As the Costas convulse and Dubai sinks into the sand, there is somewhere in the world where the sun still seems to be shining on property developers. St Kitts and Nevis (SKN), two tiny islands — populations 39,000 and 11,000 respectively — that make up one small nation in the eastern Caribbean, give all the appearances of valiantly bucking the global trend for second-home-market inertia.

“We are in the perfect storm,” says LeGrand Elebash, chief operating officer of the ambitious 2,500-acre Christophe Harbour development, on the wild southeast peninsula of St Kitts, which will include a Mandarin Oriental hotel, a golf course and a marina. An unfortunate choice of metaphor, perhaps, for an area not unfamiliar with devastating hurricanes, but his thesis boils down to this: while elsewhere in the region, many projects have stalled, developers on the islands are still building and marketing, mopping up available buyers and getting ready for confidence to return to the world economy, when they will have a product “ready to go” in a market not sullied by previous overdevelopment — and with prices that compare well with those on other Caribbean islands.

It is precisely this underexploited, old-style, “real” Caribbean feel that is SKN’s principal draw for many. Kevin Horstwood, a designer from Lincolnshire, travelled the Caribbean looking for a site for his property venture and found that St Kitts “ticked all the boxes”: the environment, that is, rainforested volcanic slopes in the interior, ringed with small coastal villages and pleasant beaches, with the Atlantic on one side and the Caribbean on the other; heritage, in the form of old sugar mills and plantation houses; low crime; “reasonable” infrastructure; less poverty and fewer social problems than the bigger islands. Sunday best is still worn, the tiny, packed churches outnumber the beach bars, and the pace is measured and courteous.

In 2005, he bought Rawlins, a historic plantation inn on the northwest side of the island. He has landscaped part of the 12½ acres of luscious gardens and divided it into 26 plots of a fifth of an acre each, with sweeping sea views, on which he is erecting prefabricated houses devised in his factory in Blaenavon, Wales. “I wanted to design something that respected the architectural lineage of the island, that overcame the shortage of skilled artisans in the area and that would leave holiday-home buyers without maintenance problems,” he says.

And so the Carib Cottage was born: 1,200 sq ft, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a covered verandah, made from a marine aluminium structure clad in stone outside and hardwood on the inside (including carved English oak bookcases). It can be delivered to the site, like the two already there, fully wired and plumbed, with a finished interior including a kitchen and bathrooms, ready to be assembled by a team of gardeners.

House and plot cost £345,000, and there’s a three-bedroom, two-storey version with 2,100 sq ft of living space, for £435,000. Ten of the plots have already been sold. Horstwood says that all the elements of the houses will be sourced from “appropriately skilled factories” working to his detailed production drawings.

There are no holiday homes under construction yet at any of the sites on Christophe Harbour, but the bulldozers and blasters are hard at work shaping the Tom Fazio-designed golf course, and building plots are selling for prices starting at £330,000 for a third of an acre.

James Cabourne, 50, a reinsurance broker from Surrey, has bought a plot on the Ocean’s Edge development on Cable Bay, in Frigate Bay, near Basseterre, the capital. He plans to build a five-bedroom villa with pool, bringing the total cost to £1.6m. Cabourne, who travels in the area on business, says: “Most of the Caribbean disappointed me: flat, scrubby landscapes, ramshackle buildings or overly glitzy — unlike St Kitts, with its lush, verdant interior and old stone architecture.”

He was attracted by the situation of the hillside development of 23 villas and 170 condominium units, with prices starting at £225,000: they are within walking distance of Caribbean and Atlantic beaches, and close to a golf course and lively beach bars. It was also cheap compared to the peninsula, with a strong rental market. Some of the finished flats on Ocean’s Edge are being let out at about £1,250 a month.

Like many — but not all — new developments, it offers two perks. First, it is in a tourist development zone, which, says Damian Hamp-Adams, of Newfound, the developer, means overseas buyers are exempt from the alien land-holding licence fee (usually 10% of the purchase price). Total buying costs (including legal fees) would therefore add just 1.2% to the purchase price.

Second, those buying there are entitled to an “economic passport”. The scheme, introduced in 1984, confers full citizenship rights except voting in this income-tax-free territory — provided you pass government scrutiny, buy a property for a minimum of £215,000 and pay a one-off fee of about £30,000.

“I’m considering it because I can see the benefits of sometimes travelling on the passport of a country that’s not high on the radar,” Cabourne says. “Not for economic reasons — I’m a UK taxpayer — but it does give me an option in the future, maybe when I retire.”

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers