Want a villa in Tuscany, but don't fancy the hassle of restoring and maintaining it? A development offers shares in five-star homes from €360,000, writes Frances O'Rourke
Mmm . . . time for breakfast, a pre-breakfast swim in your pool - or another 40 winks in the bedroom, all exposed brick walls, roof beams, shuttered windows - and a throne-like bed with a giant coil-sprung ultra-comfortable American mattress?
This is life in a villa at Castello di Casole, a few hours' drive from the airport at Pisa, close to Siena in the heart of Tuscany's hill villages. To buy one of the five-star villas on the 4,200-acre estate could cost €7.75 million - but you can enjoy time there for a fraction of the cost.
To be specific, you can buy a one-tenth share of a property at Castello, a fractional ownership resort developed by an American group called Timbers, which has successfully developed this holiday home model in the US over the past 10 years.
No, not timeshare, fractional ownership, explains Gary Moore of Timbers, the project director of Castello. The difference is that in fractional ownership you buy your tenth of the property freehold and are free - to sell it on, to will it to your children, indeed, to flip it (two people who each bought more than one interest at Castello have already done so, selling their one-tenth shares for more than they paid, once their villas were complete.)
Timbers built its first fractional ownership development in the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, aiming properties at cash-rich, time-poor Americans who want a holiday home but who don't realistically have much time to spend in it.
Fractional purchase entitles the buyer to a minimum of four weeks a year in their villa, and possibly more, if another owner decides not to use all their weeks. Some owners buy more than one share, entitling them to more weeks. (You can, if you want, rent out two of your weeks.)
The price of a share varies with the cost of the property, ranging from €360,000 to €550,000. You will most likely have to have enough cash to buy - many lenders won't finance fractional property purchase. Service charges will cost an additional €8,000 to €12,000 a year, which covers taxes, insurance, general maintenance and daily housekeeping. For your money you get a part-share of the kind of holiday home it would cost megabucks to buy - or to restore, if you are one of those hardy souls who likes the idea of buying an old farmhouse and doing it up yourself.
Castello di Casole is a huge estate, once owned by a noble family from Siena, and in the 1950s and 1960s by Italian film director Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, Death in Venice), who apparently housed his lovers in the casali (farmhouses) dotted around Castello. Timbers bought the estate three years ago as its first venture into Europe.
It has planned Castello as a development of just 26 villas and seven townhouses, with a five-star boutique spa hotel with 41 suites at its heart. Fractional shares in the three-bed, three-and-a-half bathroom "villettas" or townhouses (called San Antonio) being built close to the hotel cost from €345,000. Shares in the four-bed, four-and-a-half bathroom 750sq m (8,000sq ft)-plus villas cost from €525,000. So far, nine of the properties have already been built, and another 10 are being built or restored.
About half of all the properties will be restored farmhouses, half "reconstructions", i.e, newbuilds built in exactly the same rustic style as the originals.
Each has a pool of its own, kitchens with Carrara-marble sinks, open stone fireplaces, wood-burning stoves, and of course those beautiful Italian bathrooms with huge baths and giant showers.
All are furnished individually, with a mix of locally-bought antiques and smart modern furniture.
It's difficult to tell the restored villas from the all-new: super-strict Italian planning laws ensure that authentic style - exposed beams, terracotta roofs, beamed ceilings - has been maintained. The combination of rustic style and ultra-modern comfort is winning.
Every effort is made to make it feel like it's your home: storage is provided for your pictures, sports equipment, bikes, whatever you want to have in your villa. Before you arrive, staff will set everything out just as you left it.
A concierge service provides daily housekeeping, can order groceries, arrange cooking and language classes, sightseeing tours, children's activities, even private chefs to make dinner in your villa (for an extra cost of course).
The 4,200-acre estate is being conserved as a nature preserve, and has already won several conservation awards in Italy, Gary Moore proudly tells us as we bounce around the paths that snake through the estate in his car. On cue, a hare steps shyly into the headlights, then scampers away. By day, we spot deer and pheasant strolling across the road.
Each villa sits in splendid isolation surrounded by acres of empty countryside, giving people who want to get away from it all exactly that. It's perfect for walking or cycling, but you would almost certainly want a car.
Beautiful Tuscan hill villages - cobbled, walled places like Casole d'Elsa, Mensano, Radicondoli, and 18 miles away, the best-known of all, San Gimignano - are a short drive away.
By 2009, the castello at the heart of the estate will have been restored as a five-star boutique hotel, with restaurants and of course, a spa.
The sun beams down as we explore the ruins where the hotel is being built: more than anything else, this vividly conjures images of the kind of country estate it once was.
Marina Palmiero, the Italian-American salesperson of Castello ("ownership representative" in American corporate speak), outlines Timbers' further plans as she shows us around: a vintners' club is to be started, where owners harvest the estates grapes and bottle their own wine.
It will be based in Cetena, currently a guest-house on the estate where prospective buyers can stay if they want to consider buying. (It costs €175 a night, refundable if you purchase.)
Marina Palmiero can be contacted at: www.castellodicasole.com
00 39 0577 967511
