Given that he won in court, he was presumably at least able to establish that the house existed at one time, and he owned it, so it’s unlikely to be totally fictitious.

There would be a record in the land registry, with a map.

Even if the house disappeared he would still own the land. Given that it was a very basic house it's likely the land was worth at least as much as the building.

>> Even if the house disappeared he would still own the land. Given that it was a very basic house it's likely the land was worth at least as much as the building.

Don't underestimate the cost of building stuff on an island like that. Everything needs to be brought in by boat, including labor.

For sure. An uncle of mine used to own property on Mackinac Island [1] that he wanted to build a home on. After years of trying to find a way to manage it, he gave up and sold: it was just too far beyond his budget (he is fairly wealthy).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island

>> Even if the house disappeared he would still own the land.

Not always. So-called Ground Leases are common in many parts. The tenant owns the house but the landlord owns the land and collects rent from the building owner. I'm not clear of exactly what type of ownership rights this person had over the house let alone the underlying property.

Ground leases in Ireland used to be common, but they're transferrable and can generally be converted to freehold for very little money, so they don't have a significant impact on costs. That said, land on Tory Island is presumably ~worthless anyway.

A lot of it probably won’t be above water in the next hundred years, so I’d seriously advise against investing in property there.

There’s probably some lessons here about good headlines to draw you into a story via social media. Or if you go deeper the value of stories/fiction that were entirely invented in the first place, or documentaries about real things combined with the limitations of an hour and a half plus the biases and editing of the creator, or the podcast medium which lets you go even deeper into a topic, etc.

There’s plenty of angles here in a meta way beyond the sum of the real story itself.

But I do agree this is most likely going to be an unrewarding investment with a likely simple explanation like the hotel wanting views + very old basically vacant building in the way.