Finance > Real Estate > Restoring Townhouses in Le Marche, Italy
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Dermott Sales
The restoration and rebuilding of Townhouses or village houses in Le Marche has become very popular over the past couple of years. Restoring small village houses in the historical centres of the many hilltop villages in Le Marche is much a less onerous task than tackling the complete restoration of an isolated farmhouse with many acres of land.
Up until recently most buyers were only interested in the dream of purchasing and restoring a large farmhouse set in several hectares of grounds and normally also installing a swimming pool.
While the prices of farmhouses with land were low, perhaps less than 100,000 euros just a few years ago, it was relatively easy to afford the additional restoration costs, but attractive country houses are now often 200,000 euros or more and so with the high costs of restoration a full project can cost close to 500,000 euros or more to fully restore a 200sqm farmhouse. Installing a must have swimming pool with all the necessary pumps and filtration systems can easily cost in excess of 30,000 euros.
Perhaps it is not surprising that many foreign buyers are now looking to purchase Townhouses in pretty historic hilltop villages and towns as a means of owning a property in Italy and enjoy the accompanying lifestyle but without the high costs of restoring and maintaining a large country property.
I would always advise to use Italian builders who specialise in restoring village houses rather than general builders who work on many types of property. Also it is always essential to have a survey carried out before purchasing a property and if possible try to use a structural engineer rather than a general surveyor called a Geometra in Italy.
As most village houses in Le Marche are built on rock there is usually very little problems with
subsidence and most cracking found in walls is normally due to many small earth tremors over the past hundreds or so years and usually are nothing to worry about.
Much more common is damp and water damage due to rainwater entering through damaged or neglected roofs. As many village houses have stood empty for many years no time or money has been spent on general maintenance of the property, especially on the roof and missing or slipped roof tiles are a common occurrence in a lot of unoccupied houses.
Renovating a medium sized townhouse of approximately 160 sqm in floor area should be well within the budget of most foreign house purchasers. I would normally think that the costs per sqm would be nearly half that of restoring and renovating a country house of the same size. But the best of the village houses for renovation, especially houses with roof terraces are now becoming increasingly hard to find and over the next few years the majority of these will have been bought up and restored. Day to day running costs and maintenance of a medium sized townhouse are perhaps only half that of a similar sized country house which is an increasingly important factor for many potential purchasers.
Townhouses in popular villages are also now purchased in many cases for the popular holiday rentals market and I would advise anyone thinking of purchasing a holiday home in Italy for themselves or as an investment to check out houses for sale in le Marche and book a visit very soon.
Dermott Sales is a UK based expert in property sales and renovation in and is one of the few specialist Estate Agents in Le Marche. Please contact him on +44 (0)7885 773 433 (UK), 0039 3343256597 (Italy)
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