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Clean, spacious, beautiful and inexpensive, Abruzzo is Italy’s Cinderella region. For years the place has been tipped to be the Next Big Thing for foreign buyers in Italy, yet still the stampede has failed to arrive. The recent recession hasn’t helped, of course, but surely it’s just a matter of time before Abruzzo takes its rightful place as a favourite for holiday property. The place just has too much going for it to keep it in obscurity.
Chief of the region’s appeal is its landscape. Abruzzo’s geography is expansive and impressive. Clean, golden beaches cede to green hilly countryside backed by the highest, jagged peaks of the Apennines – often cloaked in celestial snow and forming an arresting backdrop to any rural scene. Buy a property somewhere in the hills and you could be within half an hour’s drive of ski resorts and beach resorts. You could ski in the morning and go for a swim at teatime.
A full third of Abruzzo is protected national or regional parkland (the highest percentage of any region in Europe). The population is low, and the settlements small. With fewer than one and a half million inhabitants, Abruzzo remains one of Italy’s most sparsely populated regions. Perhaps because of the low population, communities are strong, 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.
There are abundant attractive buildings here, the local food and wine is excellent, and the region enjoys a solid transport infrastructure – with direct budget flights from the UK and good road connections. Rome is only an hour or two away by car, as are the delights of Umbria, depending on where you are in Abruzzo. The central Italian climate, of course, is delightful. All this, and low prices too! Village homes to restore in Abruzzo start at an incredible €30,000, and small farmhouses needing renovation at a mere €60,000. This is one of the few places in central Italy where it’s possible to get a habitable country home for around €100,000.
Usually a place that few people have ever heard of, Abruzzo hit international headlines back in in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. A major earthquake struck the region’s capital and its surrounding area – resulting in a three hundred deaths, thousands of injuries, and the destruction or damage of countless properties. Shockingly widespread as the damage was, it’s important to remember that not all of Abruzzo was affected, and the whole region certainly isn’t ‘broken’.
Simone Rossi of the property portal Gate-Away.com notes that “The earthquake badly damaged Abruzzo’s capital L’Aquila and its surrounding villages, but the rest of the region was unharmed. This isn’t the impression that most people have been given. The Italian media covered the story as ‘Abruzzo has been destroyed’ and international media covered it as ‘central Italy has been destroyed’.”
Simone adds that distorted news coverage hasn’t done Abruzzo any favours. He says “If you went to Abruzzo in the few months right after the quake you could see famous villages which just months earlier were full of tourists now completely empty of visitors, even though they had suffered no earthquake damage whatsoever. Sloppy news reporting has dealt a bigger blow to Abruzzo’s economy and property market than the quake itself.”
Put simply, Abruzzo’s seismic situation is no reason to avoid buying a home here. The whole Italian peninsula is an earthquake zone, and always has been. You might just as well avoid buying in Tuscany for fear of earthquakes. The crucial thing is to make absolutely certain that any property you buy or restore – in Abruzzo or anywhere else on the Italian peninsula – meets the legally-required earthquake-proofing standard.
Since the 1980s it has been a legal obligation that all Italian properties are structurally protected against seismic activity. Unfortunately, many of the homes damaged in Abruzzo’s recent earthquake did not meet the legal standard. Otherwise they would have remained relatively unharmed. So if you’re buying a habitable property anywhere in Italy, be sure to ask about its quake-proofing. And if you’re restoring an old place, be certain to include anti-quake strengthening in your building works. It’s the law. Pure and simple. No apologies for having repeated all this many times in these property articles!
Having been substantially de-populated by emigration to the New World in the early 20th century, Abruzzo has a particular abundance of abandoned rural properties ripe for restoration. Buyers chasing the romantic dream of doing up an old house in Italy need look no further, really. Mark Slaviero of Homes in Italy notes that “Labour costs are pretty low in Abruzzo compared to other parts of Italy, so it’s a good place to carry out a restoration project. You’ll certainly be able to obtain a rustic farmhouse here at a fraction of the cost of neighbouring regions such as Le Marche and Umbria.”
Like many agents, Barbara Baldaccini of Absolutely Abruzzo advises would-be restorers to be sure they’re fully up for it before committing to a major building project. She says “Make sure you are capable of carrying out your project, in terms of time, funds and stress! Be committed to learning Italian quickly, be prepared to visit your property at least once a month during planning and building or else hire a project manager. And employ a bi-lingual lawyer to do the contractual work – preferably one based in Italy.”
On balance, Barbara thinks taking on a major restoration perhaps might not be the best way to go. “If you can afford to and you find a place you like, buy a habitable property,” she advises. “An Italian will not keep a house habitable if they do not think it is worth it, so a habitable house will mean it’s in a good area, with facilities close by.” Mark Slaviero is similarly circumspect about rushing into a major renovation project. He advises, “The best of both worlds is to purchase a structurally sound property which requires refurbishment. This allows you to make your own mark on the place at the same time as adding value.”
Another option in Abruzzo is of course to build from scratch, but in a traditional style. This way you’ll definitely get the exact house you want, and can take advantage of the excellent craftsmanship that persists among modern-day Italian builders. Sophie Walters of the Abruzzo-specialist agency Houses in Italy says she sees an increasing number of buyers interested in traditionally-styled new-builds. “Buyers start from scratch with a comprehensive quote for the finished article,” she says. “They get to choose the materials, which way the house faces, and so on. They know from the outset exactly what they’re in for. We sell plots of land and liaise with the client before the sale to change the outline building permission into fully approved plans. The price for a hectare with fully approved plans is about €40,000. You can still do a new build on one hectare of land in much of Abruzzo, unlike in neighbouring Le Marche where new-builds from scratch are just not permitted now.”
So whereabouts in Abruzzo should you consider looking for a property? As everywhere, it depends on what you want – splendid isolation, strong holiday rentals, lowest price, etcetera. Generally, the southern part of the region tends to be a bit cheaper than the north – especially the far south, near the border with neighbouring region Molise. As you might expect, the coast is Abruzzo’s priciest part, and prices tend to drop steadily the further you go inland. The coastal city of Pescara, with its airport and wealth of job opportunities, is probably Abruzzo’s single costliest locale. The remote mountainous stretches are probably its very cheapest.
For many buyers, the best areas for property are the villages and countryside of Abruzzo’s hilly hinterland – where you can enjoy splendid views as well as being within easy reach of beaches and of mountains. Prices in the hills are very affordable (village houses to restore from €30,000; small farmhouses to restore from €60,000). Barbara Baldaccini points out that the hills a few miles inland are “a good solid area to make a home in terms of quality of life, investment potential, environment and climate.” Put yourself in or near one of the charming little towns and villages in these parts, and you can enjoy all the best of Abruzzo’s strong community spirit.
In terms of holiday rentals, Abruzzo’s hilly hinterland is a fairly good location, expected to receive a growing number of visitors over the coming years as Abruzzo becomes better-known and better-visited. Your clients would be exploratory Brits or other northern Europeans – each of which are slowly discovering the delights of rural Abruzzo. The coast itself has a more established market, of course. One and two-bedroom apartments by the beach can bring in €1,000 or more per week during the summer months. Your clients here would be mainly Italians (who know a great coastline when they see one).
Wherever you buy in Abruzzo, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve chosen a region not because of its fame or long-established reputation but because of its actual strengths. Abruzzo is a place with so much to recommend it, and discerning buyers can spot that without having the fact be part of common knowledge. If the region hasn’t yet become famous (except for unfortunate reasons last year), it is surely destined to become steadily better-known over the years to come. Buy here now while prices are still so low. Eventually this Cinderella will start going to the ball.
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.
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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.
After a long career as a London-based BBC journalist, David Brenner made a permanent move to Abruzzo with his wife Pauline. The couple rebuilt two ruins in an abandoned hamlet up in the pretty hills an hour south of Pescara. They live in one, and have transformed the other into a trio of villas – for couples-only holiday rentals.
“On Millennium Eve we started wondering what we might do with the rest of our lives,” David explains. “Moving abroad appealed. We wanted somewhere with an excellent food and wine culture, so that narrowed it down to France and Italy really. Pauline isn’t a big Francophile, so that narrowed it down to a choice of one! We started looking in 2003. Like most people we began with Tuscany, and soon realized we couldn’t afford even a hole in the wall there. We looked at Umbria and didn’t like it much. We looked at Le Marche and liked it, but by the time we saw it in 2006 it seemed all the decent properties had gone. Then we started looking at Abruzzo. We’d never seen any Place in the Sun type programmes about it. It was just the next stop down from Le Marche. What we found there was a beautiful region with very cheap property.
“We left the UK in October 2007. The sale of our UK home fell through two weeks before we left, and we arrived not having exchanged contracts on our property in Italy! It was a leap of faith. I can’t pretend it was easy. The pound went down, so our project went over budget, and then as soon as we opened for business there was the earthquake in L’Aquila. The epicentre was more than a hundred miles from where we are, and thankfully there wasn’t any local damage. The only effect we saw was a drop in visitor numbers to Abruzzo! But things are much better this year, and our rentals are going well.”
How have the couple adjusted to living in Abruzzo? “It was difficult at first because there is no real ex-pat community here. There’s a thin sprinkling of us, and we all help each other out. The language was a big hurdle initially. We had a vertical learning curve. Now I think we speak Italian with an Abruzzo accent! In terms of people, life here is great. Our village is tiny, and we’re on waving terms with everyone. My best friend Rocco is in his late sixties and he’s taken me under his wing. It’s amazing how far your money goes here. A good meal for two with wine, for example, can be about €35. The views are beautiful, the walks are wonderful, and the climate is a delight. All our villa guests have loved it.”
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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 |
