Originally Posted by Descant
Buy now and you'll be happy with your camp. However, in only a few years, it won't be yours anymore. It will be the family camp. This will be the place for family reunions after you've all made three job changes around the country, down-sized for retirement, and so forth. At some point, you may decide that island living doesn't fit your lifestyle anymore and the kids can't yet afford to take over, so you sell. And for the rest of eternity, the younger ones will say "wish you hadn't sold, we could have found a way". This may not be a short term purchase. Look at the tax assessors listings on-line and you'll see that many of these properties are in some sort of trust. That's part of the reason there isn't a lot of turnover. They're now into the 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation.
There may be some appeal to hiking on Rattlesnake, Bear, etc., but on the smaller islands (the Forties and the Varneys for example) there may be more water sports as they protect each other and you can easily walk or row to the protected side on a windy day. Great views but few canoes on the east side of Rattlesnake is my guess.
Docking: Room for your boat, the kids boat and a guest boat? Can you pull the Whaler, canoe, kayaks jetski, sunfish up on shore easily for winter storage? After awhile on an island, boats tend to accumulate. We've had more, but right now, we're down to our boat, the little boat, three kayaks and a canoe. And my daughter just got a stand up paddle board. We paid $75 for the canoe, and all three kayaks were raffle or promotional wins. But once you have the opportunity, you start slowing down when you see a boat for sale in a yard, or start looking at Craig's list for water toys.
So, land, exposure, docking, proximity to services. You can always modify the buildings.
Be prepared for a lifestyle change. You're not just buying some real estate.
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