Here are my top 3places to live in the DR:
1. Santo Domingo: it's the perfect city in the caribbean basin. Everything you want is on sale somewhere in the city. Every type of people are constantly "on display" on it's vibrant streets. It's a surprisingly pleasant city (much of it doesn't even resembles third world at all), it has a sizable moneyed class which add that sense of "keeping up with the jones" lifestyle if that's what you want. Keep in mind that "keeping up with the jones" lifestyle is slightly more melow in SD than in say NY or London. And of course, the city is CENTRALLY LOCATED. The most extreme points in the country (the boarder, the north coast, and Punta Cana) are all about the same distance from town.
2. Santiago: it's a smaller version of Santo Domingo. It's smaller for now, the town is blooming into a metropolis at an alarming rate. Hopefully, it will continue to be a pleasant mini-santo domingo. It's only about a 1.50 to 2 hour ride along the smooth Autopista Duarte from Santo Domingo. It's in the middle of one of the most beautiful valleys on earth, the Cibao. The people are slightly more refined than those of the Capital. And the mountains are a stone throw away, very convenient on those occasional hot july and august days, when the mountains are in there 70s during the day and a cool 50 during the night.
3. On a ranch out in the provinces of El Seibo or Hato Mayor. Beautiful quiet countryside, life goes at a slower pace than most places in the DR (most places are slow to begin with), your not bothered by dominican capitalism as much as you would in Santiago or Santo Domingo, especially Santo Domingo. The potential to create a ranch with horses and other animals and agricultural stuff and then market the place as a tourist attraction are great in this region. This place is good for people looking to really get away from it all and simply relax under swaying palms and drinking Presidente or Brugal while you watch the cows graze on the super green lawns. I personally would like to have a getaway home here for those weekends when SD gets on your nerves.
Personally, I would like to own a luxury apartment in a highrise in Santo Domingo as my main residence, then own an alpine style country home in the Constanza valley for a weekend getaway into the mountains, a wild west style home in the Enriquillo Basin overlooking Enriquillo Lake and sorrounded by cactuses and very very hot air for those days when the Desert gives me "a call", a beach front palapa style villa in Cap Cana for those days when life is a beach, and a oversize typical dominican countryhome (the ones that are square and made of wood) but with balconies, two floors, elaborate mohagony lattice work, etc. A real caribbean jewel out on a ranch in the El Seibo or Hato Mayor country side. Thats for those days when the childhood dream of becoming a cowboy comes back for a weekend at least. Yeup people, I have some humungus dreams. But then again, I am still young and the more I see my self in my dreams, the greater the chance I will work wiser to attain them.