks and their phones.
“Wick Hall Estate is proof that a Jamaican development can lead on this, rather than follow. The families building their futures here deserve a process that respects their time,” said Horne.
Both ALTRUHOMES and Hidden Leaf Group see this as an early step. Mahon wants the next phase to get more proactive: personalised guidance, automated reminders, financing updates, construction progress tracking, and move-in support.
“The buyer relationship shouldn’t end when the sale closes,” he said. “It should keep going.”
The ambition reaches past Wick Hall Estate. Mahon wants the platform to eventually cover the whole homeownership journey, from discovery through financing, construction, closing, and move-in — and he’s clear that ALTRUHOMES has plans beyond the one development. Hidden Leaf Group intends to keep building the infrastructure underneath that growth.
