Want To Buy an Island? Read On

Did you know that you can purchase your own island for 20% less than you'd pay for comparable waterfront property on the mainland? Here's how to get your cays to paradise.

By Sean O'Neill, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine
Slide show: 10 private islands for sale

Tom Brisson strides through the cathedral quiet of a spruce grove and emerges into a sunlit clearing. On an outcrop of granite, ocean waves spray a halo of mist. The elegant port town of Bar Harbor, Maine, appears across the water. "The only thing missing from this view is a hammock hanging between two trees," he says.

Brisson owns 13-acre Heron Island, a 20-minute boat ride from Winter Harbor, Maine. The 58-year-old financier had never seriously set his sights on buying an island until mid-2005.
But a few weeks after retiring from his job as a Sallie Mae financial analyst, Brisson saw Heron Island pictured in a magazine article. The Potomac, Md., resident quickly visited the island and sized up its value. On the plus side, it's close to Maine's top attractions, and he plans to boost the value of his wooded fiefdom by building a three-bedroom house and a storage building. He lowballed the $795,000 sale price with a successful offer of $715,000.

The own-your-own-island dream starts around $150,000. But you can also rent a private island for rates that start around $4,000 a week for two.
Consider the 1.75-mile-long chain of five islands in Maine's Brans Mill pond. You could build a cabin on the largest of the islands (4.8 acres), from which you could fish for brook trout and white perch. The archipelago was recently selling for $229,000, which included a lot on the mainland for parking your car and launching your watercraft. The pond is an hour's drive from Bangor. (See this island and others for sale in a slide show here.)

If you can afford waterfront property on the mainland, you can likely afford to purchase an island. As a rule, islands are about 20% cheaper per acre than waterfront mainland in the same locale. Yet islands offer more overall waterfront for your dollar -- with 360-degree views, of course.

What's more, the long-term investment value of an island often equals that of comparable mainland property. The main reason is the diminishing supply of islands that can be developed. State governments and environmental groups are restricting construction on many undeveloped private islands, especially in Florida and Maine. This trend is boosting demand for islands that don't have restrictions on renovating or replacing existing buildings.