THE JAMES BOND RELATED GOLDEN-EYE PROPERTIES IN JAMAICA, BEING SOLD AT US$10m ASKING PRICE

GoldenEye properties being sold at US$10-million asking price—

SEVEN GoldenEye properties are being sold at an asking price of just over US$10 million.

The famed properties have been listed by Coldwell Banker Jamaica Realty and ranges in value from US$1.15 million to US$1.5 million each.

“No other single resort property in the Caribbean offers the variety of landscape that GoldenEye offers,” said Sandy Tatham, realtor associate at Coldwell Banker Realty.

“A prospective homeowner can choose a unit on a beautiful, white-sand beach, or on a cliff, nestled in a tropical jungle or alongside a pristine ocean-fed lagoon,” she said.

The luxury property first went on the market in 2009, with a large number of the units being sold long before construction was completed.

Upon completion of its first phase on December 2010, the property opened its door as a resort, and has enjoyed “a high level of occupancy since then,” Tatham told Caribbean Business Report.

Buying into GoldenEye is a very lucrative investment. Some investors who have bought two units have opted to place one in the ‘rent pool’ while reserving the other for personal use.

A resort company, Island Outposts, which allows owners to add their units to the rent pool and earn from them, manages Goldeneye.

The company, handles all the marketing, operations, and associated costs, and takes a commission from the profit.

Having returned “very nice first-quarter results”, the profits from the units in the rental pool more than cover the homeownership expenses for both, she said.

At its lowest, a one-bedroom lagoon villa at the GoldenEye resort typically attracts nightly rates of US$975, in the off season, and up to US$1,700 nightly in the peak season, according to the resort’s website.

Coldwell Banker Jamaica Realty, which has been the local and international listing agent for the property since 2012, has listed three of these 1,110 sq ft, one bedroom units at a cost of US$1.5 million each.

Conceivably, this unit, at 100 per cent occupancy, could pay for itself in four years, if the minimum nightly rate is consistently charged.

“Jamaicans have actually looked an this as a very good investment,” said Tatham.

Currently, people from all over the world have bought into GoldenEye, but the vast majority of them are Jamaicans who live overseas, she said.

GoldenEye was the name Ian Fleming gave to his estate in Oracabessa, St Mary, which now operates as an upscale hotel consisting of Fleming’s main house and several cottages.

Fleming, who is the author of the world-renowned James Bond novels, is said to have wrote all his novels while he vacationed at GoldenEye, and have even shot a few of the films on site.

The GoldenEye Hotel and Resort is located 10 minutes away from the Ian Fleming International Airport and is in the Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary, which was established in 2011 to protect Oracabessa’s marine ecosystem.