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A Renovated Villa With a Rooftop Pool
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Ingrid Pullar for The New York Times
By Roxana Popescu
A RENOVATED VILLA WITH A ROOFTOP POOL
1.5 MILLION EUROS (ABOUT $1.8 MILLION)
This traditional Moroccan-style villa in Tangier has five bedrooms and three floors and was built in 1930. It was renovated and decorated in 2014 and 2015 by the seller, Nicolo Castellini Baldissera, an interior designer.
Past the front gates, there is a verdant courtyard with a parking space. The house, which is free-standing on three sides and 6,028 square feet, is at the back of the courtyard. One side of the structure shares walls with a neighboring property. At the east side of the house is a studio apartment with a separate entrance; it includes a kitchenette and bathroom.
The home’s entrance hall has a half-bath, and the building’s elevator is on the right. To the left is a dining room with a fireplace and a long veranda that leads to a back garden. The garden has a fountain designed by Mr. Castellini Baldissera and lined with 18th- and 19th-century tiles. The kitchen and pantry are in the center of the house, and the laundry room and a staff bedroom with an en-suite bath are at the back.
One staircase is near the elevator; a second, at the back of the house, is outside. The second floor has a grand, partially divided drawing room, currently arranged for entertaining, with a terrace overlooking the back garden and a half-bath near the elevator. There are also two en-suite bedrooms. The third floor has three en-suite bedrooms, including the master suite, which has peaco*ck blue walls, a fireplace, a walk-in closet and a bathroom with a bathtub and a steam shower.
The roof has a pool; hammam; half-bath; a simple, secondary kitchen; and an elevated sun deck with 360-degree views of Tangier and, across the Strait of Gibraltar, the coast of Spain.
The house, named Villa Nikka, sits on a 4,090-square-foot lot and is in the Marshan neighborhood, near the Forbes Museum of Tangier, and a five-mininute walk to the casbah, said Maggie Deane, a Tangier-based agent with Kensington Luxury Properties, the affiliate for Christie’s International Real Estate in Morocco, which has the listing. Within a minute on foot there are multiple barber shops and small markets with essentials, Mr. Castellini Baldissera said. Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport is about eight miles away.
MARKET OVERVIEW
Residential housing prices in Morocco rose 4 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2017, according to the most recent available data from the Bank Al-Maghrib and the National Land Registry Office. This growth contrasts the trend of the previous three years, during which residential prices either fell or remained almost unchanged over the same yearly period.
The number of residential transactions nationwide fell 22 percent between the third quarter of 2016 and the third quarter of 2017, the report also stated.
Maud Faujas, the director of the Marrakesh office of Emile Garcin, an international luxury real estate agency, said that for luxury properties, prices are 20 to 30 percent lower than they were in 2008, when they peaked before the global financial crisis. She defined luxury properties as those priced at 1 million euros and above in Marrakesh and 500,000 euros and above in Tangier.
Starting in 2014, foreign luxury buyers began returning to Marrakesh, attracted by lower prices, and the number of yearly luxury sales there has been increasing since 2012, according to her agency’s data, Ms. Faujas said. Luxury prices there are stable, she said, and the volume of luxury sales increased in 2016 and continued to be robust in 2017.
She also said that demand has risen recently in Essaouira and Tangier as well.
Alex Peto, a partner of Kensington Luxury Properties, said there has been more interest in luxury real estate in Tangier and in other cities since 2016, but the number of sales started picking up only in 2017. He said this is because of increased confidence from foreigners in Morocco’s stability.
“I think as the years tick by and Morocco remains a safe country, people are starting to realize that it’s not going to go up in smoke,” he said.
Morocco’s real estate market had been hit by “a bit of a double whammy,” Mr. Peto said: hesitation from foreign investors because they feared instability in neighboring Muslim countries would spill over into Morocco, and before that, the global financial crisis.
Tangier, a city with a population of about one million that is an hour’s ferry ride from Spain, was an ancient trading post and later a destination for artists including Tennessee Williams, Eugène Delacroix, Henri Matisse and William S. Burroughs.
Ms. Deane said prices for luxury properties in Tangier range from 800,000 euros to 20 million euros (about $960,000 to $24 million). “Very nice” properties are available for far less: A house in the casbah in need of work could cost 100,000 to 200,000 euros (or about $120,000 to $240,000), she said. Ms. Faujas said a nice riad, or traditional style home, in Marrakesh or Tangier can cost 200,000 to 300,000 euros ($240,000 to $360,000), while the majority of luxury properties in Tangier cost 500,000 to 1 million euros ($600,000 to $1.2 million).
All three agents said prices in Tangier vary widely based on a property’s age, condition, location and size, making it challenging to calculate how much real estate costs per square foot.
WHO BUYS IN TANGIER
Tangier, like other Moroccan cities including Marrakesh, has a diverse international real estate clientele, Mr. Peto said. Traditionally, it has attracted buyers from Spain because of its proximity, he added. Across the country, buyers have recently come from France, Britain, India, Italy, the United States, Scandinavia and the Middle East, he said. About 70 to 80 percent of luxury buyers in Morocco are from abroad, agents said.
BUYING BASICS
Foreigners can buy most property in Morocco without restrictions; agricultural land is an exception, said Bouchra Belouchi, a managing partner with the Belouchi and Fassi-Fihri Law Firm, based in Casablanca.
Real estate transactions are done in Moroccan dirhams, though properties are sometimes listed in euros, Ms. Belouchi said. She urged prospective buyers to ask their notary to check properties for outstanding liens.
WEBSITES
Morocco tourism: muchmorocco.com
Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies: legation.org
LANGUAGES AND CURRENCY
Arabic: Moroccan dirham ($1 = 9.25 dirhams) and euro (1 euro = $1.20)
TAXES AND FEES
Annual property taxes are approximately 560 euros (about $675), Mr. Castellini Baldissera said.
Reda Boulmane, a notary in Marrakesh, said closing costs paid by the buyer include a notary’s fee of 1 percent of the purchase price and a 10 percent value-added tax on the notary’s fee; a registration fee of 4 to 9 percent of the purchase price; land registry fees that total around 1.5 percent of the purchase price; half of the real estate agent’s commission (for the buyer, typically 2.5 percent of the purchase price); and several hundred dollars in stamps and certificate fees.
CONTACT
Alex Peto, Kensington Luxury Properties, 011-212-676-887-376; kensingtonmorocco.com
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