Own this entire private island in Sacramento region for $39,000

A $39,000 price tag doesn’t usually buy much in California real estate. But in the heart of the San Joaquin Delta, it buys something few people can claim: an island.

The 5.6-acre private island in the tranquil waters off West Eight Mile Road, between Correia and Potato roads, has hit the market near Stockton, 48 miles south of Sacramento.

The triangular property is sparse on improvements — because there really aren’t any — but that’s part of the appeal. The land is surrounded entirely by water, making it a blank slate that’s less about a house and more about the idea of getting away from everything.

“Your own private island in the heart of the California Delta,” the MLS property description reads, noting that the setting “feels a world away yet remains within reach of Stockton and the greater Sacramento region.”

For listing agent Monte Morris of Nick Sadek Sotheby’s International Realty, properties like this are unusual enough that he’s built a niche around them — this one isn’t his first.

“It’s extremely rare, this is the third (island listing) for me,” Morris said, referencing a prior island he sold that garnered a lot of attention.

In 2020, Morris sold an island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for $43,000 in an all-cash deal. That property spanned 18 acres of raw land and was also in the middle of White Slough. It changed hands less than a month after being listed and closed escrow in just eight days. The seller received seven offers for the property. It was listed for $40,000.

Morris already has offers on the current listing, including one from a company in Seattle that buys unusual properties and uses them for short-term rentals, he said.

The new listing sits in a quiet stretch of Delta waterway that tends to trade waterski-for-a-weekend chaos for a slower rhythm: fishing boats, the occasional cruiser and a landscape defined by reeds, levees and big skies. Morris described the area around the island as “super laid back.”

“It’s really calm, and not a lot going on,” he said, save for people traveling up and down the river, fishing and otherwise recreating.

In an era when privacy can feel like the ultimate luxury amenity, a 5.6-acre island offers it by default.

“Spend your days exploring the Delta waterways, casting a line at sunset, or simply enjoy the kind of privacy that’s becoming harder and harder to find,” the MLS description reads.

Unlike the fantasy of a fully built-out island compound, this listing is more grounded — literally, a bermed piece of land.

“They’re classified as berms,” Morris said. “And they’re zoned agricultural.”

That zoning, he added, reflects what the land is on paper, not necessarily what buyers imagine doing with it.

“These are just like land deals,” Morris said. “They’re obviously different because they’re surrounded by water, but they’re basically just land, and it’s agricultural pieces of land that I don’t think that’s their highest and best use, because it would be too hard to access for a farmer.”

That’s not to say buyers haven’t dreamed big — sometimes very big. Morris said that when he sold a similar island previously, would-be uses were all over the map.

“Last time I sold one of these things, people were looking into them for recreational use,” he said. “Somebody wanted to do a pot grow on it, some people wanted to do jet ski rentals.”

More commonly, he said, the interest tends to be less entrepreneurial and more personal — the kind of purchase that doubles as a story to tell friends.

“They want to just have a place to take their buddies and hunt and fish, and I think, they want to just say, ‘Come to my island,’” he said.

That access question is a defining feature. The property is reachable by water, and any notion of building or installing amenities comes with a to-do list that starts with conversations with local agencies.

“A lot of these are things that would have to be worked out with the building department,” Morris said. “You can always change the zoning. It’s not easy.”

In that sense, this listing is part trophy, part escape hatch. The Delta already draws boaters, anglers and people looking for a place where cell service fades and the to-do list shrinks. Owning a private island takes that impulse to its logical extreme: a patch of ground where the nearest neighbors are separated by water.

“I think that you could probably put some pylons in there and put in a dock,” he said, adding that others have added small structures. “A lot of these guys that I talked to have put sheds and things like that, or little fishing hut. It would be just a little bit tough to get utilities over there.”

If he owned it himself, Morris said he’d keep it simple.

“If it were mine, I would probably put some piers or something in there,” he said, imagining a setup that leans into the setting rather than fighting it — a platform for sitting, casting a line, watching the water traffic and calling it a day.

That stripped-down reality is also what makes the $39,000 price point possible. It’s not the kind of price tag associated with the more famous private islands, which are effectively in a different universe. For example, Red Rock Island, the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay, was listed for sale in 2023 for $25 million.

This listing is not that. It’s the accessible, oddball version: a rare piece of California geography that most people only experience by boat, now available to someone willing to take on the quirks.

There are a couple of marina businesses nearby: the members-only Devil’s Isle and Grindstone Joe’s.

The island was last purchased in 2007 for $17,500, public property records show.

This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 12:45 PM.

David Caraccio

The Sacramento Bee

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David Caraccio is a video producer for The Sacramento Bee who was born and raised in Sacramento. He is a graduate of San Diego State University and a longtime journalist who has worked for newspapers as a reporter, editor, page designer and digital content producer.