Come Home to a Private Island
Everyone from Latin crooner Ricky Martin and CNN founder Ted Turner to fractious filmmaker Mel Gibson has followed in the footsteps of Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando and even John Lennon to bag the planet’s most rarefied trophy asset: an island of your own. gary jones reports
Hollywood bad boy Johnny Depp bought his slice of heaven in the Bahamas in 2004. He paid US$3.6 million after falling under its spell while filming the first version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Richard Branson got a bargain, snapping up his for just US$180,000 in 1979. Movers and shakers who’ve swung by the tycoon’s British Virgin Islands Eden have included Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela and … er, David Hasselhoff.
Pamela Anderson’s hideaway – off the coast of Dubai – was an extravagant peace offering from her ex-husband, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. Leonardo Dicaprio, meanwhile, splashed out US$1.75 million for a patch off the coast of Belize. Word is, the environmentally minded Titanic star plans to develop a luxurious ecoresort there (presuming climate allows).
While their perceived exclusivity suggests scarcity, the number of islands for sale globally is actually huge, with rocky outcrops in the Aegean competing with palm-covered treasures in the Seychelles and countless secluded Bond-villain lairs off South America.
But such water-lapped sanctuaries are expensive – not just to buy but to make habitable and to maintain (try calling out a plumber when you’re an hour from the closest village by speedboat). What’s more, procuring an island is fraught with pitfalls that vary with country, geopolitics and, indeed, with climate.
Hamburg-headquartered specialist real-estate firm Vladi Private Islands claims to have sold more than 2,650 such chunks of rock, coral and/or sand since 1971, and has some 12,000 more properties on file. In deciding whether to list an island for sale, proprietor and broker Farhad Vladi first makes a detailed evaluation according to a checklist of 12 “vital criteria”. While many companies gush about the islands they sell – with no hint of the hazards to a potential purchaser – Vladi is brutally honest: “This check list is to be taken very seriously,” its website states, adding that “paradise can never be found on earth and we always have to live with some compromises”.
Vladi’s 12 criteria are Title, Medical, Fauna, Flora, Host Country, Access, Infrastructure, Building Permit, Climate, Surroundings, Value and Seller. The company’s broad-brush online summary of risks under these headings runs to more than 3,000 words – “for the buyer to determine with which combination of pros and cons he can live best”.
Among other considerations, Vladi points out that without freehold title “you cannot insure your island against expropriation” by the country of jurisdiction. In such cases a buyer then “will not be compensated for the land”. Vladi goes on to discuss why medical services should be within
a 90-minute radius of the island, and asks whether any starry-eyed newbie can cope with the mosquitos and sandflies, and even with poisonous snakes. Is the island accessible in all weathers? Is there a risk of tornadoes or tsunamis? Who will maintain the palm trees, so that a falling coconut doesn’t crack a passing supermodel’s skull?
“An island is like a boat that does not move,” says Jacques Menahem, Tahiti-based founder of French Polynesia Sotheby’s International Realty. “You have to think how you can be independent for water, electricity, sewage, sometimes food – if you’re on a remote one. Construction is more complicated since everything is transported by water.”
It’s not, of course, all doom and gloom – and bugs and hurricanes and chemical toilets – in paradise. As Depp told Vanity Fair of his 18-hectare Little Halls Pond Cay: “I don’t think I’d ever seen any place so pure and beautiful. You can feel your pulse rate drop about 20 beats. It’s instant freedom.”
Menahem in Tahiti, meanwhile, says that since the Covid-19 pandemic kicked in, enquiries for private islands has risen. “Before the confinement, I’d get two emails per week from foreigners,” he says. “In the past two months, I’ve got two to 10 emails a day and 80 percent are for private islands.”
But are islands sound investments? “You can plan on the rising price of the value of the land,” says Menahem. “All the islands I’ve sold made a good margin … but maintenance and daily logistics cost a lot!”
Menahem advises profit-chasers to buy land-locked apartments to rent. But if privacy and a connection with nature float your boat, he says, look offshore. “If [a buyer] wants to have a lifestyle of running naked with the wind in his hair, of swimming in a crystalline lagoon with fishes and colourful corals, or just of enjoying the beauty of nature all year long … he should buy an island.”
Variety is also the name of the game in this property sector. Victoria Point Cays – a 4-hectare site off Andros, the largest island in the Bahamas – is actually two postcard-perfect coral islands surrounded by azure waters.
With working freshwater wells, and electricity, phone and Internet provided via underwater cables, the cays are home to houses built by Nelson Hayes, author of the unfortunately titled 1940 novel Dildo Cay (which Publishers Weekly dubbed in 2011 “the worst book ever”). Because of the regularity of hurricanes, the houses’ walls are 40cm-thick concrete and topped by heavy Bermuda-style roofs. The fact that they’ve survived since 1953 attests to their solid construction.
The main residence (two bedrooms, two bathrooms) boasts a living room with fireplace, a library, a fully equipped kitchen, cool ceramic floors throughout, front and back patios, and a gazebo. Next to the main house is a combination office with loft, utility room (with washer, freezer, refrigerator) and a full bathroom, with a 7,570-litre water tank located above the building. A lookout tower offers 360-degree views.
A separate guesthouse’s lower floor features a small bedroom, sitting room, galley kitchen and outdoor bathroom with shower. Upstairs are two bedrooms, another bathroom and a wrap-around veranda.
There’s also a protected boat basin on the northeast side of the cay, with a floating dock to accommodate small vessels. A nearby sand spit is perfect for catching the local delicacy bonefish at low tide.
There are two flights a day to and from Mangrove Cay from the capital Nassau, which has onward services to the US and Canada, London and Frankfurt. Alternatively, there are direct flights into Congo Town on South Andros from Fort Lauderdale in Florida. There’s also a helipad on the south side of the cays. The site is for sale at US$3.1 million from Vladi Private Islands.
Motu Teta is a privately owned, quintessential South Pacific island at Rangiroa, French Polynesia. Blanketed by coconut palms and edged by pristine white-sand beaches, 3.8-hectare Motu Tetu ticks all the tropicalparadise boxes. Part of French Polynesia’s Rangiroa coral atoll, Motu Teta means “faraway isle” in Tahitian, making it ideal for a wannabe Robinson Crusoe looking for privacy. It’s a 90-minute boat ride across a turquoise lagoon from Rangiroa airport, with daily one-hour flights to the capital, Papeete on Tahiti, from which there are flights to Los Angeles, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo.
Motu Tetu might also appeal to the adventurous tourism entrepreneur. The island has for many years been run as an all-inclusive private resort, with Tahitian-style hardwood main and beach bungalows accommodating up to 10 top-dollar-paying guests in three master suites and two additional bedrooms. There’s also a small villa to accommodate the all-important gourmet chef and support staff. Electricity is around the clock by two generators and solar panels. The asking price is €2.6 million; contact Jacques Menahem at French Polynesia Sotheby’s International Realty.
If Coastal New England is more your style, then Wheelers Island at Branford, Connecticut located just 120km – or less than two hours’ drive – from New York. The island is one of the Thimbles, a
NOT ALL ISLANDS ARE IN OCEANS — CANADA IS HOME TO MANY PRIVATE PARCELS OF LAND LAPPED BY FRESH RATHER THAN SEAWATER
picturesque archipelago of two-dozen pink-granite islands bobbing in Long Island Sound.
Although covering less than 0.4 of a hectare, every inch of this wavelapped hideaway has been attractively landscaped to showcase an eightbedroom, three-bath Victorian-style (but built in 2001) residence set amid a rolling green lawn, with its own sandy beach for swimming or launching kayaks. The fully furnished property features two wrap-around porches and a outdoor dining area, a large living area with fireplace, a spacious eat-in country kitchen with local granite countertops, dishwasher, double sink and gas stove.
According to William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty agent Margaret Muir, “this is a leave-the-world-behind sort of place,” though one that’s also close enough to amenities not to feel isolated. “It’s really a delightful experience for someone who loves completely unplugging.”
Wheelers Island’s private dock is accessible by boat or water taxi from picturesque Stony Creek seaside village on the mainland. It’s offered for US$3 million; contact Margaret Muir at William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.
Not all islands are in oceans, of course, and Canada is home to many private parcels of land lapped by fresh rather than seawater. Eshpabekong Island is large outcrop of pink and grey Precambrian granite at Georgian Bay, Ontario – a celebrated summer resort popular for boating, fishing and water sports, on the north-eastern arm of Lake Huron, less than 200km north of Toronto in the Great Lakes region.
With a trio of smaller companion islands, Eshpabekong Archipelago covers almost 7 hectares and is on the market for the first time in three decades. It’s home to a 2,575-square-foot timber home with wraparound cedar decks delivering 360-degree views, high ceilings, Chinese slate floors and generous windows that flood the space with light. A central staircase leads to a lookout tower, while majestic views are also visible from every room, including the three bedrooms and two bathrooms. A 30-metre-long dock provides the jumping off point to explore Georgian Bay’s 30,000 islands. Private Islands is asking US$2.2 million for the property.
While Thailand may seem like an island paradise, there are many restrictions placed on foreign investors who wish to own land there, who are generally not allowed to buy freehold islands. There are legitimate ways to work around such restrictions, however, especially for serious developers with deep pockets and a strong team of property lawyers. And one would certainly need such clout to buy Koh Rangyai.
Located just off the east coast of Phuket, Rangyai is the largest island currently available for sale in Southeast Asia and boasts significant development potential. Covering 44.5 hectares, it’s located just 5km across the bay from Phuket Royal Marina and less than an hour from Phuket International Airport.
Much like Phuket and neighbouring Krabi, it features magnificent white-sand beaches and lush tropical forests. The most mindblowing thing about Rangyai, however, must surely be its astronomical asking price: US$160 million, from Private Islands.