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NEW YORK – Calls and emails don’t stop at all times of the day or night. The demands are no longer related to fun or prestige. They focus on fresh water and solar panels, very different from what intermediaries selling islands used to get. In the pandemic, they are overwhelmed.
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At the same time that Covid-19 devastated countries, it completely changed everyone’s life, including those most surrounded by money. Even this niche in the islands’ rich trade has been reversed.
“It was the busiest two months in 22 years selling islands,” Chris Krolow, CEO of Private Islands, said in July.
The pace hasn’t slowed since then, he continues. Krolow said he was assailed by the questions of “children waiting to start their own country.”
Before the pandemic, an island was a typical vanity purchase that a millionaire customer, usually a man, would make sometime after retirement, the broker says. The urge to acquire an island used to hit a few years after purchases of other luxury items were exhausted.
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– You have your yacht, your jet. Now you want your island, ”said John Christie, director of Christie’s International Real Estate, based in the Caribbean islands of the Bahamas.
The island runners knew how to take care of these customers. They were looking for a place to feel like “the kings of the seas,” Christie said, a small kingdom with no authority other than those of those buyers. Negotiations become even more attractive with allusions to billionaires or celebrities as neighbors.
‘The logistics of paradise are complicated’
However, this new wave of island buyers is less driven by ego and more by the desire to escape the virus. And brokers, like their clients, are new to this fight for survival.
So even after a hectic few months, professionals struggle to meet new customer requests, such as marrying an area for agriculture with a helicopter landing strip.
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Despite the high interest generated amid the coronavirus crisis, Krolow’s Canadian company closed only a few sales.
Like other brokers, he explains that most of his time has been spent explaining what it means, in practice, to maintain an island that operates autonomously (the logistics of paradises is complicated) and trying to understand how to show the property to potential buyers at a time when travel restrictions exist.
Dylan Eckardt, an agent for Nest Seekers International, says he gets a lot of calls like “money is not a problem, put me where my family won’t get sick.” He recently tried to fulfill that request from a family by renting them a private island in Maine for $ 250,000 a week.
But a lease is not enough for some millionaires. The pandemic has profoundly transformed the way they think, in the long term, about being around other people.
– Before, an island was a toy – highlights Marcus Gondolo-Gordon, CEO of Incognito Property, in England.
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Now clients describe their dreams, including a “long boat ride” to make sure no one sails into them and breaks their isolation, he said. Buyers also want access to fresh water, solar panels, and houses ready to move in and sleep at night.
Risks must be considered
Preparing an island quickly to be self-sufficient will be difficult, says Gondolo-Gordon for his clients. Building on private islands takes much longer. And brokers cannot guarantee that the islands are safe havens in the event of various disturbances.
For example, this week he saw an island in the Mediterranean – for sale for $ 7.4 million – but there are tensions in the region of those waters claimed by Turkey and Greece.
“You need to read this news,” he tells the clientele.
He emphasizes that it is also necessary to consider that the coastline of these islands must be affected by climate change. When clients say they can’t handle it, the expert recommends chartering a super yacht.
Several island buyers wanted by the NYT, through their brokers, declined to comment on their experiences.
Before Covid-19, most of the agents operating in this segment sold islands as a boutique fraction within the broader real estate business.
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Now that many sellers see an increase in interest in the islands, several have said that these transactions represent a greater proportion than they negotiate. Still, Krolow is one of the few brokers that just sells islands all the time.
He helped sell his first island in the late 1990s, almost by accident, after accepting an offer from a seller to place an ad on a small island he had created.
Two decades later, the Krolow platform shows hundreds of islands. Some cost less than $ 100,000, like options on the lakes of Canada. Others have prices that reach eight to nine digits, offer runways and resorts on the turquoise islands of the Caribbean or the South Pacific.
One of the great advantages of selling islands in the middle of a pandemic, brokers say, is that customers are more flexible about location. British buyers who had a fixation on the Greek islands are now interested in isolating themselves in the Seychelles or the Irish Sea.
The enthusiasm of Americans and Canadians for the South Pacific has recently been overtaken by interest in closer coasts in the Bahamas, Belize and Panama.
Challenge to visit the island without traveling
Taking clients to visit the islands has become a great challenge. At one point, Krolow had a dozen potential buyers to see an island in Belize, but the airports were closed. In the past six months, there have only been a couple of weeks where he has been able to easily travel to the Caribbean, said Edward de Mallet Morgan, a partner at Knight Frank, a London real estate firm.
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It’s one thing to buy a house without visiting it first, he says, but “buying an island is another thing, especially if you can’t even send a consultant to review the place in advance.”
The Virgin Islands banned tourists until at least December. And even with the resumption of flights to the Bahamas, travelers must install an app on their phones and do a two-week quarantine. These measures are excessive, some clients tell brokers.
Some potential buyers have found ways to fix these problems. An American client of Christie’s sent the capital of his yacht from Florida to the Bahamas. The client took a private flight and then boarded his own boat, where he was isolated.
His captain took him to his two island options to escape the pandemic. One of them was Bonefish Cay, with US $ 8.2 million, already with five buildings and the capacity to produce its own energy. But it didn’t work out well, the client told Christie.
The other option was Foot’s Cay, at $ 8.7 million, with a four-bedroom main house and a bunker with generator. This was more intriguing, but when the customer arrived, the island had already been bought.
