See the photos

Casa Maria – Porticello

€ 220.000

Santa Flavia - 90017 - Via G. D'Annunzio, 3-5

#86447221

10 Rooms
3 Bathroom
152 m²

A Huge Sea-view Roof Terrace is the Highlight of this two-bedroom Family home in Porticello, Perfect for Access to Palermo and Minutes from the Beach

With two bedrooms and two bathrooms, Casa Maria is a very generously sized 135m2 apartment with a 100m2 garage and enormous sea-view roof terrace.

As you'll see from our virtual tour, this typically Sicilian family home in Porticello - a charming fishing village and home to one of our offices - is partially underground but with natural light in all rooms. Some have full-sized windows, others have roof level ones, making the living space really bright for a basement. It also comes with the shared use of a small garden and the exclusive use of the terrace, which is an obvious highlight.

The interiors are perfect – no more work needs to be done at all. It's a very comfortable and classily realised property with great transport links. A train station is nearly opposite and the closest sandy beach is only 500 metres away, a ten minute walk.

The Property

You can enter Casa Maria via two entrances on via Gabriele d'Anunzio. Vehicles can take the sloping driveway, which gives you a completely private entrance to your front door through the garage. This is certainly the most convenient route home. Pedestrians do also have the option of a smaller gate and a walk down well-kept footpath along the side of the house, which lead to a shared front door. Once inside, beautifully laid marble stairs with a wrought iron handrail lead down to your apartment.

The living space begins with a large reception room giving you 25m2 of space in which to welcome guests or relax, with a direct access to every other room in the property. Natural light comes directly from a high window and also through the translucent glass brick wall from the kitchen.

Passing through this open space you come to the two bedrooms, of 16m2 and 19m2 respectively. They both have good-sized windows which let in a good amount of natural light for a property on this level. The master has its own en-suite bathroom with a box shower and full-wall tiling.

On the other side of reception area, a corridor leads you past a storeroom to the 30m2 kitchen-diner. This huge room has been fitted with wooden cupboards, worktop and mount for an oven, all of which will remain in the property after the sale. There is a large double sink, extractor fan and a walk-in larder. Needless to say, there is all the space you need for a dining table and chairs for warm and connected family mealtimes. More formal hospitality can be moved across the corridor to the 19m2 dining room, which has a large window and an interesting feature wall in narrow brick effect. Alternatively this would make a lovely living room for family use, freeing up the entrance space for some other use.

The family bathroom is spacious, in an elegant bone marble tile and with a walk-in shower. A high window allows for natural ventilation. Both this and the en-suite will be left with all fittings as seen in our virtual tour and photography.

Polished marble floors throughout and smart medium-tone wooden trim including interesting round-topped internal doors create a unified aesthetic and a glossy style. Tall ceilings at nearly four metres maintain a spacious, airy feeling even underground. Unobtrusive lighting gives great coverage throughout.

Across the landing at the bottom of the building's staircase is, the internal entrance to the garage. This huge space has ceramic floor tiles and smooth plaster walls. There is natural light from some ceiling-level windows as well as from the main doors at the front. These are automatic and connected to the lighting system for ease of entry when you get home by car. There is a utility room with a box shower and a washing machine, as well as a storeroom for tools and, obviously, a lot of available work space. This kitchen units mounted along one wall are not included in the sale.

The spectacular sunny roof terrace is reached up the main stairs, past the door to the upper flat. It measures 200m2, and to reiterate, all of this is for the exclusive use of this basement apartment, Casa Maria. The flooring out here will be completely replaced before the sale.

On the front side there is a lovely view of the countryside and, from one corner, the sea. A pergola on a wooden frame supports solar panels, and offers shade to the outdoor kitchen. The units won't stay with the house, but all the plumbing, drainage and electricity is in place to replace it very affordably. We can't claim that it's the quietest corner of the island, as the back side overlooks a marble factory, but the noise isn't deafening, just there in the background. It doesn't run during a three hour lunch break, into the evening or on holidays. The nearby SS113 road and railway line, while great transport links, obviously bring a certain soundtrack, too, but again, nothing at all deafening.

The photovoltaic system delivers 6 kW with a 10 kW storage battery, meaning that the power generated on long sunny days will never be wasted. Radiators throughout the indoor area are heated by a condensing boiler and there's air conditioning in the kitchen and two bedrooms. This climate control is conserved by a 5cm thick thermal insulation and electric outer shutters on the larger windows. The smaller ones, harder to reach, open and close electronically. Water comes from the municipal main, with the security of a 5,000-litre backup tank in the garage.

The house is fully compliant with building regulations, including the fixed canopy on the terrace.

Surroundings

The only other flat in the building is owned by the brother of Casa Maria's vendor. This is a great advantage as you will have a certain continuity and the guarantee of a good neighbour. He and his wife both work and don't have any children, so you won't have any issues with privacy or noise, just a friendly presence when you need it.

Although the road 40 metres to the west is a moderately busy one, the actual street on which Casa Maria stands is calm street, very leafy and without much traffic. Unusually for Sicily most of the houses have little front gardens and off-street parking.

The location is perfect for getting around by car but also public transport, with Santa Flavia train station just a five minute walk. You can reach central Palermo in under half an hour either way, and Cefalù in about 40. The airport is 45 minutes if you drive it, but you can also take a direct train there in the summer months, and reach it with only one change in low season. More locally, the little high street of Santa Flavia has grocery stores, bars, a bakery and a butcher's.

As well as the beach around the corner, you can walk to the lovely marina of Porticello in ten minutes. You'll find a fantastic fish market every morning, a recently rejuvenated seafront... and one of the offices of Sicily's number one international real estate agency!

We painted a full picture of life in Porticello and the peninsula on which it stands in our complete guide to the Mongerbino coastline.

Potential

The family home in Porticello is beautifully presented and you would only need to budget for furnishing it and moving in. The proximity to the beach, ample space and photogenic terrace means that it would have some potential as a rental investment, but we see it as a perfect for a full-time relocation to Sicily.

If you want a little more sleeping capacity, it would be easy to use what is now the dining room (shown on the plans as a living room) as a third bedroom, considering that the kitchen is very spacious and the entrance has plenty of living space.

In our opinion, the pergola installed for the panels could either be replaced, or perhaps enclosed by some side panels to create a sun room and give you some extra living space. The connections are there to add a bathroom, and then you could put up a canopy over some of the remaining terrace while still having all kinds of room to spare. The durable quality of the kitchen infrastructure means that this would be affordable on a modest budget. You could even add a dishwasher, and the kitchen can be connected for gas without needing to rely on portable cylinders.

All the wiring is in place for a burglar alarm system, if you want to install one.