“We are seeing some new luxury areas apart from Tuscany, the very top cities — Rome, Milan, and Florence—and Lake Como,” says Diletta Giorgolo Spinola, head of residential, Italy Sotheby’s International Realty. Across the Globe, luxury markets are vastly expanding in response to a booming real estate market in which prices are skyrocketing. Buyers are taking a closer look at slightly more out-of-the-way destinations that may offer a bit more value. Instead of Tuscany, buyers are looking at Umbria, instead of Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, she says. In a post-pandemic market, buyers are also looking in the south of Italy, Puglia, which forms the heel of Italy’s “boot,” as well as the island of Sicily.
“People want to be in places that are as beautiful and maybe less expensive,” says Giorgolo Spinola, a little more bang for their buck. Lake Maggiore is drawing buyers from Germany, France and Switzerland, the latter of which the lake is quite close to. “The setting is beautiful with larger views because the mountains aren’t as close. It has a very different feeling from Lake Como” she says.
For both Sicily and Puglia, “we’re now seeing some really famous resorts in both places, and two years ago we opened an office in Noto,” in Sicily, she says. Sicily, home to the resort White Lotus season two was filmed at. Noto has been named a Unesco World Heritage Site and is only ten minutes from the seaside. It has top restaurants “you can buy seaside mansions or small farmhouses” she says. A lot of high-net-worth U.S. buyers have made a “strong comeback” to Capri, Giorgolo Spinola says. Luxury buyers are still coming to Italian cities, especially Rome, Florence and Milan, where they are looking for larger homes, she says.
U.S. markets are seeing similar trends. In Nashville, Tennessee, “we’re seeing the full spectrum,” says Jessica Averbuch, CEO, Zeitlin Sotheby’s International Realty. “It’s like bookends at either end of the luxury market.” The market in downtown Nashville continues to “skyrocket to news levels of luxury,” she says. The Four Seasons Private Residences Nashville is now delivering and the hotel component should be completed soon. A new downtown Ritz-Carlton project that will have both a hotel and residential living is in the “early development stage, and the St. Regis just announced that they are looking at downtown properties,” Averbuch says. “This urban high-rise living takes us into a new stratosphere.”
“At the other extreme, we’re seeing so much luxury activity in the exurbs, far away from our urban core, especially in an area of middle Tennessee known as College Grove or Arlington,” she says. “This is a classic rural and pastoral setting, and now we’re seeing new highly amenitized communities with some of the highest price points in the entire region.” The average list price for a house in College Grove/Arlington, both of which are south of Nashville in Williamson County, is US $2.25 million, and the highest is US $14.5 million, she says.
Discovery Land Co., which has “uber luxury resort-style living all over the world,” recently opened its Troubadour Golf & Field Club in College Grove, Averbuch says. In another neighborhood in College Grove, there is a new luxury community called The Grove, which offers equestrian facilities.
Buyers are now going further south from Nashville, both east and west, she says. “People who are new here are less tied to a specific location” within the Nashville metropolitan area. There is a “lot of movement within our region that’s driven by lifestyle choices and affordability as prices have gone up,” Averbuch says. “We’re also seeing a massive influx into our market from around the country,” citing new luxury buyers from California, Illinois, and the East Coast as well as movement within the southeast region, such as the cities of Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama.
In Scottsdale, Arizona, a desert city east of Phoenix, the state capital, the two most in-demand areas in the luxury market are Paradise Valley and Silverlead, which is part of the master planned community of DC Ranch, says Frank Aazami, sales associate, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty.
Paradise Valley is “like our Beverly Hills,” he says. “You have 15 miles of minimum one-acre lots, so people have a good buffer and space between their neighbors.”
