Nosy Be palm-garden villa

Nosy Be is Madagascar's holiday island and the one corner of the country with a real, functioning market for foreign buyers. Sitting off the north-west coast in the warm, calm Mozambique Channel, it has direct seasonal flights from Europe, a resort strip at Ambatoloaka, ylang-ylang plantations perfuming the interior, and a scatter of smaller islands — Nosy Komba, Nosy Iranja, Nosy Sakatia — a short boat ride offshore.

The property is a single-storey whitewashed villa of about a hundred and thirty square metres set in a mature garden of frangipani, mango and travellers' palm. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a wide covered terrace for the trade-wind breeze, a fitted kitchen, ceiling fans throughout, a water tank and a small staff or storage outbuilding. Local hardwood joinery, tiled floors and a corrugated roof under generous eaves keep it cool without air conditioning for most of the year.

Ambatoloaka's beach is a hundred and fifty metres down a sandy lane, lined with small restaurants doing grilled zebu skewers, crab, and the day's tuna for a few euros. Hell-Ville, the island's main town, is twenty minutes by taxi-be and has banks, a hospital, supermarkets, a hardware trade and the market where you buy vanilla, pepper and produce for almost nothing. Fascene airport (NOS) is thirty minutes away with flights to Antananarivo, Réunion, Mayotte and, in season, Milan and Paris.

The water is the point. Whale sharks aggregate off Nosy Be from September to December, humpbacks pass from July to September, and the diving around Nosy Tanikely marine reserve is easy, shallow and full of turtles. Dhow-style pirogues will take you island-hopping for the day; game fishing for sailfish and dorado is excellent and inexpensive.

Foreign nationals cannot own freehold land in Madagascar, but buying is routinely done through a Malagasy company or on long leases of up to ninety-nine years, and the villa market on Nosy Be is used to it. Use a notaire and a local lawyer, verify the title register carefully, and budget for a caretaker if the house will sit empty between visits — that is standard practice here and inexpensive.

For a buyer who wants Indian Ocean warmth, extraordinary wildlife and prices well under what Zanzibar or Mauritius now ask, Nosy Be remains one of the best value tropical islands anywhere.