Doug and KT Ingersoll are in the business of selling dreams. Island dreams, that is. Their company, Caribbean Island Brokers specializes in islands and resorts. As island owners themselves (former island dreamers!), they know first hand what it’s like to have a seemingly unattainable dream of owning an island. But their tenacity paid off. Eventually they found their perfect island and turned that passion for private islands into a business.

“Our island shopping experience was grueling. It was like buying real estate 100 years ago. We knew we couldn’t trust anything we saw on the internet. We would find the same island on several different sites with different descriptions AND different prices. There’s no organized marketing system, like M.L.S., for islands and there is little, if any, cooperation among agents in this niche market. We knew we could do it better” says Ingersoll.

Island buyers are not necessarily rich, but they have achieved a certain level of success and they attribute their achievements to staying focused on their goals. They have that fire in their belly that keeps them zeroed in on their passions. For them, a private island is that passion because they offer something different.

“Our island listing range in price from $199K to $75M; they come in all sizes and price ranges. Our average island sales are in the $700k range”, stated Ingersoll making it cheaper than most luxury waterfront properties in the US.

Islands are not only the ultimate statement of personal success, but also the ultimate personal challenge. But the island dreamer doesn’t let these little obstacles get in the way of the dream. They’re challenges to be looked forward to. Owning an island isn’t for the easily intimidated. If you find yourself needing the flurry of constant activity around you, then you probably wouldn’t last long on a secluded island. Creating a comfortable living space on a deserted tropical island requires the owner to think about the most basic elements of life and then work from there. Island buyer’s thoughts and creative ideas will keep them dreaming all day and awake at night.

Food, water, shelter, and waste disposal become the top priority. From there everything gets easier. Unless you are truly isolated by hundreds of miles of water, getting supplies to your island is usually not difficult. With recent advances in solar power systems and reverse osmosis desalination units, producing power and water for the island is comparable in cost to developing a parcel in any other remote location.

Caribbean Island Brokers is a full service real estate firm offering both buyers and sellers a service simply not offered by anyone else in the world. “We personally visit every property we list so we know it as if it was our own. Buyers learn very quickly that we know our stuff by having answers to all their questions. Sellers also know the very thing that makes islands special, also makes them difficult to sell. It’s not like selling a home where you just hop in the car and drive through the neighborhood. It’s a different kind of client; one that needs a specialist to help that island dreamer understand the details and to learn the basic challenges ahead of them.” states Ingersoll. “For us, it’s the perfect job. We’ll develop our island someday. But in the meantime helping others obtain the ultimate dream is the most rewarding job anyone could have.”

Some of the newest islands we’ve managed to find include:

Glover’s Atoll in Belize, one of the World’s finest dive locations. The island is the site of a former resort. The infrastructure is still in place and the property has been maintained well so a new owner could come in and open for business in a month or less. It’s also a favorite mooring location for yachts traveling between Guatemala and the rest of the Caribbean. Manta Caye is 12 acres with 12 cabanas on the beach plus staff and owners quarters on site.

Another unique listing is the totally undeveloped island at the northwest tip of the Turneffe Atoll. The island is 45 acres and is located in prime fishing grounds for both Flats and Deep Sea Fishing.

Roatan, the perfect private island estate. A home away from home. Every detail has been meticulously planned and implemented. The home could easily stand as an executive home in any hi-end subdivision in the world. The home is the ultimate in modern living in a private island environment. It’s like taking your more mainstream thoughts of an executive estate in your own home town and putting that same comfort and familiarity on a private island.

A complete list of islands and resorts for sale is available at www.caribbeanislandbrokers.com

Article by Terry Murray

Delicious Boutique opened the week with a leather, club-inspired collection. Their wares were tough and edgy, with men in super-tight bondage pants and sleeveless work wear-inspired jackets and tops. Delicious is known for their corsets, and the show was full of them. One particular piece was in a black and white herringbone with cap-sleeves (think dominatrix on Wall Street). While the collection wasn’t entirely wearable for the everyday woman, it was a bold way to open the week.

Lolliepop Collection showed a handful of reworked denim pieces. A standout was the punched out, Vivienne Westwood-esque jackets. Their eco-friendly means and creativity was a welcome break after the slightly scary Delicious collection.

After Delicious came Ban Thor Phan, a Philly/Thailand-based brand that focuses on sustainable practices and Middle Eastern techniques. Their show was spectacularly easy. The prints were ethnic without being costumey, with cuts that were trendy, youthful, and organic. The great part of Ban’s collection was the accessibility. I could see men and women of any age wearing the clothes. Some dresses were a little short for Mom, but then there were finely knit, calf-length shifts and the men’s looks balanced classic mens wear with an Afghani vibe.

The Northern Liberties favorite, Arcadia Boutique, showed an extensive collection of girly and modern pieces. Everything down to the black chain and rough stone necklaces were perfectly fresh. The Arcadia girl, it seems, likes to treat herself to a little frill and frou frou, without losing that Philly, tough-girl attitude. Some standouts were the teal and yellow abstract prints juxtaposed on black jersey dresses as well as razor blade-printed knit dresses.

Finally Carmelita Couture started and everything went Gaga. Carmelita, a financial analyst-turned-designer, used a fabulous palette of gold and black, with sequins and beading galore. It was gaga meets Madonna meets 1997. Sure you won’t be wearing these pieces to class, but you will be the most bad-ass bitch wherever you go (after 10 PM).

All in all it was a great way to open Philly Fashion Week; an ode to the city. Thursday is all about students, with collections from the nearby universities. Then Saturday and Sunday will be a a balance of local stars and international up-and-coming designers. Stay tuned!

With the exception of the gossipy blogger who gives the series its name, the cast of this and subsequent volumes in the spin-off is all-new, though the setting remains the same. Exactly the same. The Carlyles—teen triplets who relocate to Manhattan from Nantucket—move into the very Fifth Avenue penthouse that Gossip Girl star Blair Waldorf’s family has vacated. They attend the same exclusive private schools as did the characters from the original arc and move in the same privileged social circles.

“My publisher and I wanted to continue Gossip Girl, but the last novel took the characters to the end of the summer after senior year and they were all going off to different parts of the country,” von Ziegesar says. “With all of them scattered, I thought it was more logical to follow a new group of characters, newcomers to the city who land in the same Upper East Side playground.”

It is a familiar venue for the author, who grew up in New York City and attended a school much like the novels’ fictional Constance Billard School for Girls. “There is a little bit of me in the characters, but the books are definitely fiction,” explains von Ziegesar. “My life was nowhere as glamorous or exciting as the lives of these characters, though I did have some incredibly wealthy friends. They may have gone to fabulous benefits, but on a daily basis they were going to school, wearing uniforms and doing homework, just like I was. To make the novels more exciting, I elaborated and added elements that made things more current than when I was in high school in the late 1980s.”

Cindy Eagan, editorial director of Poppy, recalls being instantly attracted to the initial Gossip Girl proposal, which ironically—given its title character’s penchant for communicating on the Internet—was one of the first book proposals she received via e-mail. “Cecily’s writing was unapologetically catty, funny and incredibly descriptive,” says Eagan. “She seemed to have caught onto trends before they happened, with Gossip Girl being what was initially described as a ‘Web mistress,’ before the word ‘blogger’ was known. I jumped on the book right away.”

Though the publisher originally signed a contract with the author for four books to be published simultaneously in mass market format, that plan was scrapped. “When Cecily started writing, it became clear that the books would be more complex, more fleshed out, than we had anticipated,” Eagan explains. “They would take her longer to write and we knew it wasn’t going to be possible to get four out at once.”

And it soon became clear that the popular series, which debuted in 2002, would extend beyond four titles. There are more than five million copies in print of the 12 earlier Gossip Girl books, and a spin-off series, It Girl, has sold a million copies since its 2005 launch. After the first It Girl novel and the ninth Gossip Girl book, ghostwriters began to contribute to both series, Eagan says, though von Ziegesar continues to plot out each story and helps shape the drafts and characters.

Eagan reports that sales of Gossip Girls remain steady, though the publisher did see a spike when the TV show debuted last fall and Poppy published tie-in editions of the first two Gossip Girl novels. “The biggest change we see as a result of the show is that Gossip Girl is becoming part of the pop-culture language,” Eagan observes.

Although von Ziegesar is not part of the writing team for the Gossip Girl show, she does spend time on the set and says the show’s creators are doing “a terrific job,” noting, “I had thought that they might change everything so the books would be unrecognizable, but instead the show is close to the heart of the novels.”

Did von Ziegesar ever envision that her novels would ever make their way to the screen? “I didn’t think anyone would want to read the books, let alone watch the stories on TV,” she replies. “I really was nervous that this was such a privileged group of young people in Manhattan that no one would care about them. That was my challenge—to make people care.”

Source: Publisher’s Weekly