The Art of Selling a Lighthouse

One day, about 20 years ago, Dave McNally was at his family’s home in Minnesota when he made a throwaway comment to his young son in an effort to distract him: "Go on the internet and look up lighthouses for sale." That’s the simple origin story of how the McNallys came to own the 19th-century Smith Point Lighthouse, which sits about 1,135 miles away in the Chesapeake Bay, a few miles off the coast of Reedville, Virginia. (He also had to convince his wife of the unconventional purchase over dinner at their favorite restaurant.)

The McNallys paid roughly $170,000 for the lighthouse in a 2005 online Federal auction through the General Services Administration’s preservation-oriented Lighthouse Program. After some extensive DIY renovations (McNally, who worked in construction, says he hauled countless loads of lumber across the choppy bay), the family used the lighthouse as their longtime vacation home. Some of their experiences there were difficult—they lost the boat they used to travel to and from the mainland once or twice—and others were moments of beauty, like the occasional sound of dolphins beneath their bedrooms. "It takes an adventurous person to do this," McNally says.

In April, when the McNallys, now in their 70s, put the lighthouse on the market for $450,000, Virginia real estate agent Beth Groner took the listing. The "Northern Neck of Virginia Waterfront Living Expert," as it says on her website, is yet to have a serious buyer—someone on board for the required cash sale—and hasn’t had a showing of Smith Point Lighthouse yet. But when the time comes, Groner says, she’ll don a life vest, grab some Dramamine if the seas are sketchy, and haul herself up the ladder. "I mean [for] a very serious buyer," adds the realtor.

The appetite for eccentric real estate has grown in recent years to the extent that Zillow Gone Wild went from an Instagram account to an HGTV series and Airbnb launched entire categories around immersive overnight experiences and "OMG!" rentals. While some people just swipe and stare wild-eyed at waterlocked listings like lighthouses, floating homes, and private islands described as ideal "if you hate people," there are, of course, people who actually buy them. Which means there are realtors who might have to show them to prospective buyers by hopping on a boat.

It’s rarely ever that easy, though. Island listings are particularly hard sells, properties where people often fawn over the pros and possibilities of that lifestyle and rarely consider its challenges. "Remote islands absolutely have complications because everything’s a little harder to do," says real estate agent Alan Johnson, who has the listing for a 2.25-acre private island with an off-grid cabin on British Columbia’s Lake Cowichan that went on the market last September and is still for sale—with a reduced price of roughly $1 million USD (from about $1.2 million). "It’s a very different budget owning an island," says Johnson, who happens to also own an off-grid island cabin in the area.

Even though Groner specializes in selling waterfront homes, she says Smith Point Lighthouse is her most unique listing—by a long shot. Still, she likes the challenge and is waiting for the right buyer to come along. She even has one in mind: a Pennsylvania man named Rich Cucé who has already purchased three other historic Chesapeake Bay lighthouses and is restoring them as education centers for students and scientists through his organization The Lighthouse Centers. Even Cucé, the owner of a commercial painting and sandblasting company who took up the lighthouse restorations as a passion project, has had some buyer’s remorse about the purchases. "It’s one thing after another out there," he says, adding that he’s keeping an eye on Smith Point and is waiting it out for a price he stays coy about.

Agents with lighthouse and remote island listings like Groner and Johnson tend to field lots of phone calls from potential short-term rental investors. Groner says she responds to callers interested in buying Smith Point as an Airbnb or VRBO with reasons why it wouldn’t work, outlining everything from liability issues and difficulties getting rental insurance, to inclement weather affecting reservations and plain-old logistics you’d never have to worry about on the mainland. "People are interested, yes, absolutely," she says. "I hear from history buffs, older naval officers. People are just curious. I just don’t think many of them have fully thought it through. I ask them how they would get people out there."

Of course, not all of the interested buyers are on the lookout for short-term rental opportunities—some are actually seeking their dream house. Realtor Sandy Stinson, who shares the Lake Cowichan cabin listing with Johnson, says she’s taken about a half-dozen potential buyers to the private island in a small boat. She has to go out in the morning, because winds pick up there in the afternoon. Her family owns an island lodge on the French River in Northern Ontario, so she’s used to it. "I don’t mind being on the water," she says.

Stinson says she doesn’t have an official vetting process for those showings. Groner, however, explains there are some requirements for people who want to actually tour Smith Point’s interior, climbing aboard via the lighthouse’s ladder system. "Several prospective buyers have visited by boat to explore the lighthouse from the water," she says. "In order to show the lighthouse, though, we are requiring the potential buyer to provide financial verification and to sign a release." 

As of yet, that hasn’t happened.

A few years ago, when the owner of Maine’s 1.5-acre Duck Ledges Island listed the isolated plot and its tiny cabin for $339,000, he requested to have a potential buyer stay one night there, alone, to make sure the future owner would know what they’d be signing up for. Charlotte Gale, a New Jersey massage therapist, took him up on the offer and bought Duck Ledges. "I saw the island and thought: ‘What’s the chance to own a little gem like this?’" she told the New York Times in a follow-up story about the listing, which received its fair share of internet attention while on the market. (Gale doesn’t own a boat and relies on a local charter company for transportation to and from the island, where she lives for part of the year.)

After his experience as Smith Point’s owner, McNally says that buying a waterlocked listing like a lighthouse or a private island is "worth it for someone who’s a dreamer." Groner thinks that’s a good qualification for a buyer, as long as that dreamer signs the release and wears a life jacket.  

Top photo of Smith Point Lighthouse courtesy Beth Groner Real Estate

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