Where To Buy In Italy 2007 Article

Campania

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Colourful, romantic Campania has captivated visitors for more than two millennia. With property prices ranging from sky-high to cheap-as-chips, there’s something here for every buyer. Warm, fertile Campania was christened the ‘happy land’ by the ancient Romans, many of whom hoped to own a holiday villa or to retire here in campania felix. It’s still a very happy land – blessed with gorgeous geography, teeming with fruit and flowers, and packed with historical sites. The Amalfi Coast, Cápri and Sorrento are here, three near-mythically beautiful – and largely unspoilt – holiday destinations. Pompeii, Herculaneum and Paestum are here, each home to astonishing and extensive Classical-era relics. Italy’s third largest and undisputedly liveliest city, Naples, is here. So are Italy’s best pizza, ice cream, pasta and tomatoes. As the source of so many of our common stereotypes about Italy, Campania is arguably the country’s most stimulating and memorable region. It’s a romantic, glamorous, chaotic and intensely colourful place. Between 1997 and 2007 [the year of writing], property prices doubled across Campania. They are still rising, albeit more slowly. While some famous coastal beauty-spots are prohibitively expensive or lack anything for sale, there are some very appealing parts of Campania where property is still reasonably priced – both on the coast and in the hilly hinterland. Far inland, meanwhile, prices drop to very low levels. Despite being one of Italy’s most visited regions, Campania attracts comparatively few British buyers. In particular, it sees hardly any Brits settling down to live here full-time. Perhaps many would-be buyers are put off by the increasingly outdated thought that this very Southern Italian region is plagued by poverty,

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corruption, and bureaucratic sloth. Numbers of British buyers are growing, however, and it’s likely that Campania’s popularity will continue to increase over the coming years.

LONGSTANDING APPEAL Campania’s magnetic appeal is perhaps the oldest and most enduring of any Italian region. The ancient Greeks were the first to succumb, washing up on Campanian shores in the 8th century B.C. They liked the place so much that they decided to stay, and from here they infiltrated the rest of the Italian peninsula – introducing the vine and the olive, and wowing the indigenous people with the idea of an alphabet and written language, among other innovations. The Romans were the next big name to colonize Campania, filling it with villas and settlements to thrill many generations of future archaeologists. When the 18th-century Grand Tourists set the fashion for gallivanting across Europe, Italy was their main target and Campania their ultimate goal. “See Naples and die!” they cried, certain that he who had not beheld the exotic glories of Campania could not say he had truly lived. The enthusiasm persisted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries too, with innumerable European artists, writers and celebrities tumbling through chic, invigorating Campania – the wind tousling their hair as they cruised the Amalfi Drive. One of Campania’s greatest attractions is, of course, its glorious geography. This region enjoys many physical blessings. Its coastline is long and varied, being relatively straight and flat in the north and south, with wide open stretches of sand, but steep and intricate in the centre – from Pozzuoli to Salerno. Here the coast sinuously breaks into various bays, headlands, cliffs and dainty coves, not to mention three beautiful little islands. Campania's immediate hinterland sports a few fertile plains and lots of rolling hills, each ultimately rising to meet the high, rugged mountains of the deep interior. As you’d expect, the region is quite crowded down by its waterside, and almost deserted far inland. With 5,700,000 inhabitants, Campania is one of Italy’s most populous regions, but the vast majority of the people here live within easy reach of the sea and, in particular, of teeming, sprawling Naples. Abundantly fertile thanks to its rich volcanic soil, Campania enjoys a thriving agriculture and produces some of Italy’s bestquality foodstuffs. This, together with the region’s huge appeal to tourists, might incline you to think that Campanians could easily live off the fat of their land. It’s true that tourism and agriculture are mainstays of the region’s economy, but unfortunately Campania still has a problem with unemployment and poverty. About 18% of its population are jobless, despite the swathes of heavy industry ringing Naples. There are slum pockets in and around this otherwise beguiling city, spoiling the idyll of Campania a little. Deep inland, a few old semi-abandoned villages are another

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depressing sight to some. To others, they are a romantic vision of picturesque decay. Or indeed, a development opportunity.

MANY MARKETS Dominic Hebblethwaite of the agency Live in Italy rightly says that “You can’t really talk about the market in Campania as ‘one market’. The market along the Amalfi Coast is completely different to that in Naples, which is completely different to the countryside of Benevento and is completely different to the Cilento National Park.” More than most Italian regions, Campania sees huge differences between the prices and popularity of properties in its different areas. The region contains, in fact, some of Italy’s very priciest homes and some of its cheapest. So it’s crucial to know where to focus your search. Let’s start by looking at the costliest locales then work downwards. The gorgeous Amalfi Coast area is, as you’d expect, one of the most desirable and expensive places in Campania. Dominic notes that “There is almost no market now on the Amalfi Coast, properties rarely come on the market and when they do the prices are extremely high.” Villas here generally go for more than a million euros, and even though their rental prospects are superb (several thousand euros a week), you might not profit much as your initial outlay is so great. One or two new property developments offer rather more affordable homes on this glamorous coast, but generally the steep landscape prohibits much new building. Sorrento is another pricy spot with limited options, as is the chic island of Cápri. The other two islands in the Bay of Naples, however, can be a little easier to buy on – especially Ischia, where there’s quite a bit for sale across a fairly wide price range. And the summertime holiday rental prospects here are very good. It might surprise you to learn that Naples is also one of the most expensive places in Campania. So many people want to live in this huge, lively city that property prices have risen and risen. As an investment, Naples is a good option – but you should rent long-term to local people rather than short-term to holidaymakers. Two-bed apartments range [in 2007] from about €150,000 on the city outskirts to nearly €800,000 for a luxury flat in a highly desirable area like Vómero or Posillipo. The rents would be something like €600 per month up to about €2,000 or more, respectively. We Brits commonly think of Naples as an impoverished city, but in fact there is lots of money here. If you want to buy in Naples, make sure you fully understand which districts and neighbourhoods are the most and least desirable.

MORE AFFORDABLE During the period 2005-2007, many foreign buyers have turned their attention to southern Campania – to the coast south of Salerno and the hinterland behind it. The area has a lot going for it. The beaches are wider and emptier than further north, and the rolling hills of the interior are very attractive. Almost the whole area is, in fact, officially National Parkland – comprising the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park. There are lots of quaint little villages, and lots of homes with views down to the distant sea. All well and good, but a slight downside to this southern stretch of Campania is the long journey from

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Naples airport – around two hours. Clare Shipston of Italian Properties notes that with the Campanian market, “The further south you go, the lower the price.” She also points out that down in the south “As always, the best buys are to be had by going inland a few miles. Most properties have sea views but cost a lot less than something on the beach.” Prices are rising steadily in southern Campania, but in 2007 one- and two-bedroom apartments by the beach tend to cost between €100,000 and €270,000. A few miles inland, you’ll get larger apartments and detached properties for these kind of prices. There are restoration projects, villas, homes with land, village houses – all sorts of options. Foreign buyers down here are the usual crew of Brits, Germans, Americans, Scandinavians and South Africans, and they tend to prefer homes with land needing restoration. Southern Campania is popular with Italian holidaymakers, and a property near the water here should bring in fairly reliable summer rental returns. Inland, your clients would tend to be exploratory-minded northern Europeans, in lower numbers. Southern Campania’s hinterland is perhaps more an area in which to enjoy a holiday home, rather than a place in which to try and cover all your costs with rental returns. But given the low initial outlay for a property here, you might not need to worry too much about bolstering your finances with rentals anyway. Buy here and you would have an affordable rural idyll with the sunny seaside never far away and many of Campania’s famously romantic and historical delights of within daytripping distance.

DEEP INTERIOR The very cheapest stretch of Campania is its deep interior. There is some astonishingly good-value property here if you look carefully. You could easily secure an attractive old place in a lively town or village for a five-figure sum, and be within an hour to ninety minutes from places like the Amalfi Coast, Naples and so on. If you’re interested in buying in Campania’s deep interior, then it’s important to explore the area and get a feel for what’s where. There are a few dispiriting spots with an air of abandonment to them – the locals having all left for jobs in Naples. But there are also many thriving places surrounded by glorious mountain scenery. (Many people find that that the countryside is especially striking in the area round Benevento and Ariano Irpino.) Campania’s interior is a potent slice of ‘real Italy’, where local people live a slow-paced, traditional lifestyle in picturesque old towns and villages which seem to have stayed unchanged for centuries. Communities are tight-knit and family values prevail. Deep in Campania’s interior, you could get a one-bedroom apartment in a medieval village for €30,000, a one-bedroom village house for about €40,000, and a two-bedroom house in the country for about €50,000. It really is that cheap. [Prices are from 2007.] Many of the properties in these price brackets are fully habitable – occasionally even fully furnished. Others need only a small amount of renovation work. But if major restoration is your thing, Campania’s interior also holds a wealth of potential projects for you to choose from – all at a very low initial outlay. As you might expect, the holiday rental prospects

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for this part of Campania are fairly low (although certainly not non-existent). But as you would spend so very little for a property here, it’s likely you wouldn’t have to worry about meeting your costs with holiday rentals anyway. So what’s the catch? Well, there isn’t one really. Campania’s interior isn’t for everyone – there are a few threadbare villages; there’s almost no English spoken; and the climate isn’ quite as benign as it is on the coast, where winters are milder. There’s also a slightly greater risk of earthquakes, but this really shouldn’t deter anyone since all of the Italian peninsula is an earthquake zone. The Italians live with the risk of earthquakes as we British live with the risk of rain. Italian laws dictate that roofs and walls are strengthened against seismic events. If you’re buying in Campania’s interior (or anywhere else on the Italian peninsula), do check that your property is fully up-to-standard with anti-earthquake precautions. And if you’re restoring an old property, be sure to seek advice on this from your builders or architect. To ignore the risk of earthquakes altogether is to be very shortsighted indeed.

MODEL VILLAGE One interesting project deep in Campania’s interior that deserves a mention here is the ‘Medieval Hamlet of Calitri Project’. A small property development company called Tricali has been working together with local councillors since 2004, sensitively restoring many of the old borgo homes of this thriving little town about eighty minutes’ drive from Naples, and selling them as holiday homes. Only local craftsmen and traditional building materials are used in the restoration work, considerably adding to its appeal. The project has been quite a success, with non-locals (including foreigners) snapping up these excellent-value borgo homes and enjoying their time in Calitri as a welcomed part of the strong local community. Apartments with one, two or more bedrooms in Calitri’s medieval borgo tend to go for about €30,000 to €50,000. Tricali doesn’t act as an agent selling the properties [and request that would-be buyers do not contact them directly], but relies instead on various brokers through whom buyers can make enquiries and purchases. Among the various brokers they use are: www.realpointitaly.com, www.escapes2.com, www.sunandskihomes.co.uk, and www.italianhomesandholidays.co.uk. So, whatever your budget, it seems there’s something that could suit you in Campania. This colourful and varied region has a great deal going for it and deserves far more British buyer-interest. Having beguiled all sorts of visitors for the last two millennia, isn’t Campania worth your consideration?

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www.italianhomesandholidays.co.uk www.abode.it

[All quoted prices accurate in 2007]

Naples Italy’s third largest city and one of the most densely-populated places in Europe, Naples is a genuinely beguiling place where common descriptions like ‘colourful’ and ‘exuberant’ are not just euphemisms for ‘impoverished’ and ‘dangerous’. This is a truly invigorating and compelling city with stunning food and great shopping – all incomparably set on a wide, volcano-backed bay. There’s space for many parts: a lively historical quarter; some very well-heeled suburbs; a bit of slum chaos; a sprawl of coastal industry. Because so many people want to live in Naples, housing is in great demand – which means surprisingly high property prices and very good rental returns. The cheapest one- and twobed apartments go for between €100,000 and €200,000. In more central or popular districts, these ask €200,000 to €300,000. Vómero and Posillipo are among the loveliest and priciest areas, and a two-bed apartment here would set you back around €500,000. (So much for Naples being an impoverished city!) Summer holiday rentals are pretty good, with one-bed apartments averaging €600 a week; a two-bed about €1,100. Or you could rent long-term to locals. one- and two-bed apartments rent for €400-€1,000 per month, but up to €1,800 per month in a place like Vómero.

North and West of Naples You’ll probably want to avoid the impoverished and industrial area immediately to Naples’ north. Head west out of the city instead, and you enter a strange, volcanic landscape punctuated by craters, hot springs and steam vents – with towns like Pozzuoli prone to subsidence. The coast round here is relatively appealing (especially at Miseno), and rich in Classical remains. North of Cumae, however, the seaside is mostly overdeveloped up to the border with Lazio. Few tourists or property-buyers venture inland round here, but towns like Cápua and Caserta are pleasant enough (and little Sant’Agata dei Goti is positively charming). A wide fertile plain dominates the area, grazed by herds of buffalo whose milk is used for mozzarella.

The islands A trio of lovely islands frames the Bay of Naples, each with its own distinct character. Cápri is the most famous of the three, an enchanted chunk of limestone draped in flowers and greenery – once a playground for the super-wealthy, and now a daytripper’s paradise.

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It’s arguably unspoilt by all the attention, and away from the main town’s boutique-lined centre, the people here lead fairly normal, traditional lives. Larger, less glamorous Ischia is just as popular as Cápri but feels less crowded. Its biggest fans are German and Scandinavian tourists, who lap up Ischia’s beaches, volcanic thermal springs and quiet mountainous hinterland. Tiny Prócida is the least visited, but also perhaps the least scenic. Property is hugely expensive on all three islands, but priciest on Cápri, where there’s rarely much for sale. Ischia has more on the market, with prices ranging from €170,000 for a tiny 2-bed house to €620,000 for a 2-bed apartment. Holiday rental returns are excellent on Cápri and Ischia, and so-so on Prócida. Expect a 1-bed apartment on Cápri to rent for €1,500 a week in the summer.

Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast Light-hearted Sorrento has been a favourite of Brits and other visitors for more than a century. Its lively clutch of lanes sits on a cliff-edge with wonderful views across the Bay of Naples. Many lovely walks over Sorrento’s leafy headland beckon from the town centre. Property is expensive here, but not quite so much as it is a few miles further south, along the Costiera Amalfitana – frequently described as ‘Europe’s most beautiful stretch of coast’. The Amalfi Coast is a dazzling 20km or so of steep, flower-strewn terrain plunging into a turquoise sea, supporting semi-vertical villages of pastel-coloured villas. It’s heady stuff, with hefty price tags. Properties here rarely come on the market, but if you’ve got the cash and manage to grab a place, you’d be looking at superb rental returns. A three-bed villa in a prime location would usually ask €1 million or more, but you could rent it for €4,000 a week in the summer. Best of all, while the Amalfi Coast is undeniably popular and crowded in the summer, access is relatively difficult and the terrain naturally restricts much new building – so the area is unlikely ever to be spoilt by overdevelopment. An investment here should have a sound future.

Southern Campania South of Salerno, Campania’s coastline begins to lose some its steep drama, but it compensates for this with some great stretches of sand and much thinner crowds. Inland, there’s lovely hill country peppered with unspoilt villages and small towns, often with commanding views of the sea in the distance. Almost all of southern Campania’s coast and interior is classified as National Parkland. This whole area has been quietly growing in popularity with foreign buyers over the last few years – and deservedly so. Prices are still reasonable here, and there are lots of property options, including restoration projects. Down on the seaside, one- and two-bed apartments ask between €80,000 and €270,000. A few miles inland, you might get a two-bedroom villa with land for €270,000, or a tumbledown old house with land asking €50,000 or so.

The interior Campania’s mountainous interior is a different world to the region’s much-loved coast. Rarely visited and very thinly populated, the towns and roads here are small and slow, the lifestyle quiet and traditional. As you might expect, property prices can be very low indeed. There’s some very handsome countryside up here – forests and rugged mountain

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landscapes steeped in silence. The land is especially attractive around Benevento and Ariano Irpino. Property-wise, there are lots of prospects: farmhouses, village homes, rustic buildings, townhouses – restored and unrestored, old and newly-built. Good-sized country homes ask as little as €50,000, and rarely more than €200,000. Holiday rental prospects would be limited, but you’d have a peaceful and inexpensive retreat to call your own – just an hour to ninety minutes from Naples.

Our Home in Campania Sara-Jane Gray and her husband Kevin own a four-bedroom property in the old borgo of Calitri, about eighty minutes inland from Naples. “We’d been looking for about three years,” Sara-Jane explains. “We’d considered Liguria, Umbria, and so on. Then I was surfing the net and came across a project, where a small company had gone in with the municipal council to renovate houses and regenerate an old part of Calitri. I did my homework, and even went to a UK firm of solicitors and said ‘I don’t understand why these houses are so reasonable, what’s the catch?’ Turns out there is no catch, it’s just because so many people have moved away, and the Italians don’t commute the way the English do. If they go away to Naples to work, then they want to live in Naples, not an hour and twenty away. “We bought our house in Calitri three years ago. We were either the first or second buyers in the whole project. We paid about £45,000, and we can sleep twelve. It’s a three-storey townhouse, on the side of a mountain. It has two entrances; a fully-equipped studio apartment downstairs; and upstairs three bedrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a lounge with a cathedral ceiling. Calitri is a bustling little town. Traditionally, the borgo was where the poor people lived – crowded, high up, with few amenities. When people could afford it, they went down the mountain and built new houses. The Italians like everything new and shiny, whereas we British like everything rustic and quaint. The borgo has always been alive and vibrant, and there are lots of Italians there. I love it. “Normally we visit about five or six times a year. We explore the local area – there’s a lake and stunning mountains – and also go further afield. But the closer you get to the coast, the more anglicised it gets, and we like to be in Italy. It’s wonderful for the

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children. There’s an intensely strong sense of community here, and a huge respect for family. Because the house was so inexpensive, renting is not something we have to do to cover costs. But we do rent out the studio apartment, and the rentals market is pretty good. “The developers, Tricali, use only local tradespeople and artisans in restoring these properties, so they create local wealth, which the townspeople love. Calitri isn’t a place for buyers who want every amenity and lots of English spoken. The houses are renovated and furnished, so you don’t have to drag furniture through the borgo, but you are going to have to speak some Italian, because it’s a traditional Southern Italian town.” As well as organizing events in Italy, Sara-Jane acts as a broker for Tricali’s homes. www.italianhomesandholidays.co.uk

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