Salt air reaches you before the view does. You step out of the car in Villa Margi, and the Mediterranean is already announcing itself, close enough that you find yourself walking toward it before you have decided to.
The water sits about a hundred meters from this front door. Not a hundred meters the way a listing measures it, but a hundred meters the way you actually walk it, down a narrow street, past the bar on the corner, onto the sand. In the summer you would hear music from the lido (beach club) drifting up the street well past midnight, and in October you would still be swimming.
Now the honest part. This is not a pretty house. It is the plainest building on a street of newer ones, and that is precisely the reason we are standing here.
The Ugliest House on the Best Street
There is an old rule in property that we have repeated to buyers for thirty years. Buy the worst house in the best neighborhood, never the reverse. Villa Margi handed us a textbook example of it.
The buildings on either side are about the same age, roughly sixty years old, and most of them already operate as holiday homes or summer rentals. The income potential here is not a projection. It is what the neighbors are already doing.
Getting to a number took some doing. Pietro and his wife Maria sat at their kitchen table and would not move below eighty thousand, so after twenty minutes we thanked them and left. Three days later the phone rang and the answer was sixty.
Three Small Apartments and the Walls That Are Not Holding Anything Up
The ground floor is currently divided into three narrow one bedroom apartments, each with its own street entrance. Walk into the first one and you are in a modest soggiorno (living room) with a second small room behind it.
Look up in the corner and you will see what makes this whole plan work. The load is carried by reinforced concrete columns and beams, not by the thin brick partitions between the rooms. Those partitions can come out.
Do that across the width of the ground floor and three cramped studios become one apartment of forty five square meters (about 485 square feet) or better. There is even a doorway between two of them that was framed for exactly this purpose and then closed up.
The Balconies Somebody Already Turned Into Rooms
Along the back of each apartment you will notice the wall thickness change. That thicker line was the original exterior wall of the building.
The balconies beyond it were legally enclosed years ago, with permits, which quietly added living space to all three units. You can leave them closed and gain the floor area, or open them back up. We would leave them, because the better view is coming from above.
Behind the building there is an alley that takes you straight down to the beach. Two ways in and out, one facing the street and the bar, one facing the water.
The Attic That Is Really Another Floor
A solid set of reinforced concrete stairs takes you up to what is currently attic space. The metal roof over it has to come down, and that is not a problem so much as an opportunity.
Raising the roof here is permitted, which gives you three meter (about ten foot) ceilings across the entire upper floor. That is another full habitable level of more than 120 square meters (about 1,292 square feet), and once the roof lifts, the enclosed side can take windows along its whole length.
We walked all of this with Nino, a geometra (surveyor), and spent a couple of hours going through the paperwork and the plans before filming. What is written here is what he confirmed can legally be done, not what we would like to be true.
The Roof Terrace and Its Wide Blue Horizon
Stand at the upper floor window as it is today and the sea is already there, over the rooftops. Go one level higher and you clear the neighboring buildings entirely.
A roof terrace is permitted here, and you are allowed to cover up to half of its surface. Shade on one side, open sky on the other, and the Mediterranean in front of you the whole time.
That is the part of this property that no renovation budget can create somewhere else. The Villa Margi coastline is what you are actually buying.
What This Place Could Earn While You Are Not Here
One option is the simplest one. Restore the three ground floor studios close to their current layout, one bathroom each, minimal spend.
In summer each of those rents for at least a thousand a week in this village, and we have confirmed that with the people already doing it. The upper floor then becomes your own two or three bedroom apartment with the terrace on top.
Come in spring and autumn when the water is still warm and the village is quiet. Let it pay for itself through July and August, when Villa Margi turns into somewhere very different.
Being Straight About the Summer Noise
We are not going to sell you a tranquil seaside retreat and let you discover otherwise in August. Villa Margi is lively in the warm months, with bars, restaurants and live music that runs late.
We can hear it from our own villa some nights. For most of the year it is genuinely quiet, and the swimming season stretches from spring well into October.
If that sounds like the wrong fit, we have quieter towns a few minutes inland. If it sounds like the right one, this is about as close to the water as you will get at this number.
Property Highlights of Casa Pietro
- Over 120 square meters (about 1,292 square feet) of floorspace per level, across two levels
- Ground floor currently laid out as three separate one bedroom apartments, each with its own entrance
- Interior partitions are non structural, so the ground floor can be opened into one large apartment without major work
- Upper floor attic is legally convertible into full living space, with the roof raised for three meter ceilings
- Partially covered roof terrace permitted, up to fifty percent of the surface area
- Sea views from the upper floor and across the rooftops from the terrace
- About 100 meters from the water’s edge, with a back alley leading directly to the beach
- Municipal water and sewer already connected
- Balconies legally enclosed years ago under permit, adding floor area to all three units
- Surrounded by newer buildings already operating as holiday homes and rentals
- Villa Margi is a coastal satellite of Santo Stefano di Camastra, minutes from full services
- Walk through the whole property with us
- Featured in Episode 86
- Asking price: €60,000
Please note: our property tours stay online long after filming, and homes like this tend to sell quickly, so this one may no longer be available. If it has already sold, we can still help you find something similar. Tell us your dream, and we’ll help make it real.
A Plain Building in a Rare Position
Nobody is going to fall in love with this house from the street. That is the whole point, and it is why the number is what it is.
What you cannot buy anywhere else on this coast at sixty thousand is the walk. Out the back, down the alley, onto the sand, in under two minutes.
Everything else here is work you can plan, budget and permit. The location is the only part that was never for sale twice.
If a project like this is where your head has been going, read how another buyer got from a first email to a set of keys.
