Property Description

Roomy Ground Floor Apartment, a Perfect Retirement Property in Sicily’s Most Welcoming Fishing Village; Huge Outdoor Spaces and Five Minutes from the Sea

This practical ground floor apartment is just moments from the beach. It offers two bedrooms, a large kitchen-living room and a surprising amount of room outdoors. Recently renovated, it is sold unfurnished but in good condition, with no pressing need for further investment.

Found twenty minutes to the east of the region’s vibrant capital, Palermo, in the charming and typically Sicilian fishing village of Porticello, the little home is convenient for all amenities, including the community’s lovely marina and a pair of beaches. The drone shot at the start of our virtual tour illustrates just how fabulously close it is to the sea.

It would be an ideal chance to buy a retirement property in Sicily, as it is completely step-free, with the potential to make the patio outside feel much more like a shady garden. Everything shown in that tour is private and part of the purchase, including the 50m2 of covered veranda and the side and rear courtyards. It sleeps four in comfort, and honestly, if you have children and grandchildren coming to visit the living room is so big that adding a sofa bed for them would be no inconvenience at all. We love the location and the garden, and think Casa Michele is a bargain at this asking price.

The Property

The building is a very typical construction for the later part of the twentieth century in Sicily. Clean plastered walls give neat square lines which are accentuated by a wraparound balcony. It’s three stories high, and shared with other families, but unlike a classic terraced palazzo apartment Casa Michele has a direct private entrance. The street is wide and quiet, with plenty of free parking available, but the double gate also allows you to keep vehicles off the street underneath the veranda.

This deep covered area is separated from the street by a low wall and iron railings – climbing plants could easily be grown up these if you’d like a greater degree of privacy. A three metre-wide passageway runs down the side of the house past a narrow flowerbed with three little trees, and wraps around at the back where it is less overlooked. In total you have 130m2 of outdoor space, including the veranda. For a townhouse like this in Sicily, that’s almost unheard of and offers real potential if you can find a good way to take advantage of it.

The apartment has been designed for family life, and this is reflected in the distribution of spaces: more has been given to the very big living room (over 30m2) than both of the bedrooms combined. A characterful glazed front door leads you into this long open space, the full depth of the property and lit by a window on the west side as well as the door to the south. A kitchen will need to be fitted, but at once end you will find all of the necessary connections to add this.

The bedrooms are similar but not quite identical in size, and the smaller one compensates for its lack of size by enjoying a direct access to the outdoor space at the back of the property through another glazed door. The bathroom has a shower and tray, although currently no cubicle. Finally, at the far end of the corridor which leads to all of these rooms is a helpful storeroom about 2 ½ metres deep.

The electrical and plumbing systems and bathrooms have been redone recently and are working perfectly. The frames of the windows and doors are wooden, both inside and outside. They aren’t double glazed, but they are good quality and in good condition. Given the climate it doesn’t seem urgent to replace them for now.

Casa Michele is connected to the municipal water supply, and shares the use of a large water cistern with three other families. The water bill is in the name of the owner of the entire building, and is divided evenly between the four units. This comes to approximately €20 per month. The electrical connections are all in place – you will only need to reactivate the meter.

All of the relevant documentation is in order from a documentary point of view and has a certificate of habitability.

Surroundings

A perfect little seafront village on a beautiful headland filled with history and natural beauty, we are in love with Porticello. If that sounds like standard realtor sales-speak, you should know that Casa Michele is a two minute walk from one of our two offices!

It’s a traditional place, where people living by the sea in every sense – a great fish market in the mornings is a treat for those who love to cook the freshest seafood. It’s convenient for the small city of Bagheria and the much larger Palermo, but manages to feel villagey and informal. Mass tourism is fabulously absent, though some families from Palermo have summer homes along this stretch of coast. The marina is charming, and if you don’t want to cook you can always find a good dinner here. Two beautiful beaches are barely more than five minutes’ stroll from your front door.

A kilometre up the road is Santa Flavia, a slightly larger community, with bigger shops and a train station which will take your into central Palermo in twenty minutes. Alternatively, head east towards Messina and stop off for the afternoon at magical Cefalù or the villages of the Madonie mountains.

Both Porticello and Santa Flavia are overlooked by the Solunto archaeological site, which sits atop a nearby hill. Further to the west this develops into the nature reserve of Monte Catalfano. All around the peninsula all kinds of great coves and bays are waiting to be discovered on foot, by bike or ideally in a small boat.

The nearest airport is Palermo, 45 minutes away by car.

Potential

As a seaside getaway or a retirement property in Sicily Casa Michele is perfect. No further restoration work is needed, only the purchase of furniture and a kitchen, but there are small tweaks that would make the place feel more like home. We would swap some of the concrete in the large rear courtyard to create a small garden, and maybe even try to add an outdoor shower – perfect for washing the sand off on your way back from the beach.

There are no radiators or boiler, so the simplest way to add a heating solution would be to add a few air conditioning units that produce hot as well as cool air. The house is connected to a gas pipeline, so you could install central heating but it would be cheaper and easier to stay with electric heating. If you prefer gas hobs in the kitchen it would be easy to connect your oven to a gas cylinder. You will need to replace the water heater, which is housed in the little storeroom on the veranda, but this can be done cheaply for about €200.

Beyond this, the only things you will need to worry about are the logistics of moving to Sicily and setting up your residence here. The first piece of good news is that you’ll love the tax breaks on offer to overseas buyers who make Sicily their home. The second is that our after-sale Welcome to Sicily service is on offer to take care of all the bureaucracy and admin work before you even arrive. Ask us about this popular and affordable package any time you’d like to know more.