PORTUGAL:Deep in Portugal's Douro Valley, a UNESCO Heritage woodland park, a luxury spa resort has been built.
TWENTY-ONE UPMARKET sale and leaseback villas costing from €542,000 to €1.2 million are being offered for sale in a luxury spa resort in northern Portugal.
The resort - 142km away from Porto, Portugal's second largest city and home to Jose Mourinho's 2004 Champions League Final winners Porto - is by the Douro river in the Douro Valley, a well-known wine producing region. The valley, with its eight acres of protected woodland, is worlds apart from our usual idea of Portuguese resorts, all sun, sea and golf on the Algarve. Indeed, the word golf is barely mentioned in the information about Aquapura, although there are golf courses nearby.
On the other hand, if you are either a wine lover/gourmand and/or a fan of spa treatments (the publicity material mentions thermal suites, herbal baths, panoramic saunas and the like), you could be tempted.
The properties are for sale through Cushman & Wakefield Residential in the UK.
Aquapura Douro Valley is a resort with a 50-room hotel, 21 villas, spa and business centre. Fourteen of the villas are contemporarily designed "villas do douro", on the Douro riverbank: they include 155sq m (1,668sq ft) one-bedroom villas costing from €542,000 and 262.8sq m (2,828sq ft) two-bedroom villas costing from €980,900. These villas have terraces overlooking the river, decked roof terraces and plunge pools.
The remaining seven "villas do vinha" are surrounded by vineyards and built to a more traditional design: 182.4sq m (1,963q ft) one-beds cost from €604,500; 271.5sqm (2,922sq ft) two-beds cost from €893,000 and there is one 398.8sq m (4,294sq ft) villa costing €1.21 million. The villas da vinha have their own gardens, share three swimming pools, and are closest to the main hotel building.
The hotel, which incorporates a 19th century manor house, is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World. The resort is owned by a Portuguese business group.
Owners are offered a fixed guaranteed return equal to 6 per cent net for the first two years of ownership with variable returns after that. They can use their properties for a maximum of eight weeks a year, subject to certain restrictions. They can use it in high season - for two weeks at Easter and between July 15th and October 5th.
Portugal, although generally more expensive than Spain, has long been popular with Irish buyers, from timeshare days onwards. But most sales have been on the Algarve, for the obvious reason - guaranteed sun. However, a number of developments in northern Portugal have been launched here in the past few years.
The Irish agent of Bom Sucesso, a resort development an hour north of Lisbon, held a show here last weekend for its mix of townhouses and villas costing from €350,000 to €1.6million.
This large-scale five-star resort of around 1,000 properties on a 270-acre site - first launched on the market here two years ago - is billed as a design resort: the mix of townhouses and villas were designed by 23 architects (including Eduardo Souto de Moura and David Chipperfield) from across Europe.
Agent Pivotal Capital Partners reports a lot of interest and four sales last weekend. In September, it will launch 400 more townhouse apartments costing from €395,000. The agency is also soon to launch a development south of Lisbon by the sea at Sesimbra, costing from €220,000.
Agent Vivian Giles of Pivotal says that the lower temperatures of northern Portugal make for good golfing weather - and the other attraction is prices that can be, he says, up to 50 per cent lower than on the Algarve.
Aquapura is even further north, with temperatures that can soar in the summer, but with rainy winter spells. The attractions are its relative remoteness and exclusivity, say the developers, along with its vineyards, fine restaurants and of course those spa treatments.
Access:Ryanair flies direct to Porto, and Aer Lingus to Lisbon. Aquapura is 33km from the regional airport of Vila Real, with a daily 50-minute flight to Lisbon.
www.aquapuravillas.com
