'This is a unique property,' says Penny MacIntyre, a slim, no-nonsense realtor who delights in showing off the reflecting pools and waterfalls that the architect has incorporated into the house's design. Most Bermuda high-end properties are a reflection of the island itself-proud, conservative stone mansions painted in deep reds, dark yellows, browns and blues. They are built in what is known as the Bermuda vernacular style and boast distinctive wooden window shutters, tapered chimneys and white roofs that collect rainwater for the flowers in the lush gardens that fill the island. Not Aquamarina. One of a handful of futuristic styled houses in Bermuda, Aquamarina, says MacIntyre, is 'very modern and forward thinking.'

But modern and forward thinking, it turns out, have never quite been the forte of this fish-hooked island, known for its stately British airs, pink sandy beaches and currently, the fourth-highest per-capita income in the world. While MacIntyre may drive a fairly modern SUV, a lot of residents here navigate Bermuda's many twisting roads in small motorcycles that look straight out of a Steve McQueen movie. Downtown Hamilton, its capital, boasts one glass office tower, and its 10 stories stand out against the backdrop of much shorter, old colonial office buildings. Whereas the rest of the world seems to be opening its door to glitz and brand new, Bermuda, a self-governing British territory for four centuries, prides itself on a sheltered life with virtually no serious crime, no paparazzi and no income tax.

It's the kind of world a lot of rich people love. Or perhaps loved. While Aquamarina may be a steal, it has sat vacant and unsold for about a year. And as MacIntyre begins to rattle off some sale figures, a disturbing reality emerges about the island's small but lucrative market of island mansions, which range in price from $3.5 million to more than $40 million. More than 50 of these homes were sold between 2007 and 2011, including the proudly named Castle Point ($21.5 million) and the slightly more modest Tradewinds ($11.5 million). Last year, there were 34 properties on the market that the island's quirky and restrictive system allowed foreigners to buy. Of these, just one went into contract, in what was one of Bermuda's worst real-estate years on record. And things have only started to pick up this year. 'It's been a quiet market,' she says.

Indeed, after decades of reigning as a supreme destination for some of the world's elite, Bermuda is having a tough time competing for the patronage of the stupendously rich, creating a classic tug of war over old and new money. The island, an easy two- or three-hour jet jaunt from the U.S. coastline, still attracts such billionaires as Ross Perot and Michael Bloomberg, who maintain homes here. But government officials and business leaders say they are worried that the mores of high-end tourism are changing, along with the wealthy themselves, and that this magical archipelago must now fight to follow the money. 'Bermuda is like a lady with a very long skirt on,' says David Dodwell, a hotelier who is also chairman of Bermuda's tourism board. 'We need to pull up our skirts a bit.'

Without question, the geography of money is changing-and at an unaccustomed velocity. According to an annual survey of global wealth by Boston Consulting Group, private wealth in the 'new world,' primarily the Asia Pacific region, jumped around 12 percent last year alone, or more than double the rate of growth in the 'old world,' including North America and Western Europe. This new breed of nouveau riche tends to favor a lifestyle of supernova toys, with private elevators hauling sports cars into their living rooms and bar drinks costing thousands of dollars each. They like their homes to be modern, their nightlife late and their clothes as shiny as their jewelry. All of which has very little to do with sleepy Bermuda, whose nightlife shuts down at the stroke of 10 during the week and whose hotels haven't quite caught up with the concept of in-room infinity pools or 24-hour butler service. (Note: A special check-in area and afternoon tea is still considered a high-end perk at the Fairmont, the island's upscale, flamingo-pink resort.)

Beyond the need for celebrity chef restaurants and Prada boutiques, once-popular high-end resorts are discovering that it also takes a special cocktail of tax policies, real-estate laws and a host of business-friendly steps to reel in the big fish. That's a challenging task, especially for the smaller locales like Bermuda. Upset about its own struggling economy and a gaping national debt, the island's citizenry elected a new government last year that is promising some intriguing changes-including a few key overtures to the business community and the jet-setting rich it brings. But Bermuda is a place steeped in conservative traditions. Change does not come easy.

'I DON'T THINK Bermuda has enough zip for the younger crowd,' says Wendell Hollis, a leading corporate lawyer who has represented many of the billionaires who have bought real estate here over the past 20 years. A tall, blue-eyed ruddy-faced Bermudian, Hollis is walking about his home, which boasts a castle-like battlement built on the remains of a 17th century pirate fort, still armed with 13 small-bore antique cannons pointing out to repel whatever invaders might be lurking at sea. These days, he worries that his home country is missing out on an opportunity to attract more wealthy residents. A former senator and adviser to several governments here, Hollis once wrote a paper showing how just three rich individuals contributed over $100 million to the Bermuda economy. 'How many tourists or ex-pat workers does it take to produce such a contribution?' he asks.

The kind of population Hollis would like to see more of has been enjoying the enchanting qualities of Bermuda since the 19th century. Mark Twain, an early booster here, was quoted as saying: 'You can go to heaven if you want. I'd rather stay in Bermuda.' He was joined by Vincent Astor, the son of Titanic victim John Jacob Astor IV, who used part of his inheritance to build an estate here, complete with a mini, narrow-gauge railroad, on a 22-acre property. In the 1920s, when Bermuda's worthies decided to create the island's first club and golf development, the Mid Ocean Club, it marketed heavily to wealthy Americans from New York and Boston. The Lowells might have talked only to the Cabots, and the Cabots only to God, but some of those conversations, according to the list of early club members, took place on the links of the Mid Ocean Club.

Today, the Astors, Lowells and Cabots have been replaced by Perots (as in Ross), McGraws (of McGraw Hill) and Pritzkers (of Hyatt Hotels). And in place of Mark Twain, Bermuda has long counted on actor Michael Douglas and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, for a dash of celebrity glamour. The two raised their children here but have returned to New York, renting their home for the asking price of $28,000 a month. Most of these big names maintain homes in a secluded area of the island known as Tucker's Town but more commonly as Billionaires' Row. Few resort streets in the world can boast so many names of so many ultra-rich people living so close together. A visitor will find only one bored guard manning the gate to the neighborhood, known for its views of the Atlantic and its flowering white and pink oleander hedges.

The old money here say Bermuda has always had a special appeal, from its relatively close distance to the power elite of the U.S. Northeast, to a natural beauty that photographs can't quite capture. The island is emerald green, one big park, complete with a botanical garden and the occasional postage-stamp-sized garden farm growing onions and carrots. Not one blade of grass appears to be withered or out of place, even though Bermuda has hardly any fresh water and depends almost entirely on rain for its water supply. Bermuda could be England with palm trees and decent weather.

In this setting, the rich seem to get lost amid a population that could care less about them and local papers that ignore their comings and goings. 'Bermuda is very unassuming,' says Neal Churchill, a private banker with Butterfield Bank (UK) Ltd., who lived here for three years and was back for a visit from Monaco. 'You can mingle with wealthy people and not know it.' Pink from the sun as he sips a cup of tea at a hotel pool, Churchill says homes are the only status symbol here. 'There is no showing off here,' he says. 'There are no flashy cars, no super yachts in the harbor.' Drinking a rum punch on the terrace of the Mid Ocean Club, Nir Sadeh, chairman of the club's membership committee who also heads private banking at Butterfield, concurs. 'It's not flashy,' he says. 'You have people walking down the street in shorts who are worth billions.'

The problem is this happens to be the polar opposite of what today's new generation of global wealth wants. The 30-year-old Russian billionaire zigzagging around city streets in his new Lamborghini. The Chinese 'whale' gambler giddy from another run of luck at the Baccarat tables in Macau. Bermuda doesn't expect, or want, to attract all of this kind of wealth. But its government officials are staring down some awful declines in the country's second-largest industry, tourism, that reflect Bermuda's staleness. At its peak in 1980, Bermuda welcomed some 500,000 plane-arriving tourists a year, and counted on some 12,000 hotel beds, says Shawn Crockwell, the island's minister of tourism. Last year, the island received about half that number by air, and had only 2,500 hotel beds to offer them. About 60 percent of last year's tourists were low-spending visitors who arrived on the island on cruise ships. The remaining 40 percent arrive by air, a figure that continues to decline. 'We need to reverse that ratio,' says Crockwell.

The British territory is also groaning under a record $1.4 billion in debt, the result of shrinking revenues not only from tourism but from the island's largest business sector, reinsurance. (Bermuda is famous for a so-called economic 'miracle' of sorts: It produces almost nothing and imports almost everything, and has no income, capital gains or sales taxes. Yet it has thrived with a strong standard of living for decades on payroll taxes and import duties.) In response, the newly installed government, run by the One Bermuda Alliance party, thinks one solution is to send more positive signals to the international money elite, the people and firms who create the jobs and the lifestyle that spurs a stale economy. 'I didn't think the business community was feeling the love,' says Bermuda's new premier, Craig Cannonier.

Certainly, Bermudians will agree that the island, wrapped tightly in protectionism and red tape, has tended to irradiate a certain feeling of unfriendliness toward nonislanders. With just 69,000 souls jammed into its 21 square miles, the island has long feared that foreigners would push locals aside. So the country has done everything from setting time limits on how long nonresidents could live here (six years) to at one point banning Bermudians from selling any real estate to outsiders. In an interview, Cannonier, a bear-like U.S.-educated gas-station owner, says he is trying to put his foot down on a lot of this, quickly ending the residency limits. Members of his cabinet say it was a big move. 'You would find that even if a top executive had term limits waived, there were term limits imposed on the nanny,' says Michael Fahy, Bermuda's minister of home affairs. 'If you are saying your nanny has to leave, then why stay?'

The rich are also getting a break on real estate now. Since 1926, Bermuda has imposed restrictions on purchases of land by non-Ber- mudians. Eventually, non-Bermudians were allowed to purchase only the most expensive of houses-those that have an annual rental value in the six-figure range. Today, that works out to homes worth about $3.5 million and up. What's more, foreigners had to pay a 25 percent license fee on home buys, which can drive even a billionaire a little batty. The high-rental rule remains, but Cannonier has temporarily cut the tax on real-estate sales to 8 percent of the purchase price, which then increases to 12.5 percent after 18 months. For now, a $4 million home no longer requires an extra $1 million, which MacIntyre, the realtor, says is 'a very welcome change of pace.'

But even government boosters say moves like these can only go so far in creating the kind of full-service playground the rich can so easily find elsewhere now. The island, for example, likes to boast that it has more golf per square mile than anywhere in the world. That's fine, except that today's rich-fitter and more active-want other options for high-end recreation, including celebrity trainers and yoga instructors working out of space-age gyms. In the Caribbean, it is possible to find a host of new private-jet airports, compared with Bermuda's one commercial facility. And once upon a time, it was charming that the country limited residents to one puny car per household, a policy dating back to when Mark Twain and Woodrow Wilson teamed up to help get motor vehicles banned for decades. But it is not exactly comfortable for today's stretch-limo crowd, which has to make due with the island's sparse supply of Mercedes-Benzes, which are available to rent by the hour.

From a corporate standpoint-and the island is keenly aware of how many wealthy executives encamp here when business flourishes-Bermuda doesn't even rate as an especially great tax haven. Sure it lacks taxes, but its conservative ethos requires a far more careful company-registration process than many newer and hotter resort countries have. Feeling the heat, the government two years ago extended the date that companies have before their tax-exempt status expires. Officials in Bermuda also argue that their island country maintains a program for registering off-shore companies that is respected around the world. Still, the number of tax-exempt companies in Bermuda has hovered around 12,000 over the past 15 years. In the Cayman Islands, by comparison, the number has nearly doubled in 10 years to more than 75,000.

SO THE QUESTION remains: How far into the fast lane will the island go to up its new-rich appeal, or will it just disappear someday off the high-end radar, like so many ships in the Bermuda Triangle?

As his government dreams up more ideas, including considering a proposal to start a high-end casino here (bow-tied gamblers included), Cannonier provides a telling story about Ross Perot. Manning his gas station one day, he recalls seeing the 83-year-old former U.S. presidential candidate show up in his gardening boots. 'Here's a guy who can walk around Bermuda pretty much as he likes,' Cannonier says. 'They don't have to worry about the paparazzi. We've done a great job at protecting their privacy. That's one of the great things about Bermuda. They can come and relax.'

For some, the country's best step may be just to concoct yet one more Bermuda miracle: a middle ground, way out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where East meets West, where new money finds enough razzle dazzle but old money can still enjoy the very anonymity and British DNA they have so long cherished. Hollis, the corporate attorney, likes to point out that the island, first settled by a ship running aground, goes by the motto 'where fate take us' and that now it's about time Bermuda forged its own.

But if it does, some Bermudians past and present will always have a divided view of their home. Jon Paradine, the owner of Aquamarina and a native Bermudian who is now living half way around the world, says, sure, the island needs to 'improve its product' and up its entertainment value. But get him talking about the days he spent there, the stunning views of the turquoise blue waters, the magnificently fresh salty air, and talk of change fades. Suddenly, it is hard to imagine how any of it-the dull shopping on Front Street, the MIA limos-really matters. As far as Paradine is concerned, his home would go for $50 million, easy, in Singapore, but you'll never find it there either. 'The beach in Aquamarina is the most beautiful beach I've ever seen,' says Paradine. 'I miss the natural beauty of Bermuda.'