Imagine being a modern day Robinson Crusoe with your own island playground – but with luxury facilities instead of a makeshift hut and a few coconuts for company. For a price your ultimate island idyll could become a reality. Farhad Vladi, the world’s leading authority on private islands, tells James Moore how to buy a bespoke piece of paradise.

Forget the plush apartment in New York, the pad in Monaco or the country manor tucked away in the English countryside. Today’s must-have piece of retail estate is the private island.
Islands have always held an allure for the rich and famous. Film legend Marlon Brando was one of the first big names to secure his own exclusive isle, buying Tetiaroa off Tahiti in the 1960s. Many other big names followed including actor Johnny Depp who snapped up the 45 acre Little Hall’s Pond Cay in the Bahamas complete with its six private beaches, while Leonardo DiCaprio’s 104-acre island in Belize came with its own airstrip. And there are profits to be made. Entrepreneur Richard Branson famously bought Necker Island in the Caribbean for just £180,000 in 1979. Today it’s reckoned to be worth £55 million.

Now, as the pace of modern life and business becomes more frenetic, the busy well heeled are increasingly seeking tranquil private hideaways. And that means the private island business has boomed.
The world’s biggest expert on the island industry is Farhad Vladi. In 40 years he’s sold more than 2000 islands and his customers include famous clients including singer Diana Ross, movie icon Tony Curtis, and actor Nicolas Cage as well as the writer Edward de Bono and the designer Leonardo Ferragamo.

Vladi fell in love with the idea of islands as a child growing up in Germany after reading Daniel Defoe’s famous castaway novel. Then in 1971, while an economics student, he spotted an opportunity to turn his passion into a business, when he realised that fabulous tropical islands were available for a snip and he sold his first island, Cousine Island in the Seychelles. He explains: “I’d spotted a newspaper article saying that a tropical island in the Indian Ocean had been bought for just two thousand dollars. Nothing! It was this that changed my life.” Over the next few years he built up his business and today Vladi currently has over 100 islands on his books, selling around 30 a year.

“In the early days, my clients wanted islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean, or the Caribbean. Now there is a much wider choice.”

The islands come in all shapes and sizes and with wildly different price tags. The most expensive island he’s sold was Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands for US $12 million while the cheapest and smallest was an island of 500 square metres in Lake Charlotte, Nova Scotia, Canada for $1,500. The largest was Eigg Island on the west coast of Scotland with approximately 29,947,800 square metres. Many of the islands for sale aren’t simply the fabled deserted dots in the ocean of novels and movies. Many come with fabulous facilities. Some, like the recently sold Laucala Island near Fiji, come with their own airstrips for your private jet. While lavish Emerald Cay in the Turks and Caicos islands, is on sale for a cool $48.5million which includes a luxury 30,000 sq ft mansion with full service gymnasium, a 10 person state-of-the-art home cinema, a custom-built ‘smart’ spa as well as bars and tennis courts.

Vladi says the market for islands has changed over the years: “In the early days, my clients wanted islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean, or the Caribbean. Now there is a much wider choice.” Over the last few decades prices have risen by 20 per cent a year. A finite number of quality islands has also meant that the recession hasn’t sent prices plummeting for the best islands.

“Of all privately owned islands in the world, there are only approximately five per cent which I would consider to be quality islands.”