Back in July Property Soup reported how two waterfront homes that offered extensive private boating facilities had been brought to market through Bahamas Sotheby’s International Realty.
The properties, on Harbour Island and Great Guana Cay, illustrate how private dockage and deep-water access are becoming central selling points within the Bahamas’ luxury residential market.
Buttonwood’s boating facilities include three boat lifts and deep-water access, allowing residents to travel directly from the property to neighbouring islands and anchorages.
Property Soup spoke to Lana Rademaker (main picture), Co-owner and Chief Brokerage Officer at Bahamas Sotheby’s International Realty, to find out more about Dockage & Waterfront in the Abacos and Harbour Island.
What proportion of your current luxury enquiries specifically requires private dockage?
Around a quarter of our enquiries now specify private dockage, and in the Abacos that share is climbing.
Many of our Abaco buyers are boat owners first and homeowners second, so a property with its own dockage draws noticeably broader interest than a comparable home without one.
Harbour Island tells a slightly different story. Boating is woven into the rhythm of life there, but the island is also well served by marinas, so a good number of buyers are content to keep a boat in a slip, or simply to charter when they want to fish or explore.
Has that proportion increased during the past three years?
In the Abacos, yes. A new generation of buyers has arrived, largely from Florida and the American Southeast, and most of them are boat owners.
Their tastes have moved the market with them, away from the traditional Bahamian cottage and towards modern homes with docks and pools. Dockage now sits considerably higher on the priority list than it did a few years ago.
Harbour Island has been steadier. Demand for dockage there has held rather than risen, partly because the island’s marinas absorb much of the need, and partly because a significant proportion of Harbour Island buyers are not boat owners at all – they charter when the mood takes them.
What price premium can deep-water access and a private dock command over a comparable waterfront home without boating facilities?
Substantial, and for a straightforward reason: dockage cannot be manufactured.
Hope Town offers the cleanest comparison from our own transactions. A beachfront home with a pool and a dock trades at around $4M, while an equivalent home without a dock sits closer to $3M. That is a premium of roughly a third.
In Harbour Island, only around 35- to 40% of harbourfront homes have dockage, and securing permission for a new dock is difficult, slow and far from guaranteed. Scarcity does the rest: homes with existing dockage typically command at least 25% more than those without.
Which nationalities currently account for most demand in Harbour Island and the Abacos?
Demand is predominantly North American. Florida is the most consistent single source, with the wider Southeastern United States close behind. Harbour Island draws heavily from South Florida, the Northeast, the Carolinas, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, and in the Abacos we have seen a marked increase in buyers from Tennessee.
Canadian and European buyers remain a steady presence, and alongside private purchasers we increasingly work with family offices and globally mobile buyers for whom The Bahamas forms part of a wider lifestyle and wealth-planning picture.
Are buyers primarily purchasing for personal use, seasonal occupation or rental investment?
Personal use leads, and more clearly than it did a few years ago. Rental income has slipped down the list of priorities, and many buyers are planning renovations with their own long-term enjoyment in mind rather than a yield calculation.
That said, each island has its own character. Some communities attract buyers with rental potential firmly in view; others are purely lifestyle destinations.
A large part of our advisory role is matching a buyer’s intentions to the island that genuinely suits them.
Is limited marina capacity increasing the value of homes with their own dockage?
Yes, and it is one of the more durable supports beneath waterfront values here.
Marina capacity is finite in both markets, slips in the best locations are effectively spoken for, and adding new berths is neither simple nor swift.
The result is that a home with its own dockage is not just more convenient – it is insulated from a constraint every other buyer has to work around.
That advantage shows up in the depth of the buyer pool, and ultimately in the price achieved.
How have transaction volumes, prices and available waterfront stock changed in these two markets?
Hope Town gives the clearest measure of price growth: the average sale price has risen 131% since 2021, from $1.133M to $2.617M in 2025, according to our MLS data. That figure needs its context, though, because it is not a story of straightforward appreciation.
Hurricane Dorian came ashore over Abaco in September 2019 as a Category 5 storm and stalled there for the better part of two days.
The destruction was near total in places, and thousands of homes across the island were left uninhabitable.
Six months later Covid closed the borders, and they remained shut or heavily restricted for much of the following year, which meant that both rebuilding and buying largely stopped.
The 2021 average therefore reflects a market at its lowest ebb: few transactions, much of the stock damaged or yet to be rebuilt, and prices reset accordingly.
What has happened since is as much a rebuild as a recovery. The homes trading today are, to a significant degree, new or comprehensively reconstructed to a far higher standard than what stood before, with better materials, better elevation and better hurricane engineering.
They are also selling into a wave of demand from buyers who discovered the Out Islands during and after the pandemic. So the 131% captures three things at once: a depressed starting point, a genuine step-change in the quality of the housing stock, and real growth in demand.
Harbour Island, which Dorian largely spared, has been consistently strong across the same five years, with sales coming through season after season; beachfront there now commands some of the highest values in the country.
Across both markets, the constraint is stock. Inventory is genuinely short, particularly of modern, move-in-ready homes, and private sales are common enough that public data understates real activity.
What insurance, hurricane resilience and maintenance issues must buyers consider?
Three things, and we walk every waterfront buyer through all of them.
Insurance: standard property cover including hurricane protection, along with working insurance for any staff on the property.
Maintenance: salt-air exposure is constant on the waterfront, so materials should be rust-resistant and easy to clean. It affects long-term running costs more than buyers tend to expect.
Resilience: hurricane performance comes down to materials and construction quality, which is why today’s buyers are far more attuned to build standards, elevation and durability than they were a few years ago.
Are buyers becoming more cautious about properties exposed to storm surge or coastal erosion?
More informed rather than more hesitant. Buyers look closely at elevation, build quality and resilience, but they also understand the mitigating factors: barrier reefs offer natural protection in many of our markets, and the established luxury communities have pre-engineered coastal solutions.
The practical effect is a widening gap. Robust, well-built waterfront homes command both confidence and price, while properties that fall short of those standards tend to remain on the market longer.
How long are properties above $5M currently taking to sell?
Roughly six months has been the historical norm across all price points, but above $5M there is no single average, and it is worth understanding why. $5M means something quite different in each market: in Harbour Island it sits towards the lower end of the luxury spectrum, while in the Abacos it sits near the top, so the two behave very differently at that level.
Inventory above $5M is limited and each sale tends to be highly individual, so timing is driven by presentation and pricing rather than by any market-wide figure.
A well-priced, turnkey home in a desirable location can go under offer in 30 to 60 days, while a property needing work typically takes longer to reach its target price.
