Thinking of buying an island, were you? Think twice. It’s not as straightforward as you might imagine.

In the week that billionaire Larry Ellison was reported to have grabbed a Hawaiian island for a sweet $500m, private-island salesman Chris Krolow shares the pitfalls of such purchases with the website of the American NPR radio network.

There’s access, for a start, he tells Scott Neuman.

You need to be able to get a boat in there, and runways can be a right pain to construct, even if there is the space.

And the weather can be a real worry.

So while that $28,000 island in Nova Scotia might seem a snip, “the locals would never buy an island”, Krolow advises. “They don’t want to deal with the hassles of getting there, the weather and the fog.”

And that’s not to mention the water, the electricity, the environmental impact reports. And “the possibility that someone else will claim it’s their island, not yours”.

Krolow: “Every once in a while, there may be someone contesting a deed on the basis of squatter rights.”

Camping it is.