• 17 Rooms

• 0 Bathroom

• 262 m²

• Ground floor

Villa Antonella – Three-unit Residence Near Sciacca with Sea Views, Productive Olive Grove and Full Solar Power in the Countryside of Maragani

Villa Antonella is a three-unit residence near Sciacca, just  350 metres from the sea in the coastal countryside district of Maragani. Around 200 square metres of living space are divided between two apartments in the red-fronted main villa and a separate cottage. Between them, a large outdoor kitchen and covered veranda serve all three of them, and the fenced grounds of about 1,700 square metres include a productive olive grove.

This layout opens up several ways to use the property. It would work well for an extended family, or a group of friends who want to share a place in the sun but keep their own private spaces. It is equally well suited to an investment in holiday letting. The three units and shared outdoor spaces form a ready-made base for an entry into the tourist trade.

Maragani is a stretch of open farmland and Mediterranean pasture that beautifully showcases the traditional character of south-western Sicily. There is a quiet beach below the property, and the historic port town of Sciacca is a short drive along the coast.

Some serious investment has already been made in the property, with solar power and generous water storage already in place. Everything you see in our photographs, including the fixtures and furnishings, is included in the sale, making all three homes usable from the very start. If you plan to test the tourist market, the property could even start earning for you while you plan any improvements.

The Property

The main villa is a single-storey building with a flat roof and a red facade that makes it instantly recognisable. Originally one home, it has been divided into two fully independent apartments, each with its own entrance and small outdoor spaces reached directly from the rooms. Both follow the same plan: a kitchen-diner with living area of about 16 square metres, two bedrooms of between nine and eleven square metres, a bathroom, a hallway and a veranda or terrace. The windows are double glazed with external shutters, mosquito screens let you leave them open on summer evenings without frustration and several rooms have air conditioning. Each apartment heats its water with its own gas boiler.

Across the courtyard, the second house is older and typically rural in style, with a white facade, a pitched roof in terracotta tiles and a small front porch. Inside there is an open-plan kitchen and living room, a bedroom and a bathroom, with hot water from a solar thermal system with a 300-litre tank. In position and size it is a natural guest annexe.

The building between the two homes, mentioned above, measures around 32 square metres. It has been fitted out as a large communal kitchen with its own bathroom. In front of it stands a spacious veranda under a timber frame and shade sails. This is where all three households can come together for lunches and dinners in the open air.

The courtyard between the buildings is mostly paved, which keeps it practical and gives plenty of secure off-street parking. A tall palm, an ornamental fountain and flower beds soften the hard surfaces, and the olive grove along one side is the greenest and most private part of the plot. There is also a garage of about 20 square metres at a lower level, with its own access from outside, and the whole property is fenced.

The solar power mentioned above comes from a 6 kW photovoltaic system with around 15 kWh of battery storage, supplying all three homes. Mains water is backed by two cisterns, one of roughly 12 cubic metres under the main veranda and another of 10 cubic metres in the grounds, about 22,000 litres in all. For drainage, the apartments share an Imhoff tank and the annexe uses a cesspit. 

Surroundings

Villa Antonella sits atop  a slight rise in contrada Maragani, seven kilometres west of central Sciacca. Its neighbours are large agricultural plots, olive groves and Mediterranean meadows, with few houses in view. The road from town is asphalted and in excellent condition, with only the last few hundred metres on a flat, well-kept private lane shared by five properties, closed by an automatic gate, maintained at a condominium cost of around €20 a month.

The sea fills a good part of the horizon, although a modern villa built directly in front does unfortunately block part of the view from the front courtyard. The three-unit residence near Sciacca could definitely be marketed to tourists as 'sea-view', however. A local lane leads down to the broad beach below, and the shoreline keeps small beaches, coves and natural stretches of coast, calmer in summer than the busier resorts.

The drive into Sciacca takes ten to fifteen minutes, and the town has supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, a hospital and year-round services. It is a historic fishing port with a medieval and Arabic old town, a tradition of artistic ceramics, thermal springs known since Greek times and a Carnevale that ranks among the most famous in Sicily. Heading east along the Costa del Mito you pass Eraclea Minoa, the Torre Salsa nature reserve and the Scala dei Turchi on the way to Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, an hour and a quarter away, while the archaeological park of Selinunte is under half an hour to the west. The airports of Palermo, the island's bustling capital, and Trapani in the far west are both around ninety minutes away, and a car is essential for daily life.

Potential

The first option for this versatile three-unit residence near Sciacca would be to keep everything more or less as it is and rent out the holiday homes individually. Our sister company Solemar Sicilia, noted vacation property experts, can advise you on marketing and best practices. There is a favourable tax picture for business owners in Sicily.

Even with this route there would still be some investment required. The kitchen building is shown on the official plans as storage space, and this would need to be changed. We can help you find a local lawyer for that. Other priorities are a unified drainage system, the boundary walls and the facades, none of which should pose a problem for local professionals. 

A more ambitious approach would reunite the main villa. The floor plans identify the partition wall introduced when the building was split, and its removal, once checked and permitted, would recreate a single home with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two kitchen-diners to reorganise. A seaward room could become a panoramic living room with larger openings, the white house stays a guest annexe and the central kitchen building could be renewed as a summer kitchen or removed to open the courtyard to the water. A swimming pool could follow in the olive grove, subject to consent, alongside new construction and landscaping.

A full transformation of this kind, with the villa reunited, a pool added and the garden redesigned, is unlikely to cost less than €100,000, and a firm figure needs a technical survey and an itemised costing. 

Either way, our project management service can organise and oversee the work, and we are the only agency in Sicily to offer it across all our properties. For buyers making this their main home, the same team runs our Welcome to Sicily relocation service