"We had been to Roatan, the neighbouring island to Utila where we now own our property, in 1994 and in 2000," says Mike Haigh, of how the process of owning his own beach actually began. "We felt Roatan had become too built-up so we started to investigate other islands. Utila is more remote and smaller than Roatan so we decided to look there. In addition, the diving is as good – or even better – than Roatan and they have whale sharks visiting at certain times of the year.

"Price and climate are the main reasons that we decided to buy in Honduras. Also the government pretty stable as the constitution is based on US and UK model and there are good tax breaks too."

Mike bought a plot of approximately three quarters of an acre and 100 foot of white sand beach next to a jetty. Power lines are established on the plot and the property has its own well. There is also planning permission to erect one large and two smaller houses on the land.

"Our property needs to be built," says Mike. "We have plans  for this and we're probably going to build a small Maldivian-style hut to begin with whilst overseeing construction of larger property.

"We paid $150,000 for the plot and the beach but the process of finding and buying the land was hard work. It took six months of research in the UK, then a lot of work trying to get in contact with local realtors. In the end it came down to finally finding someone to act as a 'go-between' and spending a week on the island before going to look at any property at all to find out the lie of the land. So we made some contacts and kind of made it happen and bought through a company called Roatan Realty. 

Even then, Mike had to be aware of the quirks of the Honduran legal system.

"Honduran law states that you can't actually own the sea/sand interface. However, if you put up a fence no-one stops you. In reality as access is only by boat at present – a road/track is being built – it's not a problem. Registration of land is on UK principles and we have a clear delineation of our boundaries - even with latitude and longitude!"

A British-owned Maldivian hut in Honduras: now that's what I call an emerging market.

In buying his own patch of Honduras, Mike used the currency exchange services of Moneycorp and would recommend the company to other people exchanging currency to buy property overseas.

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Article published on 22 March 2007