How to Buy An Island
/How To Buy Your Own Private Island
First Published Date: January 1, 2015
We’ve all had that conversation – if you became improbably rich overnight and money was literally no object to you, what would you buy? Answers include sports teams, huge houses with a hundred rooms and a garden big enough to land a jet plane in, a jet plane, a flight into space and so forth. We all have our own ideas on what we would buy with our new found wealth, and in many cases they are pretty common ideas. One idea that pops up in a great many of these conversations is a private island. As money is no object, you could trick that island out so that it was something really special. You could buy a speedboat so that you can get back to the mainland in a hurry if needs be. It’s a mouth watering prospect for many people.
The truth is that you do not need to be rich beyond the gift of man to actually buy an island. Sure, the more money you have in the bank the wider the choice. If you are a millionaire then that makes things a lot more straightforward. And there is no point in denying that a private island will not come cheaply. You need to be looking at six figures before it becomes well worth parting with your money. But with all of that taken into account, it is not such an outlandish idea (figuratively speaking, anyway. Literally speaking, it is exactly what you would call “outlandish”). Depending on where in the world this dream island is located, prices vary – and somewhere with a lot of islands and (comparatively) little demand, you could find yourself in possession of an island for as little as $200,000.
There are many things to take into account. As with buying any plot of land – because, after all, an island is just a plot of land surrounded by a body of water – you will get more if you pay more. This includes facilities, construction and general readiness for human habitation. A cheaper island will come with less already on it, and if you buy at the bottom of the range you may need to make your own arrangements for things like electricity and water supply, accommodation and other such essentials. Unless you really are ridiculously rich there is little point in buying an island and then not doing anything with it. If you plan to live there or rent it out to someone for a profit, you will want to make sure that it is habitable.
It is possible to rent an island before you buy, in order to get a feel for it and see if you would be prepared to take it on as a full time thing. There are numerous sites on the Internet devoted to doing exactly this. They are stacked with color photographs of the islands in question – although the phrase to keep in mind is caveat emptor – buyer beware. Always make sure you have seen the island for real before you even consider parting with your money. Aside from that, it’s your party – and it is a pretty sweet feather in your cap to be able to say you own an island.
NB – If you are interested in finding sites that deal with buying islands, search on Google for these: buy, rent, island, etc.
To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the realestateexpedition.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on May 18, 2009.
