There are not more castles, so the world's largest investment companies consider buying a castle in Europe as one of the most attractive long-term investments. The tastes of castle buyers differ noticeably. As representatives of foreign agencies told the correspondent of the real estate online magazine Metrinfo.Ru, gentlemen from the shores of Foggy Albion most value 'ruins' with ancient history, the French value three- to five-story castles, and Russians value castles with towers and unique furniture.
For peace and war
In the original meaning, a castle is a building or complex of buildings, usually surrounded by a wall and combining two functions: defensive-fortification and residential. They were usually built on elevations, islands, rock ledges, and other hard-to-reach places.
The main part of a medieval castle was the central tower - the keep. It served, naturally, for defensive purposes, but there were also living rooms, a well, utility rooms - storage for food and ammunition. A small inner courtyard was surrounded by massive crenellated walls with towers and well-fortified gates. Next came an outer courtyard, which included outbuildings, as well as a castle garden and vegetable garden. The entire castle was surrounded by a second row of walls and a moat, across which a drawbridge was thrown. These outer structures are called the dependencies. Such castles were often rectangular in plan, or their walls followed the terrain clearly.
Castle building reached its greatest flowering in England in the 12th century. Numerous structures also survive in the valleys of the Rhine and Loire rivers, in Palestine (crusader castles), and in Spain.
Money in a castle – better than under lock and key
According to Nadezhda Velyo, owner of the Belgian agency Immo-Reflex, castles in Northeastern France and in the Benelux countries are also popular. Many of them were built by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, who lived in the time of Louis XIV and spent his entire life besieging enemy fortresses and building French castles. Since the eastern border of France ran along the Rhine and Meuse in those years, some of Vauban's castles ended up on the territory of modern Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Luxembourg. Vauban built 33 castles from scratch and improved about 300 old ones. Vauban's castles, unlike the castles of Southern France, had not so much a residential and decorative purpose as a military one, and were used for defense until 1940.
Therefore, many of them are in a deplorable condition, as in 1940 they were destroyed by German siege artillery, and in 1944 by Anglo-American aviation. Today, the state, writing off these ruins from its balance sheet, sells them into private hands with the condition of restoration and restoration of the original appearance. Moreover, in some countries, the state assumes from 20 to 60% of the cost of restoring the purchased property.
The most ancient and inviolable castles have survived in Great Britain. Most of them belong either to the royal family or are in hereditary possession of aristocratic families. More than fifty belong to private individuals and are put up for sale from time to time, roughly three to four 'pieces' per year.
According to Anna Forester, vice president of the agency The Foresters’, 80% of English castles are purchased for commercial purposes: most often they are converted into hotels, restaurants, clubs. The return on such investments is small. At best, it ranges from 5% to 8% per year. Some owners rent out their property several times a year – for presentations and birthdays, and use it themselves the rest of the time.
British castles are the most expensive today. But until recently, some ruins were sold for a symbolic one pound so that the new owner would restore them to their original condition. However, there are also opposite situations – sometimes the state forcibly buys back a castle due to the owner's inability to maintain it properly, or, conversely, when the owner, carrying out a 'fancy Russian euro-renovation' in the castle, violates, in the opinion of the authorities, the historical uniqueness of the estate.
The buyers of Austrian castles are not so much foreigners as the Austrians themselves. According to Alexander Weber from the Berlin agency Volkswohnung, the greatest demand is for castles in the foothills of the Alps, not only in Austria but also in Bavaria. Bavarian castles are older than Austrian ones – they were built mainly in the 19th century, and in their architecture they are more reminiscent of medieval ones. Buyers of such castles convert them into hotels or make them the main building of a ski resort.
Looking for antiquity without forgery
The real estate online magazine Metrinfo.Ru tried to search for a real feudal castle and ask its price. Here are the options we looked through.
Austria: pseudo-fortresses for rural hotels. Small castle Zwettl in a quiet place not far from the Austrian city of Salzburg. Located surrounded by forests and meadows on a huge plot of land. Renovated and decorated in the style of traditional princely buildings using the latest technologies. The castle has a sauna, fitness room, wine cellar, two kitchens, telephone, antenna, central heating, garage for two cars. The only catch is that this building is by no means medieval. It was built in 1900 and has no historical value. But it is solidly built, and the price is quite decent – €1.560.000 (?1.560 per square meter – roughly the same as a meter in an average Salzburg apartment).
Much more expensive is a castle near Vienna – €5,200,000. And this is with almost the same area as the previous one – 1,090 m2. The square meter in such a castle costs, accordingly, €4,770 – slightly higher than the average in Vienna, but the price here is added by the pool in the castle. This castle was built less than 100 years ago – in 1910. The design included a garage. You will not find ancient castles in this country, since Austria was an empire for a long time, and the castles of feudal lords were demolished in the 16th-17th centuries to prevent them from becoming strongholds of separatism.
Is it worth investing money in such castles? It is worth it if you plan to turn them into rural hotels. As historical items, these pseudo-castles have no value. They will rise or fall in value together with the real estate of the country in which they are located, and their price will equal the average cost of real estate in that country.
Italy: concrete in cracks after major renovations. True castles can be found in neighboring Italy. For example, - a medieval castle located on the picturesque hills near the city of Udine, in northeastern Italy, in close proximity to the Alpine mountains and the Adriatic coast. It costs €3,100,000. The area of the main building with the keep is 700 m2, and the area of the dependance is 600. The square meter, therefore, costs €2,384. Comparing with apartments in Udine is somewhat difficult – currently only 'elite' apartments are for sale there, costing €7 thousand per meter, but in neighboring Trieste the cost per square meter is about the same (around €2,500). Does history really cost nothing? It turns out that in 2004 the castle underwent major repairs, and now it has turned into an expensive nine-bedroom villa with ancient walls, cracks in which were filled with modern concrete.
France: business thrown in. Where then can we find a real castle? Perhaps in France? Take, for example, the Château de Poitou, located in the province of the same name in western France near Angoulême, in the Charente department. This castle costs €4,240,000, but it is valuable not so much for its ancient walls. The fact is that the building is located not just in the Poitou-Charentes province, not just in the Charente department, but also in the sub-prefecture of Cognac – the center of production of the famous strong drink.
The castle comes with 192 hectares of vineyards with an official permit for cognac production, as well as all the equipment and a special cellar. It is clear that the buyer will pay attention not so much to the 750 square meters of the castle, which was built, as they claim, in the 15th century (although the huge windows indicate that the castle underwent a major reconstruction in the 17th century), but to the vineyards and the distillery in the basement.
France, however, is not limited to the sub-prefecture of Cognac, and in Aquitaine a 21-room castle is for sale for €2,800,000. Its area is 1,200 m2. The building comes with 33 gazebos of 18 m2 each, a greenhouse, three ponds, a pool with a club, and 30 hectares of beautiful park!
This castle has not only consumer value but also historical value. The seller does not know the date of its construction, but looking at the photograph, it is easy to determine that it was built in the second half of the 16th century. At that time, during the era of centralized absolutism, castles lost their original fortification purpose. Therefore, in the blank walls of old castles in the 16th-17th centuries, they began to chisel out windows, and newly built castles were decorated with militarily useless ornamentation – turrets, carved cornices, and even sculptural compositions.
United Kingdom: both ancient and expensive. We have reached the most expensive offer - Seton Castle in Scotland, built at the end of the 18th century. It is priced at $9.4 million (almost €6.5 million). The area of the four-story main building and the combined east and west wings totals 9 thousand square feet, i.e., 836 m2, which per square meter gives $11,244 or €7,760.
In general, prices for most British castles are within 10 million pounds, i.e., about $20 million or €13.8 million.
Our little journey into the world of castle real estate leads to the following conclusions. Of course, castles are acquired in most cases not to live in them. The best use is to turn it into a hotel or rent it out for special occasions. Then both the maintenance of the castle (try at least to heat it) will pay off, and the owners will receive a well-deserved income. No arbitrary global reconstructions can be carried out in castles, or they must be carefully coordinated. In a number of countries, the state helps restore castles. But our capitalists still have to grow to the 'castle' business.