Ok here are a few thoughts on Abruzzo 2010-08-26
To be honest it has been a positive year for us as the aftermath of the L’Aquila quake has resulted in people that are choosing to make a purchase i believe throughout Italy but specifically Abruzzo in my case are now more than aware that careful research need to be undertaken and its amazing the amount of our clients that have the web address of the INGV Italian seismic web site in their favourites. Teramo which once appeared to be expensive for no apparent reason in most peoples minds has suddenly been able to justify its price differential. In the past when we had touring clients they had either just come from or were going to the Province of L’Aquila and were comparing property values here against what could be bought there.
Despite offering to my mind quite logical reasons regarding the risks of buying in Seismic class 1 areas i was left with the clear impression that my thoughts and advice were seen as just estate agent talk in the sense of trying hard to sell here. These days people that come often ask without any prompting about earthquake risk and regulations regarding the structures they are interested in. They seem to understand that the intervention required on an old building in a high risk zone is going to be something that will add significantly to restoration costs often placing low priced properties well beyond their resources.
So Teramo has benefited as a province when it was clearly seen by the world as a whole that the majority of the people moved from L’Aquila in the immediate aftermath were place here in the Province of Teramo, some 45,000 initially, many of whom have made this province their permanent home ,as it is the only Province within Abruzzo with no class 1 seismic zones.
Typically now we have clients arriving that have chosen Teramo and most want hill side properties between the mountains and the sea. The type of property most sort at this time are those which will e suitable for a future business use, mainly bed and breakfast.
Bed and breakfast rules here are complicated but they do allow for a very easy tax regime, and if you start by following all the rules and regulations and adapting your property to those during any building interventions its possible to quite easily become legally registered here. They are popular not only with the non Italian holiday market but more and more so with domestic clients. Traditional seaside holidays are still taken but for shorter periods and days are kept back now for long weekends or weeks away outside the normal August coastal rush.
In many areas of Italy the largest growth in tourism is within the agriturismo and rural holiday type of vacation. Interest in regional food and national parks is growing hugely. Abruzzo is well placed to take advantage of this new interest and Teramo is benefiting as the closest Province to Rome on the coastal side of the Apennines is well placed to provide easy access not only for holiday trips but also second home owners with a short drive of ninety minutes from Rome.
Another significant interest this year for the first time is the amount of enquiries we get from the North of Italy. Northern city based Italians are looking to escape the ret race and find a better life style. A familiar story outside Italy but new to us. They ask lots of questions but are very current with all the bio diverse opportunities offered here in Italy via grants and are very knowledgeable on traditional construction work. They ask significant questions before viewing and want specific details ,for example they want the location of the property in terms of the comune and they view far fewer properties in a day. They seem to be more aware of distances and time taken, rarely viewing more than three properties in a day they ask for very clear facts about for example water supply. Foreigners seem to take it as read that a water company will supply them clean and continual water to a property. Italians know this in some areas is not true. So they want the name of the supply company. Italy has thousands of water companies, some good some terrible and water quality difficulties that make the water unsafe to drink in many areas. They use a legal loophole which gives them temporary permission to supply unsafe water whilst they are fixing a problem and then just keep extending it, for instance there is no safe water in the Pescara valley area supplied by the ACA water company. Other companies run out of water in the summer so for instance they stop water through the day. Hence they ask the name and then check.
Pescara has established new regular flights to Oslo so we are seeing increased Scandinavian interest as well, many already know the area well from previous summer beach holidays, many are looking for apartments inland slightly away from the coast, the advantages are a much lower price per square meter, a sense of being in a real Italian town or small village and views over the sea and mountains without the coastal chaos, whilst the beach is an easy bus ride away. Best sellers in this case are those apartments with large areas of outside space and with pools. Italian construction companies are putting more effort into research and are therefore building to suit these requirements.
All in all Abruzzo is benefiting from increased exposure due to the earthquake, which brought a huge number of international journalists to a region which few of them knew, and then they were amazed at the diversity and scope of our national parks, the fact that it is the greenest region in Italy is now a recorded fact with the national parks covering a higher percentage of the land than any other region. So green tourism here has been vastly increased adding to the interest in properties and lifestyles that include setting up businesses in that area, interest in the Gran Sasso area as an outdoor pursuit Mecca, horse riding, mountain biking, rock climbing, or just simple nature watch holidays are all becoming more popular. Themed holidays and experiences with truffle hunting, the sheep herding (transumanza) where weeks are spent on the ancient paths moving flocks between winter and summer pastures are all growing in popularity. This leads to people wanting to choose the life here for their future, either in retirement or in lifestyle change which is all helping to add interest into good well prepared sales of property.
So interest in Abruzzo has remained strong , even increased , tempered by world wide crisis problems but people are looking for secure places to buy having seen failures in many of the so called new hotspots they now want secure areas and Italy from centre to north provides a secure and steady growth area to buy. Property prices in these areas have remained steady with no perceivable drop in property values outside the main city area’s. Abruzzo has thankfully lost its hotspot status even if it ever had one, a small gold rush occurred with people taken in by very low prices but as in all cases when purchasing a property there is always a logical answer as to why property values are low, many have lost their homes in the province of L’Aquila, not destroyed but declared unsafe to live in and now cannot be used until interventions , often costly are undertaken, with solutions meaning that loose pretty stone walls now have to be caged in steel and sprayed with concrete. People amazingly are still going for areas of low cost, my advice to anyone thinking of purchasing here and thinking they have found an unbelievable bargain is to research the comune, even Wikipedia now gives the seismic status of each comune, check the water company, check local newspapers for arguments over planned developments. Do your research it will save you a lot of hindsight pain.
http://www.protezionecivile.it/cms/attach/editor/Classificazione2006_perRegione.pdf this is a link from the civil protection group in Italy which classifies all communes in Italy and their seismic risk.
What i have noticed is that obviously L’Aquila was always heavily sold because of low prices and that has i believe seriously decreased as people have become aware of not only the risk but the costs that will be almost beyond most peoples budget in making safe any building in terms of money and time. What is clearly unknown and often concealed that there are many areas of both the province of Chieti and to a lesser extent that of Pescara that are equally at risk. Significantly you will find that seismic one areas in these two provinces are those where more properties are advertised and sold to non Italian buyers.
One of the main reasons that so many buildings collapsed in L’Aquila is that despite being classified as a class 1 zone the communes refused to implement class 1 safety regulations in their building controls. Italy has a funny legislative procedure, national rules are published and applied but then each province and region has to approve and accept them, neither L’Aquila or the provinces of Chieti and Pescara had done so. Now however things have changed and that means many places sold with say the promise of planning permission being easily attainable will now be almost impossible to get or if managed the structure will be very costly to build, way beyond the normal estimated 1500 euro per sq meter.
I know that this cannot be written about in a specific sense by anyone involved in overseas property sales as its obvious you or anyone else in that field would loose the majority of advertisers so am not expecting anything to change in that sense. Indeed i believe that people are quite happily led down garden paths into loosing money and life as long as it doesn’t cost them up front so in a sense their lack of interest and research in their planned projects here are their own faults. Property sales people do not have obligation to make sure people understand these problems, although the fact is that if a registered agent here is asked a specific question for example on risk then they have to give the correct answer. But then who can check .
Anyway its quite an interesting map of centres of ex pats here and most probably throughout Italy, they are all being sold property in hot zones which are class 1 seismic , not through choice but driven by property price and bargains. Sadly there is strong evidence and predictions of another quake to come in the Sulmona valle peligna area, this is based on evidence from satellite measurements of the movement of the marrone mountain area in the majella, one side of the fault there is moving perceptibly which is creating a huge pressure build up and there are even Italian forums discussing what measures can be taken to be safe.Because of the make up of the basin in that area and the surrounding mountain walls there is a real concern over the damage. Earthquakes are measured in acceleration terms, a bit like a rippling pond and this valley will allow very free acceleration towards the mountain sides and as they hit more solid rock the ripples will be returned at an increased rate over and over again. The consequence like the L’Aquila quake is that significant damage will be done far from the epicentre.. as in the case of Navelli due to these acceleration factors through soft valleys. Estimates are there will be another significant quake in the Sulmona,L’Aquila Rieti triangle within the next ten to 15 years. Which is how earthquakes are predicted, despite the denials about the possibility, L’Aquila was predicted in the sense that there was expected to be a significant quake in the area of L’Aquila within the next ten years. This was documented in 1999. There are three main areas where they expect quakes in Italy within the next ten years, these are called areas of significant risk by the civile protection group and they most probably already have response plans to deal with them, one is the above mentioned area Rieti,Sulmona,Aquila, the other is Friuli and finally one down Calibria Sicily way... there was a big one there in the sea a while back which might be a clue as to something starting..historically there are very defined gaps between quakes in history so areas are quite easy to identify.
Anyway its there for all to see, mainly in Italian. So if you hear of any of your friends buying in any of those areas a friendly word might get them to do a bit of research first.
A final word.. we did research.. it was not easy i didn’t understand so much Italian then or even realise where to look, but the that campobasso quake made me aware and i looked before we moved here. Our choice was based on that as well as other factors regarding Teramo to do with education, pollution,climate,coast and quakes. Its the only province in Abruzzo with no class 1 rated communes, indeed if you look all the way along the Adriatic most probably the only province in Italy defined with no high risk areas. I believe this is to do with the gran sasso, something to do with the geology here caused the highest mountain to be pushed up when the earths plates were moving.. i believe its because the plate that Teramo is on is significantly more fixed than many other areas, so we have no major fault lines.
Well more than you asked for... and maybe not a lot of relevancy to your original question .. maybe it will give you some food for thought..
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