Diving into the exclusive private island market: “Some people dream of a Ferrari, but I wanted an island”

Centimeter by centimeter, the English Channel is withdrawing from the cove of Pleumeur-Bodou (Côtes-d'Armor) this Tuesday afternoon, July ^1st . For a few hours, the sea returns the island of Aval to the continent. It's best to take off your shoes to cross the spongy strip of exposed sand and thus reach the dense six-hectare pebble. Its owner, Jean-Marie Tassy-Simeoni, has agreed to show you around his "paradise" .

In France, there are between 100 and 200 of these private islands. It's difficult to precisely determine their number among the 5,300 pebbles, often wild and public. Especially since these shards of land, mostly located off the coast of Brittany, are often passed down from generation to generation, hidden from view. This is how billionaire Vincent Bolloré, the most famous of the islet owners, inherited Loch, off the coast of Finistère.

Jean-Marie Tassy-Simeoni, for his part, had to scrutinize the advertisements of luxury real estate agencies to find his "pebble" . One or two are exchanged on average each year. "Some dream of a Ferrari, I wanted my private island. As a child, I played Robinson Crusoe. Since I was little, the island of Aval has come back to me in my dreams to the point that, when I visited it, I cried" , says the fifty-year-old. In 2020, after having sold his communications agency, he therefore signed a check for between 2 million and 3 million euros for this property and its buildings without running water or electricity.

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