Italian seaside properties

Wondering where to blow the budget on a seaside home? Then head to Capri, Forte dei Marmi or Portofino.
According to a price survey by Italian estate agent conglomerate Tecnocasa, the posh Campanian island is the most expensive seaside resort in Italy, with properties costing up to €14,200 per square metre. “Professionals and small and medium entrepreneurs from all over Italy, and particularly from Rome and Milan, drive demand for Capri homes,” states the Tecnocasa report. “Foreigners are mostly British or German, but there has been an increase in requests from Russian purchasers in the last few months. Buyers are looking both for villas and for small-sized apartments, particularly those with one bedroom. The most prestigious homes are villas with sea views—but a pool, even a small one, is crucial for buyers.”
Only Tuscany’s Forte dei Marmi and Liguria’s Portofino—neither of which is included in the Tecnocasa report—rival Capri’s pricey primacy. Villas in the heart of the celeb-studded Tuscan resort start from a minimum of €12,200 per square metre and reach up to €14,500, according to the Borsa Toscana del Mercato Immobiliare, a regional body that monitors prices in the Tuscan comuni.
But wait, that’s outright cheap when compared to Portofino, the postcard-pretty fishing village near Genoa, where prestige homes in the old centre cost from a minimum of €18,000 to a maximum of €22,000 per square metre according to figures by the Agenzia del Territorio, Italy’s equivalent of the Land Registry. Which means that a smallish one bedroom flat can command in the region of €1m.
Portofino’s vertigo-inducing prices remain unbeaten but several other resorts in Liguria try hard to match them. The Northern region heads the house price chart, with seven of its comuni making it to the top ten list of Italy’s most expensive coastal locations. Varazze, Alassio, Varigotti, Arenzano, Celle Ligure, Santa Margherita Ligure and Finale Ligure all have properties priced between €9,000 and €12,000 per square metre, according to Tecnocasa. In Santa Margherita, luxury homes, such as hillside villas or largish seaview flats in the old fishermen’s homes in the village centre, reach peaks of €13,000 per square metre. “Houses in the Nozarego hill start from a minimum of €1m and if they have seaviews they carry a premium of 10-15%,” states the Tecnocasa report.
And prices are holding up at this level, even though sale times have become longer—Italian entrepreneurs and professionals, and German and British buyers are driving the top end of the market.
However, Italy’s most expensive locations are not necessarily the most active ones. The market is most lively in Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily, reports Tecnocasa. In Calabria, property prices in resorts along the Tyrrhenian coast, in the Cosenza province, went up 5.2% in the second quarter of 2007, with peaks of 6.6% in the mural-covered town of Diamante—home to azure waters and red hot chili peppers—and 7% in pretty Sangineto. Buyers are mostly Italian, particularly from Campania.
In Sicily by contrast, a good number of buyers come from overseas. Russians, Americans and Swedish are flocking to the elegant streets of Taormina, where homes can fetch up to €4,000 to €5,000 per square metre. Plans for a golf course in the Trappitello hamlet, in particular, are generating interest among investors. That said, prices in Taormina are steady, while they are moving up in other areas of Sicily—they rose by an average 1.2% across the island, with peaks of 18.6% in Cefalu, where demand, however, is mostly for main residences, rather than second homes.
Sardinia has also seen a rise in prices, which went up by 2.2% across the island. The most dynamic location was the lively city of Olbia, up 7.7%, which has markets for both main and second homes. Among the draws attracting buyers to the area is a new marina and surrounding hotels and shopping centre being built at Olbia Mare. Even though Olbia is served by an international airport, however, buyers are mostly locals—Sardinians looking for a second home, chiefly as an investment buy.
Foreigners—English, Germans, and Russians looking for prestige waterside homes—are more present further down the Eastern Sardinian coast, in Villasimius. Properties in or near the village, which counts some of Sardinia’s best beaches, fetch up to €4,000 per square metre, even though prices here have declined a little (1.1%) in the second half of 2007.
Perhaps more surprising is the overseas interest in Sant’Antioco, an islet off the main Sardinian island. Small but quiet, beautiful and rich in history—it was one of the first Phoenician settlements in Sardinia, and later became a Carthaginean and a Roman colony—it draws Italians but also Belgian, British and Russian buyers looking for large homes in peaceful areas. Russians in particular are prepared to spend in the region of €1m for the right home—and this in a place where average prices for a good property are as low as €1,800 to €2,000 per square metre.