By Doug and K.T. Ingersoll - April 2005

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back and always in a timely fashion. We peppered him with the same questions we had asked numerous other agents. He answered all of them. We finally felt that we had found someone we wanted to work with. Now we just needed to find the property. We sent him a list of every island we had bookmarked, even though we’d already completed our own research on most of them. We requested that he get as much detail on each listing as possible. To this point, there had only been a couple of islands that really excited us. Unfortunately, both had already sold. This news, on one island in particular, was extremely disappointing to K.T. At nearly twenty acres, the island was the perfect size, close to the barrier reef and yet still minutes from the mainland and nearby airport.
The price was right and it had the perfect name, Tranquility Caye.

Billy started his research on the list we had given him, which included this island. Over the next several weeks he e-mailed us information as he received it. Most of the updates we received from him were discouraging. Many more of the islands from our list had recently sold while others were either listed with brokerages that wouldn’t cooperate or they never bothered to respond at all.

Then, one day, we received an e-mail from Billy stating that Tranquility Caye (Caye is pronounced “key”) was still available. We were thrilled, but surprised. Why did the listing agent of the property tell us it was sold? After further inquiries over the next several days, Billy learned that it was in fact still under contract.

This time K.T. was devastated. It was the only island that fit all of our needs. Nothing else we found was quite right. Had we set our expectations too high? Was our price tag too low? Would we ever realize our island dream? After the initial disappointment and a few days of depression subsided, we agreed that we definitely didn’t want to change our requirements or settle for anything less. So we kept looking!

Several months passed and it felt like we had exhausted every possibility. Then it happened! We received an e-mail from the listing agent of Tranquility Caye. Apparently, after learning that the government would not allow an airstrip on the island, the buyer had bailed. We immediately contacted Billy, since we wanted him to represent us on this purchase. He was able to negotiate a cooperation agreement with the listing agent and we made an offer to purchase the island, sight unseen.

We routinely purchase and sell property. Our offers are based solely on a financial decision, one without emotion. You’d think that signing a contract to purchase an island that you’ve never visited, in a foreign country nonetheless, would be downright terrifying. For us, the only scary part was the thought that we’d lose it again. After several agonizing days of negotiating with the seller, we finally agreed upon the terms and a contract was ratified. It was exhilarating! Until, that is, we had to send our good faith deposit. This was the greatest leap of faith we had ever made in our lives. We wired a large sum of money toward the purchase of an island that we’d only seen in pictures, to a bank account of the real estate company that we only hope existed. Somehow it just felt right and we knew that finally we were one step closer to realizing our dream.

We immediately booked our trip to Belize to see the island in person. In an effort to assure ourselves that this was the correct purchase, we arranged to see numerous other

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