Italy, 2 Houses + 3.5Ha of land with an income, in Tuscany – SP0292

Here for sale are our two houses for the last nine years. Two very different properties, one quite new and the other very very old. They both sit within on the same plot,  separated by 75m but are also completely independent.

Half the land consists of gently sloping fields and terracing perfect for farming and livestock, the other half is wild woodland with a beautiful mountain stream with deep pools, perfect on a hot day.

We are located in the Apennine mountains a little north of Barga, close to a train station and all services and within easy reach of some of the worlds best known tourist spots with Pisa, Lucca, Cinque Terre, Florence and many others.

House 1

Total living area: Internal area of 110 m² with a pergola of 19 m²giving a total of available space of 129m²

This is a three bedroomed, two bathroomed house with plenty of living space. We built this house approx 5 years ago and have been using it for ourselves, family holidays and also for doing airbnb. The house has been designed and built from scratch, one of the features of the property is that it is completely disabled access.

The house is step free and level access all the way from the parking next to the house, through the front door, kitchen and living room and onto the main bedroom and ensuite. The main bathroom has a huge wet room shower and easy access sink.

When thinking about what we wanted in a house, energy efficiency was at the top of our list. The house has a custom built heating system that integrates solar panels, a wood burning stove and a small boiler to balance the system. All the windows are hand made by our local carpenter in locally grown chestnut with argon filled 40mm double glazed windows.

Combined with lots of insulation in roof, walls and floors this means the overall energy costs the house are extremely low. I estimate the total energy costs for heating and hot water come to approx 200€ per year.

We have not had an energy certificate done yet, but when planning the construction the intention was that the design would be aiming to be an A rated.

House 2

Total living area: Internal area of 150 m² with a cantina of 42.5 m²giving a total of available space of 192.5m²

Built somewhere around the late 1400’s as a fort and then converted into a house and then expanded on somewhere in the 1800’s into its present shape.

Similar to our other house, it is a three bedroomed two bathrooms with two adjoining reception rooms with a total space of 42 m².

The house is quite spectacular with all new wooden beams and a double layered chestnut floor with a sound and heating insulation between the two layers. The house is currently going through extensive works to replace the roof and to add 14cm of insulation and solar water panels which will bring the projected energy certificate up to a C.

Water

We have a number of water sources on the property, we have a spectacular stream that runs along our border for a distance of about 140m, it has deep pools and is a fantastic spot to go and chill on a hot day. But it is below the house and would require a pump.

We have a pretty good spring which is right on the border of our land between us and the forest. It is in a gulley below the level of the main field that we own but it is above most of the terraces best suited to growing food and so could be gravity fed into a tank. I have include a video of the spring.

In 2022 we had one of the longest dry spells that Europe has ever seen, with large areas and whole countries falling into drought. We had already had already been very dry and it looked like it was going to continue so I took this opportunity to video the spring over the coming weeks and months to see how it would perform in a drought. During the summer I took a series of videos to record the effect of the drought on the spring, I can provide links to these

When the new house was built the gutters from the roof and from the pergola are all fed into a single pipe that comes out on one of the lower terraces. This produces a lot of pure rain water and comes out above the terraces and could be collected in a tank and gravity fed to the beds below

When we were building the house there were lots of trenches dug to take waste water to the septic tank and other systems, I took the opportunity to lay irrigation water pipes all the way from the water outlet pipe in the video all the way up to the top field on our property. This allows water collected lower down tobe pumped up to the field above.My plan was to put a couple of collection tanks on the rainwater outlets of the two houses and either pump it upwards to the higher fields, or gravity feed it downwards to our lower terraces.

Our top field is about 90m x 35m and the long side runs parrallel to the gradient and would be ideal for building swales for water capture. You could use the upper field just for fruit trees in which case you just cut the swales plant the trees and the whole thing can look after itself, and I would cap off the spring and divert it into a pipe.

Income stream
As mentioned above, the property also generates an income, we currently earn around 25K per year from doing airbnb. Both my wife and myself are busy on other things so airbnb is not our priority, We usually do the peak times of the year, we only do whole weeks and only Saturday to Saturday so we can fit in with people who do the cleaning and laundry.

If someone was to take this rather more seriously then you could extend the season, do shorter bookings and get on social media to do more promotion then I would expect the income could go up to 35-40k and with maybe doing some bed and breakfast in the other house in the peak times then it could be possible to push the income to over 50K.

What happens next
We are in the process of finishing the permissions we had applied for at the beginning of covid and got severely delayed because of the lack of materials and labour, we also have bookings for the house over the peak months so nothing is going to happen very quickly. But we have left some time free in the summer for people to be able to view so if you are interested in our lovely property then drop me a line and we can talk further.