Because they are relatively poor areas. They also have not been touched by the tourism inflation. I live in Ficulle, Umbria.
I live right beneath that tower. The top three windows on the left is my apartment.
I work here as an executive tour guide. I’m a 20 min drive from work. Now, gas is expensive so i have two vehicles. One is a fiat panda which runs on natural gas, which is cheap as hell, and the other an SUV for when I need to go somewhere in comfort.
My rent for an almost 1300 sq Ft apartment? 250 euros a month. Water and gas included. Electricity on the other hand is about 5 times what it is in Texas. That all sounds great, but there are some downsides. First off, there are almost no services out here. It’s almost an hour drive (twisty roads, not strait) to get to anything important, and while the slower pace of life sounds great, and it can be, when need something done, now, you will begin to pull your hair out and wonder why you have to wait 6 weeks for the water to be turned on, or why that government beaurocrat looked you right in the eye, and said they were going for a coffee and didn’t come back for two hours. Forget it. It isn’t going to happen.
So, why is it so cheap? Well in the countryside, Italy is mostly still agrarian. Our main crops here are olives and grapes. Neither one of those pay well. The largest employers are usually vineyards which require low skill workers. Unemployment is high and kids tend to live with their parents until they are in a relationship. If they want a job/career they move away, and come and visit for holidays. Ficulle 30 years ago was almost 4,000 people, now it is teetering on the 1000 mark. So there is a glut of housing available. Look at this apartment. It’s 70K. Sure it needs some work, but for a total investment of 85k you will end up with 1300 sq. Ft apartment in a 900 year old building in a village that goes back more than 2600 years.
4 bedroom flat della rocca, Ficulle |
At the same time look at that site. The old farmhouses are for sale for hundreds of thousands. Some of them for years. Why? Because the family lives in town, and know that sooner or later some tourist is going to pay through the nose for something that was essentially abandoned.
In towns that have been touched by tourism the price per square foot rivals Rome and Milan. Look up Cortona. It’s where “Under the Tuscan Sun” happened. The town is so overrun with brits, Germans, and Americans that ads in the paper and street signs are in English. There is a whole cottage industry there to support those people. Which drives costs up across the board. If you want to move to Italy, look at a map and stay 30 km away from anywhere you might have heard of. This is pretty much all of Tuscany. Look at Umbria, Abruzzo, Le Marche, and Puglia. Much, much, much more bang for your buck.
No comments:
Post a Comment