THERE’S nothing quite like messing about on boats, as the thousands of people heading to the Isle of Wight next week for the 180th Cowes Week will testify. Sooner or later, however, most yachtsmen will want to step foot on dry land — and what better than stepping straight into your own house? Although marina villages such as Ocean Village in Southampton enable boat owners to do just that, finding a home abroad with its own mooring can be more difficult. Take Spain. Majorca’s beautiful bays, coves, rocky inlets and swanky marinas have made it one of the most popular places in the Mediterranean for international yacht owners, many of whom also live on the island. Yet few houses have their own berth.

A quarter of the island’s marinas are run by the local authorities, and the remainder are privately owned and rake in a huge income by letting berths on a casual or yearly basis.

Jan Westwood, of the estate agent Property Finders, who has lived in Majorca for 20 years, says that people need to be realistic and buy the berth and house separately. She advises starting with a berth and looking for a property as near to the marina as you can afford. “A good berth is a rarer find than a good property,” she says.

She recently found a prime mooring in Puerto Portals, the island’s classiest marina, for Andrew Egginton, a British sailor. He chose to live on his boat while work was done on his house overlooking the port. Puerto Portals is the first place to look if you hanker for the lifestyle of the international yacht set. A 12m (39ft) berth costs £150,000 — up to twice as much as moorings in less fashionable parts of the island.

Westwood says that clients who cannot afford Puerto Portals should investigate Porto Colom, Colonia Sant Jordi, Cala Bona and Cala Ratjada, where new or expanded marinas are being planned since the easing of laws banning new port development.

She has also unearthed the rarest of the rare at Porto Colom: two four-bedroom, four-bathroom quayside properties with internal courtyards and direct access to their own boat house and mooring. At £823,000, they are not cheap, but that reflects their rarity on the island.

The situation is a little better in the south of Spain, where the vast upmarket resort of Sotogrande, established in 1961, is embarking on the last stage of its marina development, Ribera del Marlin. Waterside flats in three modern blocks look out across the marina and beyond to the Strait of Gibraltar. These will be the last waterfront properties to be built on the 4,800-acre (1,942-hectare) estate, and the buildings will have their own indoor and outdoor pools, gym, sauna and whirlpool baths, as well as garage parking. The flats cost between £300,000 and £830,000 but only the more expensive come with the option of buying a berth. Berths start at £89,000 for a 12m one, rising to £158,412 for 15m. David Vaughan, of Sotogrande, says that berths at some of the earlier marinas and jetties within Sotogrande have almost tripled in price in the past six years.

However, it is not certain whether buying a property at Sotogrande with a berth is a better investment than just buying a property.

Mark Harvey, of Cluttons’ Marbella office, explains that there just aren’t enough buyers around who can afford the triple whammy of house, mooring and yacht. “Many of the people buying at developments such as Sotogrande are middle-class, middle-aged professionals,” he says.

The investment case on Majorca is not clear-cut either. Berth prices have gone up by 10 per cent in the past year, yet property prices have, according to Westwood, risen by at least 10 per cent. At Puerto Portals a 12m berth costing £150,000 could be let for £12,000 a year, giving a gross yield of 8 per cent. Daily fees are £60. Even after the brokers have taken a 10 per cent cut, rental income is high.

Houses with moorings on the French coast are also rare. Olivier Morvan, of Cluttons’ Cannes office, says: “Berths are very limited in Cannes and the odd berth coming on the market will command a huge premium, often making it more expensive than the property.”

However, there is a long-established marina development at Port Grimaud, between St Tropez and Cannes. This modern village was built out along a series of jetties and islands in the 1960s. Today it has 12km of quays and more than 2,000 houses with private moorings. For £582,877 you can find what the French agent describes as a “charming fisherman house” with four bedrooms and a 14m mooring, or for £2.4 million you can buy a fully renovated bigger house with two moorings: a huge 23m one for the luxury super-yacht and a 7m space for the dinghy. Port Grimaud and Sotogrande are the exception. Demand for houses with moorings is not high. When such houses are built, they are clearly intended to be trophy homes rather than for investment. Examples are the $3.55 million ship-shaped marina houses at the new Prickly Bay Waterside development on Grenada in the Caribbean or the Perseus resort in Dubai, that come with a mooring big enough for a super-yacht.

• Sotogrande: www.sotogrande.com, 020-7736 1700,
• Quai House, Porto Colom: Property Finders, 020-7518 0335, www.thepropertyfinders.com
• Port Grimaud: www.azurproperties.com, 00 33 6 89 15 50 62
• Prickly Bay Waterside, Hamptons International, www.hamptons.co.uk and www.pricklybay.com
• Perseus, Dubai, Cluttons Resorts: 020-7408 1010

  WATERFRONT
  
  Closer to home, you can live by the water for less with a new shared-ownership scheme at the Watermark Residence Club in the Cotswolds. For between £45,000 and £85,000 you can buy an eighth share in

  a three or four-bedroom lodge at the edge of a lake. The timber-clad New England-style houses, right, painted in pastel shades, all have private decks from which you can watch the wildlife of the Cotswold Water Park, or if you’re feeling energetic you can pop down to the clubhouse for a spot of golf, tennis or water-skiing. Contact: 01285 862288, www.watermarkfractional.com

  MARY GOLD

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