Italy is giving away over 100 castles for free – there’s only one catch
Over the years we've gathered a few tips for castle buyers, some of those links after the jump....
Here's the latest, from The Guardian, May 11:
‘You get the same sort of tax savings you get in Jersey but you get to live somewhere you actually want to live’
Villa la Tana near Florence has a separate house for its employees. ‘To
run that sort of house, you’re going to want
four or five staff.’
Photograph: Knight Frank
Luxury Tuscan estate agent Ian Heath is developing a taste for private jets. “It’s not that unusual anymore,” Heath says of hitching a ride on a billionaire’s jet to the Italian Riviera last week to give the wealthy client a tour of some of the most luxurious and expensive homes....MUCH MORE
“These guys fly around the world in their jets and helicopters,” says Heath, a senior agent at Italian estate agency Lionard. “It makes sense to use them for viewings. The problem was we still had to drive from Genoa to Portofino.” In one day, they viewed half a dozen luxury villas dotted along the Ligurian coast and castles on the hills surrounding Florence. The cheapest one they saw was on the market for €10m (£8.4m).
The client, a northern European entrepreneur who Heath declined to identity, is part of a growing influx of the global super-rich to Italy exploiting a little-known tax break that allows the world’s millionaires to pay a “flat tax” of just €100,000 no matter how much money they earn.
“There has been a huge spike in interest among the global wealthy since the tax change,” Heath says in his office overlooking a picture postcard perfect view of the Ponte Vecchio in the heart of Florence. “There was an immediate 17% increase when the law changed in 2017 and, now that they [the wealthy and their advisers] are convinced that the tax break is here to stay, we are getting 350 qualified requests a month.
“People love this. You get the same sort of tax savings you get in Jersey [and other tax havens] but you get to live somewhere you actually want to live.”
Most of the wealthy immigrants to Italy come from the US and Britain, but there have been buyers from across Europe, Russia, Japan and China.
“Why not? When you can buy one of these for the same price as a flat in Kensington or Knightsbridge,” he says firing up his laptop to show a villa with a pool hugging the coast near the pretty resort town of Portofino. “Lots of people are fed up in the UK and want to leave London. They want to feel European, they like the culture and the lifestyle. And of course the tax break.”....
And in other Italian architecture news we had:
80-Room Medieval Italian Castle To Be Sold for First Time in its HistoryBut I forgot to follow-up on how much Count Spaur zu Flavon und Valer realized on the transaction.
And the handy hints for first-time castle buyers are at the bottom of this piece, everything from authenticity in circular stair design to the aesthetics of verticality, to the usefulness of machicolations under the battlements and whether you need a license to crenellate from your liege.
As I said, very handy.
Oops, one more:
For Sale, Isle of Capri Castle First Developed by Emperor Tiberius
I did not know Tiberius was a property developer but according to Tacitus he built 12 villas on Capri where he "...took to secret debaucheries and deplorable leisures"* (Tacitus annals 4,67) He liked the place so much he ended up running (more or less) the empire from the island for the last ten years of his life. This iteration was built on the ruins of the earlier construction.—Via Moderation is 4 Monks
