Property Description

Sea-view Renovation Project In Peaceful Wooded Hills Above Cefalù

Do you love the sound of buying a home in one of Sicily’s most famous and recognisable beach towns, but not of the crowds in summer? Is it important to you to have a garden and a sea view? To have both coastline and woodland to explore? Casetta nel Bosco offers the best of both worlds.

Just ten minutes from the fabulous beach and old town of Cefalù, you would never think that you were so close to such a busy seaside community. Completely immersed in hillside woodland, this picturesque spot offers a cooling sea breeze and the shade of the green canopy, making it perfectly comfortable even in the sultry height of the Sicilian summer. If you were to prune just a few trees you would even have a view of the sea, just 1,300m away to the north.

This is going to be a renovation project, and as we will discuss later it may even be in your best interests to take down what is currently there and start anew. However, this brings it down to a price you wouldn’t usually hope to find in the area.

Like a lot of property in Sicily of this era, the house was originally built without the correct planning permission, but this has since been retrospectively granted, both for the main residence and the outhouse. This means that, as our specialist colleagues will confirm, you can be confident of no legal complications, either while you own the house or when you come to sell it in the future.

The Property

The 60m2 house faces north-west. It is built on a hillside but stands on a flattened terrace with a large patio at the rear and a small flat pathway around the front of the building. The large 15m2 shed to the side of the home is the same depth as the main structure, but it has been built of wood.

In design it resembles a cabin, with a long, very gently sloping roof and a covered front porch. It doesn’t stand out from or conflict with the nature that surrounds it in any way, rather it blends into the landscape between the trees and shrubs of the garden that surrounds it.

There are three main rooms and two smaller spaces. The front door leads you into a cosy living room of about 15m2, with a brick fireplace in one corner and a window to the front of the house. A bedroom on the other side of the building’s front is only slightly smaller, and offers the same view.

At the side is a bathroom which is big enough for a small tub (which there currently is) or a box shower, plus a suite of WC, bidet and washbasin. Next to this is a large storeroom which would be a very generous larder, a practical study or a single guest bedroom. Finally the kitchen is a smallish room which nonetheless has enough space for everything you’ll need, including perhaps a breakfast bar or small dining table.

The floors and skirting boards are tiled throughout. The windows are old, with external wooden shutters. Casetta nel Bosco is connected to the municipal electricity supply, and there is a 14,000 litre water cistern in reinforced concrete.

The land outside is very impressive – the 1,340m2 garden is equivalent in size to five tennis courts. You’ll find a variety of trees including lots of beautiful cork oak trees. An unpaved driveway leads to a large flat parking space at the side of the house.

Surroundings

The house is set 25m back from a very quiet road which makes its way through the hills above the little hamlet of Sant’Ambrogio. Although only just over a kilometre from the waters of the Tyrrhenian, we are already 300m above sea level, with views as good as you would expect after such a steep climb.

The district is populated by a friendly community, mostly affluent working professionals who have businesses in Cefalù or the surrounding towns. Many have young families and we can even personally introduce you to some of your new neighbours – if you’re worried we might be overselling it, two of our team bought a house up here themselves last year!

You’ll find a nice pebble beach directly below you at the bottom of the hill, reachable in just a few minutes by car. It has the advantage of being much less crowded in the summer months than the sandy strip at Cefalù.

Sant’Ambrogio is the nearest village, big enough to offer a couple of bars and restaurants, and a small supermarket. That;’s five minutes away, though you’re only 12 by car from Cefalù, where you’ll find a wider variety of shops, some fabulous restaurants and of course that famous seafront. Don’t miss our full guide to Cefalù, which explains why these hills are in many ways the perfect spot to buy property exactly like this charming sea-view renovation project.

The nearest airport is 80 minutes away in Sicily’s capital city, Palermo.

Potential

As you’ll see from our photos and video, there is an issue with a section of the foundations at the front of the building. The front wall has slipped forwards, and this has caused further cracking at the back of the building, seen in the kitchen. This will obviously need pressing attention.

While strengthening the front wall and roof, and repairing the cracks at the back, may be an option, we recommend demolishing and rebuilding the property. You would only need to apply for a building permit to proceed with the demolition and reconstruction, as long as the new structure remains within the original footprint and does not exceed its dimensions.

Significantly, the fact that the shed has been legitimately authorised means that you could also integrate that into the design of the new build, giving yourself a larger, two bedroom home. While it is never easy to estimate costs for a building project on this scale without knowing your tastes and needs, we would suggest that between €120,000 and €160,000 would be needed to achieve this. However, the end result could be spectacular – a completely new villa in a prestige location.

If the prospect of doing all this overseas is intimidating, we can help! We don’t just sell houses, we want to make sure they feel like real homes, and to that end we offer project management services designed to offer you the security of a local presence in every step of your journey, from recruitment and negotiations to site supervision and quality control. We’re very proud of some of the testimonials we have received for this work, and would love to talk through every way in which we can make your sea-view renovation project a complete success.

There is a well on the property, giving it an autonomous water supply, which is really valuable. This has been abandoned for some time and will need to be professionally surveyed, and possibly even re-drilled. This will cost around €9,000 including a new pump and pipes, plus the geological consultancy. A large reinforced concrete cistern holds 14,000 litres of clean water, although a leak will need to be fixed.