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The rich need to escape the pandemic in a personal and remote paradise. The island’s merchants have it for themselves: it’s complicated.
By Heather Murphy
Calls and emails arrive at all hours of the day and night, it’s no longer about emotion or prestige. Instead, they focus on new solar and water panels, which were not the demands they were used to.
The agents of the island are overwhelmed.
While the coronavirus pandemic has devastated countries around the world, it has completely replaced each and every facet of each and every one’s life, adding remote maxims through money. Even the niche and the ultra-fast world of the island industry has turned upside down.
“These are the busiest two months I’ve had in 22 years promoting islands,” said Chris Krolow, managing director of Private Islands Inc. , in July. Speed hasn’t slowed since then, he said. The only time he had so many inquiries in a time after the disastrous Fyre Festival at Great Exuma in the Bahamas in 2017. Krolow said he was overwhelmed, for some reason, by questions from “other young people hoping to start their own country. “».
Before the pandemic, an island was a vain purchase that a wealthy consumer, usually a man, made someday after retirement, the agents said. The island’s error appears regularly a few years after the novelty of other luxury purchases was exhausted.
“You have your yacht, your jet, now you’re your island,” said John Christie, president of Christie’s International Real Estate, a Bahamas-based company.
The agents of the island knew how to serve those customers. They were looking for a position to feel like a “head coast-to-coast,” Mr. Christie, a small kingdom without self-authority. Agreements can be smoothed by allusions to billionaires or prominent neighbors.
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