You see it listed online: a seven-acre island off the coast of Belize, surrounded by clear blue water and striking distance from an untouched barrier reef.
Price: 492,000 pounds, or around $760,000. “You couldn’t buy a one-bedroom in Williamsburg for that price,” you say to yourself, and after a few clicks and a phone call, you’re the proud owner of a tropical haven 12 miles from the resort town of San Pedro (immortalized by Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita.”)
So … what next?

There’s probably no plumbing on your new island. There may not even be a house—or structures at all. You need help.

This is when you call someone like Doug Kulig, the chief executive officer of Miami-based architect and developer OBMI. He has designed and built a 23,500-square-foot estate on a secluded tip of the British Virgin Islands, a hillside aerie on the southwest coast of Antigua and other houses and resorts throughout the Caribbean. Kulig’s got years of experience building on remote islands, and he helpfully laid out your next moves (in chronological order, no less) for Bloomberg.

1. Figure out the regulations.
So glamorous already: “The island can have environmental concerns, usage concerns; you have to understand if you’re getting a clear title to the land,” says Kulig. “Only then do you figure out what the development rights are.”
Hopefully you will have done this before purchase, but even so, the myriad approvals for regulations, restrictions and processes, Kulig says, can easily take three to six months.

2. Figure out what you want to do with the island.
This part is more fun, because it involves the least tough choices of all time: Will you want a main house and a few guest houses? Staff quarters? Do you want the house designed as an informal bungalow, with indoor/outdoor spaces, or do you want something more formal?

“We talk about lifestyle,” Kulig says. “When are people going to use the island, and how are they going to use it?” It’s more than just whimsy. If you’re considering a wooden, beach-house type of structure, “you want to consider storm impacts in the area,” says Kulig. “Do you want to design for a 25-year storm, or a 50-year storm, or even a 100-year storm?” (The latter would involve a house made from concrete, which presents its own set of logistical hurdles.)

You’ll also need to figure out how you want to get to the island. If you’re planning to fly into a nearby airport and take a shallow boat to the island, great. If you’re planning to glide in on your 200-foot mega-yacht, you’re going to have to build a different kind of infrastructure entirely. (Same goes for laying down an airstrip.) Kulig recommends proceeding with caution: “Come in with the notion that you’re going to respect the land as much as possible,” he says. “Of course, you can’t expect not to touch anything. Development by its very nature has an impact.”

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