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Halfway down the Italian peninsula, with high Apennine peaks in its west and the blue Adriatic licking its long eastern shore, Abruzzo is a quiet, sparsely populated region dominated by wild terrain and magnificent vistas. It’s been largely overlooked by foreign buyers until very recently, but that seems to be changing. Centrally located, sharing borders with Le Marche, Lazio, and Campania, and having pretty good transport connections including budget flights from the UK, Abruzzo has a lot to recommend it. It should come as no surprise that the property market here is beginning to hot up. [Time of writing is 2007]
Over the last few years, great value-for-money has drawn many more foreign buyers to this once obscure region. Prices have nearly doubled in some places, but are currently about half those for similar properties in Tuscany or Umbria. Several foreign-buyer-focussed agencies specialising in Abruzzo have cropped up – with extensive property listings and all-round good service. Simultaneously, most agents dealing with Italy as a whole have substantially increased the number of properties they list for sale in Abruzzo. Clearly an emerging market, but one far from maturation, Abruzzo’s property looks like a very good investment right now. An up-and-coming region with a huge potential for growth, the forecast is one of steadily rising prices.
One of Abruzzo’s chief assets is its geography, especially its sense of space. Massively depopulated in the early 20th century, it has lots of unspoilt, wide open spaces sprinkled with abandoned cottages and farmhouses left behind by emigrating Abruzzesi. With just one and a quarter million inhabitants, it’s one of Italy’s most sparsely populated regions. Perhaps because of this, communities are tight-knit, and people tend to look out for each other. Abruzzo reportedly has the lowest crime rate of any Italian region. The young and the old respectfully rub along together, spending much of their leisure time outdoors in the plentiful old piazzas of the region’s small towns and villages. Road connections are surprisingly good for such a thinly-populated place, and it’s only in the highest elevations that access can sometimes prove difficult, particularly in the winter. Up here it’s possible to come across entirely empty mountain hamlets, the inhabitants having all trickled away decades ago to seek better lives elsewhere.
Abruzzo’s landscape sees Italy’s highest peaks melting into gentle hills before reaching a long Adriatic coastline. Buy a property in the hilly central stretch and you could be putting yourself within half an hour’s drive of ski resorts and beach resorts. You could go on a mountain hike in the morning, and cool off with a swim at teatime. Many properties give commanding views of the mountains in one direction and sight of the shimmering blue Adriatic in the other. The natural landscape always dominates in Abruzzo. A full third of the region is set aside as nature reserve (the highest percentage of any region in Europe), and there are three huge National Parks. In its mountains especially, Abruzzo is a place of serious wilderness, and serious wildlife. There are wolves up here, and bears, and eagles. For outdoor sports enthusiasts, this is a fabulous playground – with abundant opportunities for hiking, rock-climbing, mountain-biking and skiing, as well as swimming and windsurfing along the safe, shallow coastline.
Abruzzo’s towns and villages have all the medieval charm and stately churches you’d expect in central Italy. An impoverished backwater for much of the last two centuries, Abruzzo was once a thriving region criss-crossed by international trade routes and wealthy enough to bedeck itself with all sorts of palaces, fountains and cathedrals. They’re still here, just slightly faded by time. Lovers of history should check out L’Aquila – the regional capital, yet home to only 70,000 people – where there’s a fine crop of buildings. Or Teramo, with its impressive Roman ruins. Even the smallest settlement in Abruzzo is likely to have some grand old church, and be full of venerable stone homes – many of which are a restorer’s fantasy, full of period features. Currently Abruzzo’s largest settlement is Pescara, on the coast. Lively and modern, this seaside resort is also a major transport hub – with ferries to Croatia and an airport bringing in Ryanair flights from Britain.
Abruzzo has a superabundance of old properties for sale – farmhouses, cottages, village houses, usually in stone and often containing period details like vaulted ceilings or original terra cotta floors. Almost all these rural homes are in need of restoration, whether total or minor – making Abruzzo a dream region for restorers. The prices for tumbledown properties can be crazily low, but it’s worth remembering that you’re likely to pay the same again – if not much more – on doing a full restoration. However, the entire buying-and-restoring enterprise will still prove to be a fraction of the cost of doing the same in, say, Tuscany. Very few Italian regions currently offer old farmhouses and country houses at such low prices as Abruzzo.
Incidentally, every restorer should bear in mind that Abruzzo, like all other central Italian regions, is prone to earthquakes. By law you must strengthen to quake-proof standards any old property you restore. There’s no point pretending that more tremors won’t happen – that’s like leaving the roof off in the belief it won’t rain again! Your builders should know what tricks to perform with reinforced concrete and ironwork. Make sure they do it, as you don’t want your dream home to sprout cracks in its walls – or worse – after some minor seismic event that was bound to come eventually.
Ready-restored homes are currently thin on the ground in Abruzzo, but with many buyer-restorers having bought over the last few years, the number of ready-restored properties coming onto the market is likely to keep growing. As elsewhere in Italy, unless you explicitly want to tailor a house to suit your requirements, you’re often financially better off in the long run buying somewhere that’s already been restored by someone else. But don’t let that deter you if restoring an old Italian home is your dream – as it is for so many Brits, who successfully make it a reality. There’s new-build property here too, if that’s what you prefer – nice apartments in coastal resorts, especially. Obviously, the coast is more populous and developed, with better infrastructure and amenities, not to mention the region’s best holiday rental prospects. Inland, meanwhile, you’ve got all the quiet, space and fresh air you could want.
Abruzzo’s property prices work out on average to be 30-70% cheaper than prices of equivalent properties in Tuscany or Umbria. Obviously some parts of the region are more expensive than others. The coast is Abruzzo’s priciest part, with Pescara at the top of the table. Two-bedroom apartments in Pescara average about €200,000 [in 2007] – an amount which, half an hour inland, could get you a medium-sized rural house and cover its restoration costs. The cheapest parts of Abruzzo are in its mountains, away from the ski resorts. But with difficult access and few amenities, these remote stretches of the region aren’t many buyers’ first choice. Prices are also quite low in the steep countryside round L’Aquila, a good area to consider since it’s close to the region’s lively capital and to more than a dozen ski resorts. Perhaps Abruzzo’s best area in terms of all-round value is its hilly hinterland, running more or less the whole length of the region just half an hour or so inland from the coast. There are abundant rural homes to restore here, and some charming townhouses and villages houses in the many little settlements.
Because prices in Abruzzo can be so low, and because there’s so much for sale, it really is worth detailing what kinds of properties you can currently expect to get for what amounts of cash. It’s easy to offer generalisations like ‘on average, seaside apartments go for €110,000’ or ‘small country houses tend to ask about €150,000’, but because the range of prices and properties in Abruzzo is so vast, it’s much more useful to see a calibrated series of snapshots of what’s actually on the market. What can you really expect to pay for what in Abruzzo right now? Pooling the extensive listings of various agents, here’s a guide to the region’s frequently astonishing prices. [All quoted prices accurate in 2007.]
It is possible to pay less than €10,000 for a small stone house to restore in the hills. Naturally you’d have to spend at least the same again restoring it. There are plenty of properties to restore on sale for between €10,000 and €20,000 – two- to four-bedroom village houses, small country houses, all halfway between the mountains and the sea. Note that homes under €20,000 are sometimes so cheap because they have problems with things like rights of way, ownership, or small amounts of land that complicate applications for planning permission. Make sure you get the full story on anything like this from your agent before you buy.
As you inch up from €20,000 towards €100,000, the abundant properties for sale become progressively larger and/or require less restoration work. Again, most are midway between mountains and the sea, a very desirable stretch of Abruzzo since it can put both ski and beach resorts within about half an hour’s drive. Several one-bedroom apartments requiring no work at all appear in this sub-€100,000 bracket – one fully-restored in a house in the mountains asks €27,000; another, newly-built on the coast, asks €68,000. Country houses to restore situated just a few miles inland also sometimes come in for just under €100,000. These five-figure homes in Abruzzo are selling well, it seems. A healthy number of them are described as ‘sold’ on agents’ websites.
For between €100,000 and €200,000, you can consider a range of newly-built two-and three-bedroom seaside apartments in desirable resorts like Pineto and Giulianova. There are some interesting things in the hills in this price bracket too – for example, a refurbished four-bed apartment with period features going for €120,000. Plenty of tumbledown rustic houses ask less than €200,000. Moving up to between €200,000 and €300,000, your options in Abruzzo become very appealing. There are some very nice new-build two-bed apartments in seaside resorts going for around €250,000. Or you might prefer to pay the same amount for a one-bed house needing minor work near Abruzzo’s liveliest town, Pescara. In the hills between the mountains and the sea, there are all sorts of detached stone houses needing no work asking between €250,000 and €350,000. How about a four-bed villa with pool for €250,000? Or a large farmhouse with old outbuildings for €350,000?
As you might expect, if you’re going to spend more than €400,000 in Abruzzo, you’ll be looking at some really sumptuous homes. Compare this to what you’d get in Tuscany, where a ruined farmhouse alone might ask €500,000. In Abruzzo, you could get a six-bed villa ten minutes from the sea for €500,000, or a four-bed seaside villa with pool and private grounds for €570,000. Obviously these would be great properties for someone hoping to run a B&B or make good summer rental returns. Prices are highest near Pescara, and a lovely five-bed villa here might ask €750,000. From this level, prestige properties of various kinds go onward and upward into the millions.
As for who’s buying in Abruzzo, the ever-adventurous Brits are leading the way, as they have often done in other parts of Italy. About 80% of foreign buyers in Abruzzo come from the UK. The rest largely consist of our fellow Northern Europeans the Dutch, the Germans and the Belgians, plus a few Americans. Most buy in the hilly inland parts, not far from a town or a village. Some start out with a home on the coast then move inland because they realise they can get more for their money and enjoy more space and tranquillity. A few buy in old town centres, especially medieval buildings redolent with history.
Most foreigners are buying a holiday home when they buy in Abruzzo, and many seek to rent it out to holidaymakers when they’re not here. The rentals scene in Abruzzo, beyond the coast, is only just emerging. This is still one of Italy’s lesser-known and lesser-visited regions. There are good properties out there in the interior bringing in good rents, but it’s not yet such a reliable enterprise as it is in the countryside of many other Italian regions. Currently only the coast is truly reliable for holiday rentals– especially in July and August. A one-bedroom apartment in Pescara might get €600 a week in high season; a two-bed house €800 [2007 figures].
For a few foreign buyers, however, a home in Abruzzo is a home for life. They move out here permanently, especially for the sake of their young children – whom they believe will have a better quality of life in the region’s fresh open spaces and family-oriented culture. There are as yet no real ex-pat communities in Abruzzo, and tourists are still a rare sight in the rural interior. Thus Abruzzo remains an undiluted and authentic slice of Italian life. The numbers of foreign visitors and relocaters here will surely rise over the coming years, but perhaps it’s safe to say that this empty region with its mighty geography can easily absorb them without losing too much of its potent character.
Separated from Abruzzo only in 1963, tiny Molise is the youngest Italian region, but it lacks the dynamism associated with youth. Tradition and the past dominate here – getting around and getting things done can take that little bit longer. Molise is much less popular with foreign buyers and visitors than Abruzzo. (It’s probably the least popular of all Italy’s regions). But if you’re adventurous, it might just suit you. Certainly the property prices here are among the very lowest in Italy.
50% mountainous, Molise has similar – if less dramatic - terrain to Abruzzo. While fully one third of Abruzzo is protected national or regional parkland, Molise finds room for six nature reserves and two of Italy’s four UNESCO biosphere locations. So you can expect the unspoilt, great-outdoors landscape of both regions to stay that way. Molise also has an Adriatic coastline, and a few modest beach resorts.
Molise remains one of Italy’s poorest and least developed regions, with one of the country’s lowest standard of living. Sheep-farming and small-scale agriculture remain the chief sources of income, although artisan production of knives, lace and bells still endure. (That church bell that kept you awake all night on your last Italian holiday was almost certainly made in Molise.) What modern industry there is tends to be concentrated around Térmoli. It remains to be seen, of course, how the recent discovery of natural gas reserves in Molise might affect its economy.
Tourism has only just begun to thinly flicker into life in Molise. But they’ve already got a good slogan. Umbria has long been ‘the green heart of Italy’, and Molise is now ‘the clean heart of Italy’. Unsullied it may be, but still few come to see it. While Abruzzo plays host each year to more than one and a half million Italian holidaymakers and a modest 160,000 foreign visitors, Molise attracts less than a quarter as many Italians and only a tenth as many foreigners. Travel connections play a part in this. After centuries of isolation, Abruzzo now has good travel connections. But Molise requires more determination to get to. If you’re after splendid isolation and a strong feeling of having travelled back in time, Molise might be the region for you.
[All quoted prices accurate in 2007]
Home to 70,000 people, Abruzzo’s capital L’Aquila is an pleasant little city with busy piazzas, good shopping, and a lively student population thanks to its 500-year-old university. An earthquake shook much of the place to bits in 1703, but there’s still a moated castle, innumerable medieval fountains, original city walls, and several gorgeous churches. The city has been enjoying economic growth in recent years, adding to its all-round appeal. Around L’Aquila, the steep landscape holds some fascinating hill villages, many seeming frozen in time, others simply deserted. The almighty bulk of the Gran Sasso massif stands between L’Aquila and the coast – two parallel mountain chains flanking a vast plateau sprouting unusual rock formations and scattered with old shepherds’ shacks. The Apennines’ very highest peaks are here, in all their awesome majesty, attracting large numbers of skiers and a fair number of summer hikers. Some of Abruzzo’s lowest property prices are in the high, wild places around L’Aquila and the Gran Sasso. It’s possible to find rural hideaways with a ski resort, L’Aquila, and its motorway connections all within easy reach.
Sulmona is Abruzzo’s second most visited inland town, after L’Aquila. It’s a comfortable and prosperous place, thanks to its skilled goldsmiths and confection-makers (it’s the capital of the original confetti – sugared almonds and other sweets bandied about at Italian weddings.) In the atmospheric, labyrinthine centre of town, innumerable handsome palaces gaze across broad expanses of neat cobblestones. Meanwhile, high mountains bristle in the near distance. Sulmona is particularly well-situated for the Maiella range, which has some good ski resorts and excellent hiking trails. The steep wooded slopes are peppered with medieval hermitages, built in caves or carved out of sheer rock. Villages set amongst these slopes are a mixed bag. Many are attractive and well-preserved, others drab and tatty. Still others are largely modern-built and intended to accommodate skiers. Scanno is a well-preserved medieval hill-village attracting a fair number of visitors, who admire its striking traditional costumes and its glassy green lake. The Sulmona area has low-priced properties, yet an interesting range of nearby settlements. Road connections between Sulmona and Pescara are good.
For many buyers, Abruzzo’s hilly hinterland is the region’s most desirable stretch. It’s quiet, spacious, and puts the coast and the mountains at each roughly half an hour away. Properties here are still reasonably priced, and there’s an abundance of tumbledown homes to restore – both in the countryside and in the area’s small towns and villages. Prices range from €10,000 to €250,000, depending on size and amount of work required. Hinterland settlements are often attractive, yet rarely see tourists passing through. Teramo is a modern town with an elegant centre, a clutch of Roman ruins, and good transport connections. Atri is a charming spot with narrow, stepped streets and views of tidy olive groves arcing across its surrounding hills. Loreto Aprutino is a quiet medieval hilltop town selling especially good olive oil. Chieti is a relaxed, provincial town set on high with wonderful mountain views. And so on. Buy out in the country and you’ll usually have a choice of pleasant towns and villages nearby to shop in.
At the centre of Abruzzo’s coastline lies Pescara, the region’s liveliest and most populous spot with 100,000 inhabitants. It’s a major transport hub – offering motorway connections, ferries across the Adriatic, and budget flights to and from the UK. For all its busyness and industry, Pescara is an eminently likeable place. (The uglier bits of industrialisation lie mainly inland, in the 13km stretch between Pescara and Chieti.) Wealthy and fashion-conscious, Pescara has plenty of glossy boutiques and elegant cafés. Much of the city’s older buildings were lost to wartime bombing, but what remains of its historical parts have been pleasantly gentrified with bars and restaurants. The beach is a stunning 16km long, and very family-friendly with warm, shallow water. Obviously, because of its ease-of-access and wealth of job opportunities, Pescara is the most expensive place for property in Abruzzo. Like resorts elsewhere on the coastline, it has very good holiday rental prospects. You might pay €200,000 for a very nice two-bedroom apartment in Pescara, and expect to rent it out for €600 a week in high season. Just a few miles inland from Pescara, you might find a small house needing minor repairs for about €250,000. Depending on its ease of access to the sea, you might rent it out for €800 or more during summer weeks.
Abruzzo has 130km of Adriatic coastline, with a string of pleasant, family-friendly resorts gazing out over the blue water towards Croatia. While you certainly couldn't call it 'over-crowded', the coast is by far Abruzzo’s most developed and populous area, with good transport connections and amenities. The beach-resorts here are hugely popular with Italians in the summer, and are at their fullest in the last two weeks of July and all of August. In terms of geography, there’s something of a north-south divide on Abruzzo’s coastline. From Alba Adriatico in the north to Ortona just south of Pescara, the beaches are pale and sandy, with hills covered in fruit-bush bracken rising immediately behind them. Seven likeable resorts along this stretch dub themselves the ‘seven sisters’, viz., Alba Adriatico, Giulianova, Roseto degli Abruzzo, Pineto and Silvi. South of Ortona, to as far as where Abruzzo cedes the coast to its southern neighbour Molise, the terrain is steeper and rockier. Sandy coves are interspersed with shingle beaches, overlooked by cliffs. For many people, Abruzzo’s loveliest stretch of coast lies here in the southern half, especially between Lido di Casalbordino and Punto Aderci – where particularly deep blue water is backed by a nature reserve. Vasto is a charming resort in the southern half that has recently begun to entice foreign buyers. Pescara may be the priciest spot in Abruzzo, but the rest of the coast is also of course much pricier than the cheap interior. Two-bedroom seaside apartments average about €110,000.
Molise’s coast is less developed than Abruzzo’s. The only seaside town of any size is Térmoli, and it’s one of the region’s most pleasing settlements – a bright fishing port and smart resort sporting a walled old town, a castle, a cathedral, good seafood restaurants, a long sandy beach and innumerable flowers and palm trees. Property prices are higher here than inland, or indeed elsewhere on Molise’s coast. Heading away from the sea, the landscape becomes hilly and lined with olive groves. Larino is the largest town here and, like Térmoli, tends to hold rather more appeal than many other Molise settlements. Its medieval centre nestles in a valley while the modern town climbs up an adjacent hillside. Life in the old part goes traditionally on while the modern streets are quite slick and bustling – despite the Roman amphitheatre crumbling quietly in their midst.
Campobasso, Molise’s main city, is a pretty faceless place where a steep old centre gazes out on sprawling modern suburbs. The countryside round the city holds some fairly scenic villages, however. Not far off lie the high plateaux, forests and lakes of the Matese mountains which spill over into Campania. This is an extremely little-visited area and a very wild place indeed. Wolves and wildcats pad through the woodlands and birds of prey wheel across the bright sky blazing behind snow-capped peaks. Villagers round here are astonished to see an outsider passing through. Towns of note near these mountains include Agnone, where church bells have been made for more than a thousand years, and Venafro, an empty, neglected place where the arena of a Roman amphitheatre is used as the town’s main piazza. The largest town near the high mountains is Isernia, a luckless spot wrecked eight times by earthquakes and once by a WWII bombing raid. Its surrounding countryside is surprisingly lush and gentle.
Sussex-based Marek and Annie Lorys bought a large house in Abruzzo in 2004. Converted into three apartments, it makes very good rental returns and had gone up about 50% in value by 2007.
“We already owned some rental properties in England,” Marek explains, “and were interested in buying an investment abroad. We looked at Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Thailand, Florida. Then someone suggested Italy. We went to an exhibition and came across an estate agency specializing in Abruzzo. We’d never heard of Abruzzo before.”
“We went out looking for something fairly modest and unassuming, but the house we bought was rather more than that! It was built 20 years ago, to a very high quality, as a family home. Now one floor is a one-bed apartment, another floor is a two-bed apartment with two bathrooms and a large lounge, and the third floor is a three-bed apartment with an enormous lounge, big dining room and terraces all round. The best thing is the location. The house is on top of a hill, with spectacular panoramic views of the surrounding mountains, hills and valleys. We can see the Maiella range and the Gran Sasso. And then when you turn round, you see the sea. Ski resorts are about an hour away, hiking in the National Park is half an hour away, and the beach is also half an hour away.
“The buying procedure went reasonably smoothly. Because it was more ambitious than we’d originally planned, we needed a mortgage. Brokers in the UK all told us we couldn’t get one, but we spoke to a broker in Italy and it was all done in five minutes. We were very pleasantly surprised at the quality of workmanship when we converted the house. Not knowing Italy in advance, we feared they might have a ‘do-it-domani’ culture! But we found them very hard-working. They’d come early, finish late, and were real craftsmen.”
“We’re very pleased with the rentals, and with what people have said about the property. In 2005 we had 25 weeks of bookings, last year we had 45, and this year [2007] it’s promising to be more. We spend lots of time at the house ourselves. What started as a business investment has become much more than that – we’ve fallen in love with Abruzzo. The local people have been hugely welcoming, and we miss them when we’re not there. We didn’t really know Italy before buying the house. But what we’ve discovered is what everybody who loves Italy already knows: it’s got beautiful nature and beautiful people; wonderful food, lovely weather. All the well-known things which for us were a discovery!”
Marek and Annie also act as project managers for property-restorers, and help with finding and letting property
See www.holiday-villas-abruzzo-italy.com
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