A view of the Florida island on sale on eBay.

(eBay)

A longtime Volusia County resident is trying to auction off part of an uninhabited island in the Intracoastal Waterway for as little as $459,000 on eBay.

On the plus side, the waterfront views are unencumbered and neighbors are nonexistent on the 3-acre site in Port Orange.

On the minus side, future inhabitants would need solar power, a rainwater cistern and permission from local government to build anything there. The property, by the way, is just 5 feet above sea level.

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"It's more than I can afford to build on a private island," said Emilio Cirelli, who acquired the property in 2004 after a previous owner defaulted on property taxes. "Everything is double the cost to barge everything over there, and travel time is an issue."

The story of the island is as circuitous as the channels that thread through the waterway, which in Volusia County is known as the Halifax River. The land is on the northeast tip of a 90-acre island created more than 70 years ago with material dredged from the river bottom so the waterway would remain navigable, according to the Florida Inland Navigation District, which manages the dredged Intracoastal material.

Cirelli picked up the land when a previous owner failed to pay several thousand dollars in property taxes. Purchasing property-tax certificates from delinquent owners rarely leads to ownership; usually the taxes get paid when someone purchases the property but, occasionally, no one wants to buy the property at public auction, so the person who paid the taxes becomes the new owner.

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"In 27 years of buying tax certificates, this has only happened a few times," said Cirelli, who has acquired islands in Port Orange, Ormond Beach and Jacksonville as the result of buying up someone's property-tax debt.

Cirelli said he had considered constructing something on the 1.8 buildable acres and paid the Inland Navigation District about $20,000 to remove all the leases that had allowed them to dump dredge material there. But in 2010 he sold the undeveloped property for $112,000 to Prescott, Ariz., resident Michael Butler, who also threw in a vehicle to sweeten the deal, Cirelli said. Butler could not be reached for comment.

Cirelli lent Butler the mortgage and, when Butler failed to make payments, Cirelli foreclosed and last month got back his slice of island.

Now he has turned to the online-auction site eBay.

"I just figured it would get a lot of attention," Cirelli said.

By Friday evening -- with 24 hours left on the auction -- no one had bid on it.

David Roach, executive director of the navigation district, said Cirelli's land is unusual because few Intracoastal island properties are free from state and federal dredge-dumping leases.

But even without the government leases, the property is problematic, Roach said. Getting building permits could be challenging. Construction costs would be high. Port Orange Principal Planner Tim Burman said any project would need a myriad of government approvals, even for something as basic as a septic tank or dock.

And most buyers, Roach said, would not want to build there and then leave their island home unprotected by local law enforcement.

"The first thing that will happen is a bunch of yahoos will land there and spend the weekend and trash the place," said Roach, who was skeptical about the asking price.

For that much money, he said, buyers could purchase a yacht and anchor it in comfort almost anywhere they wanted.

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