With its rolling green landscapes and exquisite medieval hilltowns, Umbria is second only to Tuscany in the affections of foreign buyers. It makes an excellent investment.

Tuscany’s next-door neighbour Umbria is a serene and majestic region whose rolling green countryside and forest-cloaked mountains are peppered with gem-like towns and villages. Perhaps more than any other region in Italy, Umbria is the capital of the unspoilt medieval hilltown – each one groaning with exquisite churches and piazzas, and offering jaw-dropping views of its surrounding countryside. Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto, Todi, Spoleto, Gubbio, Montefalco, Trevi,… the list of gorgeous settlements goes on and on.

And yet for all its lovely ancient towns, Umbria remains an overwhelmingly rural region – dominated by green open spaces, by vineyards, olive groves, woods and fields. The population is low (there are fewer than a million people here), and despite the considerable number of visitors drawn to Umbria it remains a profoundly peaceful and spacious place. Some call it a

spiritual place. Certainly Umbria has an illustrious history of saints and mystics, and it contains an especially high number of ecclesiastical buildings – many among Italy’s finest, such as Orvieto’s cathedral or Assisi’s basilica. There’s something undeniably inspiring about the landscape and atmosphere here, and they seem naturally to draw the mind toward higher things.

Set in the very centre of the Italian peninsula, Umbria is one of the few regions in Italy without a coastline – but it makes up for this with several attractive lakes. Rolling hills dominate the region’s centre and west, while steeper inclines and wilder terrain loom to the extreme north, east and south. Umbria’s neighbours are Tuscany, Le Marche, and Lazio – each packed with fascinating diversions in the unlikely event that Umbria should fail to provide everything you might want. Even the Mediterranean isn’t too far away, being about 90 minutes to the east or the west. Road and rail connections are surprisingly good, given the region’s tranquillity and low population. A handful of airports in neighbouring regions are abundantly served by flights from Britain. And, since December 2006, Ryanair has flown direct from Stansted to Umbria’s capital, Perugia.

Market forces
Property in Umbria first began attracting foreign buyer interest about twenty years ago. This interest has steadily escalated to the point where, for the past five years, Umbria has been the second most popular region in Italy. [Time of writing is 2007.] Tuscany keeps first place, of course, and as Umbria’s illustrious neighbour it can take credit for kick-starting the Umbrian market. As prices rose and rose in Tuscany, eyes naturally

wandered across its borders in search of better bargains. More than any other adjacent region, Umbria was seen to offer similarly lyrical landscapes, rolling hills, attractive towns stuffed with art treasures and delicious architecture. It had the coveted old stone farmhouses too, the traditional casali most prized by foreign buyers. Many property-hunters were quick to notice that it also

For the past decade, property prices in Umbria have been going up by something incredible like 30% each year. Obviously some parts of the region are more popular than others, and prices have risen here most. More than most other Italian regions, Umbria’s towns can be as appealing as its countryside to foreign buyers, and we’ll look at these first. Currently the most expensive towns in Umbria are Assisi, Todi, Orvieto, Spoleto and Perugia – each a highly attractive medieval hilltop settlement surrounded by glorious countryside. Two-bedroom apartments in Assisi start at about €200,000. In fashionable Todi they start at about €170,000, while in Perugia, Spoleto and Orvieto they get going at about €150,000. [2007 prices]

Rental prospects are very good in all five of these towns. Assisi is one of the world’s biggest Catholic pilgrimage sites as well as a tourist destination –its rentals market is almost year-round, with peaks at Easter and Christmas. Todi, Spoleto and Orvieto each attract lots of visitors in the warmer months. Perugia, meanwhile, has plenty of summer visitors but also a large student population and many visiting businesspeople who all need a place to stay mid-to-long-term. The recent inclusion of Perugia on the budget flights network from Britain is likely to increase levels of interest and property prices here. Cheaper than these five towns, and attracting fewer visitors while being no less gorgeous, are the medieval gems Gubbio, Montefalco and Spello – definitely worth considering if you want a slightly quieter place and aren’t heavily dependent on rental income. Cheaper still, and little-visited, you could try any of Umbria’s other lovely but little-known medieval hilltowns and hill-villages, like Trevi, Amélia, Otricoli, Chiugiana, Montone, Bettona,…

But it’s a home in the countryside that many buyers want. Again, certain stretches are obviously more popular and pricy than others. The lovely landscapes around Assisi, Todi, Orvieto and Spoleto rank among Umbria’s costliest locales for property (with farmhouses near Todi being especially expensive). You might pay €500,000 or so for a good-sized country home near these desirable towns.

Bargain hunting
For Umbria’s lowest prices, buyers should look to the region’s east and south. (There is also an unexpected sliver of inexpensiveness in central Umbria – between Perugia and Todi, around Marsciano.) The eastern borderlands with Le Marche are mountainous and thinly-populated, with plenty of low-priced property. But it is perhaps in Umbria’s southern extremes that prices are currently lowest of all. Again, this is a mountainous area with few inhabitants, but there are some spectacular landscapes – especially in the remote ‘Valnerina’ area in the southeast. Waterfalls, green valleys, high-altitude flower-meadows – these are all attractive features of Umbria’s south. Abandoned rural homes are fairly plentiful, and can be roughly half the price of what you’d expect to pay in more popular parts of Umbria. Towns and villages in Umbria’s southern extremes are generally tiny, with inexpensive property. The most attractive medieval hilltowns here are probably Amélia, Otricoli and Norcia.

If you’re specifically looking for Umbria’s least expensive properties, or properties in Umbria’s least popular areas, you’ll find a wider choice of things for sale by looking at the websites of big, Italy-wide estate agents who generally sell to Italians rather than to foreigners. (Try www.remax.it, www.tecnocasa.it, etc.) Note that low-priced property isn’t necessarily the best-value property in Umbria these days. Currently, the majority of foreign buyers are seeking property at the top and bottom ends of the Umbrian market. There are a lot of buyers looking to pay more than a million euros and a lot of buyers looking to pay less than €250,000. This means quite a bit of competition for properties in these price brackets, which in turn means that buyers hoping to spend something between these two extremes are likely to get the best value for money. So, if you’re aiming to spend between, say, €300,000 and €800,000 in Umbria, you could stand to make the best investment on your cash here.

Rentals, restorations
And on the subject of investment, perhaps like many buyers in Umbria you’re hoping to garner holiday rental returns on a property here. Umbria has a very healthy rentals market, and it shows no sign of saturation yet. Tourism has been slowly and steadily increasing in Umbria for many years, at a rate of around 4% per year (a rate likely to increase now that Ryanair has started flying direct to Perugia from Britain). And with no coastline, Umbria isn’t just a place for summer visitors. The artistic and cultural delights of its medieval hilltowns draw travellers for much of the year – especially travellers in their middle years or of retirement age. As discussed earlier, Assisi and Perugia offer the region’s very best holiday (and other) rental returns, with places like Todi, Orvieto and Spoleto – and their surrounding countryside – coming in at second most popular.

Wherever you buy a property, you should be aware that Umbria now has a lot of homes on the holiday rentals market. If you really want to succeed you must provide high quality to see off the competition. Note that the two main rentals markets are currently at the top and the bottom end: very big farmhouses with pools (often with the option of a maid or cook), and small hilltown apartments for travellers on a budget.

Traditionally, it has been rural casali, or big country farmhouses with land, that foreign buyers have sought in Umbria. These types of properties are still very popular, and unlike in some parts of Tuscany, there is no shortage of tumbledown casali available for those seeking a restoration project. On average, you’d currently pay about €250,000 for a farmhouse to restore (a property which would cost you double this amount or more in a fully-restored state). Town-centre apartments and village houses have grown in popularity with foreign buyers recently and again, there are plenty of these to restore if that’s what you’re after. Be aware that restoration costs are rising in Umbria. Currently you’ll pay about two-thirds of what you would have to spend restoring a similar property in Tuscany (another reason why so many buyers choose Umbria over its more famous neighbour), but with restoration costs slowly sneaking up it could be the case a few years from now that building work in the two regions is of comparable price. As elsewhere in Italy’s most popular parts, in the long run you may well be better off buying an old place that’s already been restored rather than restoring one yourself.

But if you’re a very keen restorer and you’re looking for an especially satisfying project, remember that Umbria is particularly rich in old religious buildings. Converting an abandoned monastery, abbey or convent into a luxury home or a group of unique apartments could prove to be a real labour of love for the right restorer. You’re unlikely to pay less than €1 million for a place like this, and likely to spend a similar amount converting it. With its old religious haunts as with its other dwellings, Umbria’s buildings are extremely attractive – commonly in light-coloured stone, with arched doorways, towers, wrought-iron balconies and so on.

For the pure investor, meanwhile, with no interest in restoration work, there’s always the option of buying a total ruin – even just a pile of stones in a field as long as they are recognized on the local land registry as an agricultural building – and doing nothing to it. For several years now, Umbria has had an almost complete ban on any new building on agricultural land. Naturally this has had the effect of pushing up the value of unrestored old farm buildings. If you bought a pile of stones and waited five years or so to sell it, it would almost certainly go for substantially more than what you originally paid for it.

Quality of life
For the investor as well as the seeker of an Italian idyll, Umbria clearly has a lot to offer. This isn’t a region of sudden fashionability, prone to a subsequent sudden collapse of interest. It’s a place of slow, steady growth and has been so for many years. It’s still spacious and unspoilt, with room for many more incomers – and yet it has already set various safeguards in place to prevent it ever losing its peaceful, rural character. Everything points towards Umbria enjoying a rosy, stable future. For the present, things are pretty rosy too. Property-owners here enjoy a very, very high quality of life. Quite apart from the inspiring landscapes, the gorgeous hilltowns and the benign central Italian climate, they have the considerable pleasure of spending time amongst the kindly and dignified Umbrians. They have Umbria’s innumerable arts and music festivals to enliven their evenings. And of course they have magnificent Umbrian food to savour in the region’s countless inexpensive, family-run restaurants. Wild boar, wood pigeon, suckling pig, black truffles – all are common elements on the Umbrian menu. The region’s olive oil is some of Italy’s finest, and the salami from Norcia in particular is acknowledged to be Italy’s best. With its manifold blessings, perhaps it’s no surprise that Umbria has long been a place of heightened religious faith. It’s a region likely to incline anyone toward praise and gratitude!

www.tuscanyrealestate.co.uk
www.Propertyinumbria.com
www.umbriarealestate.co.uk
www.propertyinitaly.co.uk

www.italianpropertygallery.com

www.laportaverde.com

[All quoted prices accurate in 2007]

Lake Trasimeno and northern Umbria

The fourth largest lake in Italy, Lake Trasimeno is a warm, shallow expanse of tranquil water ringed by reedy shores. It’s a popular place with foreign buyers, who go for farmhouses in the low surrounding hills – lush with vines and olives – or for village homes in the pleasant shoreline settlements. Prices are slightly lower here than in Umbria’s other property hotspots, with 2-bed apartments averaging about €130,000, and 3-bedroom houses about €320,000. Restoration projects are also available, with smaller initial pricetags. Northeast of Lake Trasimeno, the countryside grows wilder and steeper. The upper Tiber Valley between Umbertide and Sansepolcro in Tuscany has seen a lot of foreign buyer interest over the last decade, pushing up prices in this otherwise sleepy area. A 2-bed villa near Umbertide would ask €200,000+. East of here, the landscape grows increasingly mountainous. Gubbio is a steep, perfectly-preserved medieval hilltown with increasing numbers of visitors. You could get a 5-bed villa near here for €330,000, or, for a similar amount, a 6-bed house in the nearby medieval mountain town of Gualdo Tadino.

Perugia

Umbria’s lively and atmospheric capital city Perugia takes the form of a large medieval hilltop town with modern suburbs sprawling around its base. Up on the top, 3,000-year-old streets sport Etruscan and Roman relics as well as superb medieval palaces and piazzas. Perugia has a booming economy, lots of visitors, and it was recently included on the network of budget flights from the UK – making it a great place to buy property. The rentals scene is perhaps the best in Umbria, after Assisi. As well as short-term lets to holidaymakers, investors should consider offering longer-term lets to students and visiting businesspeople. The city has an august academic university, and another devoted solely to teaching the Italian language to foreigners. (You might expect €700 a month on a long-term let of a 2-bed apartment.) 1-bed apartments in the old centre start at about €90,000; 2-beds at about €160,000. Apartment prices are lower in the plentiful modern condos at Perugia’s foot. As in other Umbrian towns, there are apartments and townhouses to restore in the old centre. Homes in the surrounding countryside are quite popular and good value. Recent listings included a refurbished 2-bed house asking €180,000, and a 6-bed villa asking €450,000.

The Vale of Spoleto

Southeast of Perugia, a long, table-flat plain snakes for many miles between soft hills and steeper mountains, forming perhaps Umbria’s most enticing area. Breathtaking medieval hilltowns are sprinkled liberally here, viz. Assisi, Spello, Bettona, Montefalco, Trevi, Spoleto – each offering awesome views-from-on-high of glorious surrounding landscapes. Picturesque Assisi, clinging to the side of Mount Subasio, is the priciest spot in Umbria – drawing innumerable tourists as well as hordes of religious pilgrims come to honour local-boy St. Francis. 1-bed apartments in Assisi get going at about €170,000, with 2-beds starting around €200,000. (Lower prices can be found on Assisi’s outskirts, in nearby mountain hamlets or in a handsome satellite town like Santa Maria degli Angeli). Assisi’s visitor season is almost year-round, and you could expect €500 a week rental on a 2-bed apartment. Country homes near Assisi and other lovely towns around the Vale of Spoleto are very appealing. Recent listings include a 3-bed house to restore near Assisi for €185,000, a 2-bed to restore near Bettona for €200,000, a 3-bed villa near Assisi for €230,000, and a 4-bed villa near Bettona for €340,000. At the southern end of the vale sits the ancient and impressively scenic town of Spoleto. Hugely popular with foreign buyers in recent years, it’s likely to become even more favoured after traffic is banned from the city centre starting from summer this year [2007]. Within the city walls you might get an unrestored 2-bed apartment for €150,000-€200,000, or a fully restored one for €250,000-€350,000. Villages nearby are in various states of repair and can offer some good restoration bargains. Or try the 10th-century village of San Marmiliano, allegedly the oldest in Umbria, which has been conscientiously restored throughout.

Orvieto and Todi

In Umbria’s southwest, two classic medieval hilltowns are much loved by foreign buyers. Orvieto sits on a column of ginger rock rising from an immensely fertile valley floor, and is home to arguably the most beautiful cathedral in Italy. It’s a lively and cultured place with excellent road and rail connections. Todi is more remote and less easily accessed, with a magnificent central piazza and an expanding community of ex-pat artists and writers. Both towns offer a very high quality of life and can be pricy for property. 1-bedroom apartments in Orvieto start at about €80,000; in Todi, €120,000. 2-bedroom apartments in Orvieto start at €150,000, while in Todi they go for between €170,000 and €290,000. Holiday rental prospects in both towns are good. Bargains and restoration projects on small townhouses sometimes crop up, particularly in Todi. Farmhouses in the countryside around Todi, however, can often go for Chianti-style prices.

The south and southeast

Umbria’s least-visited – and lowest-priced – areas are its southern and southeastern extremes. Mountainous and thinly-populated, with green valleys, plunging waterfalls and high flower-meadows, the south and southeast are great places for a second home or a retirement retreat but not so great for holiday rentals. Terni is an inexpensive but industrial place whose historical buildings are sadly depleted thanks to wartime bombing. Nearby Narni is rather more charming, with its medieval centre intact, but the nicest medieval hilltowns in this southern area are probably Amélia and Otricoli. Town and countryside property round here can be about half the price of the same around Spoleto. Umbria’s southeast corner, the ‘Valnerina’, is especially wild, remote and beautiful – with long-abandoned farmhouses testament to the area’s mass emigration early last century. Norcia is the largest of the many tiny settlements here – an attractively tumbledown mountain-town that happens to make the best salami in all Italy. Again, this is an area of comparatively cheap property.

My Home in Umbria

Jenny Barnes from County Durham bought a ruined farmhouse in the hills northeast of Lake Trasimeno in 2000. She and her husband spent two years restoring it, and now make regular visits as well as renting the property out to holidaymakers.

Like many buyers, the couple fell in love with Umbria while on holiday there. They particularly wanted a house northeast of the lake. “It’s a tremendous area,” Jenny says, “in that when you get bored of lying in the sun by the pool, you can nip off to Assisi, Cortona, Perugia or Gubbio – really knockout places, all within an hour’s distance.”

The farmhouse is a traditional old casale. “It was a complete ruin when we bought it,” Jenny says. “It was missing a wall and a roof, but then they had to take down the bits that were unstable, so we ended up with a wall and a half!” No one seems to know how old it is. “I’ve met people who used to play around it when they were children and it was a ruin then. So I think it hasn’t been lived in for at least sixty or seventy years. There’s a tower too, which we also restored. We don’t live in it but we made it watertight. It was obviously a drying tower of some sort, perhaps for hams. There are lots of old tobacco-drying towers in Umbria but this wasn’t used for that.”

The couple found the restoration process quite straightforward. “The building work was done in just a year, but getting the permissions and things took longer. We had a local geometra who was extremely good and helped considerably with the local commune. The standard of workmanship is fantastic. We used to go out about every two months to have a look at it, and I remember once standing looking up at the eaves overhanging the walls, and noticing that they’d make a herringbone pattern with the bricks under there. No one had asked them. It just seems that even little things are really nicely done.”

The farmhouse has large rooms with high ceilings, and eight hectares of land outside. “You look out the window and the view is to die for, it just rolls away from the house and across the valley. I certainly haven’t got sick of it yet and I can’t imagine ever doing so.”  

Having so enjoyed bringing an old house back from the dead, Jenny has developed a passion for restoration. “We now want to do it in Britain! I think our Italian house is even nicer than our English house. It’s so satisfying to restore a place. At the end of it you’ve got a designer house. How often in life do you get to design a house?”

Jenny bought through the estate agency IPN Castello. You can read more about her house at:
www.villa-martinazzi.com