We’ve long been dreaming of an Italian summer à la Call Me By Your Name. Sunset dinners in the garden, cycling into the town centre, and slow day trips to the seaside — before retiring to our picturesque and historic villa at night.
Now, the opportunity to carry out your Under the Tuscan Sun dreams may be closer and cheaper than ever before, with the news one couple is giving their Tuscan villa for the price of a pub dinner.
Jon and Annmarie Nurse, a British couple from Dorset, England, are hosting a raffle for their £400,000 (AU $723,200) vacation villa in Garfagnana — a rural town in northern Tuscany that maintains its authenticity, being that it’s undiscovered by tourists.
Open now, only 20,000 raffle tickets will be sold at £25 pounds, or AU $45. The draw will close once all tickets are sold, by which point the home’s owners will choose a winner at random. That person will have the home transferred into their name, free of any mortgages, charges and other encumbrances.
As for what the winner does with the villa is then up to them! They could live in the home permanently, keep it as a holiday villa, or rent it out to holidaymakers.
The home has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a living room, plus a fully equipped kitchen with modern appliances. There’s a dining room with a feature fireplace, plus an additional outdoor dining area in the courtyard (with flowering trees and pear apple and fig trees), which sits adjacent to a huge swimming pool.
The home is situated in the Tuscan countryside, with views of rolling mountains from the home’s nearby villages and national parks. Undiscovered by tourists, the town shows an authentic Italy with local markets, restaurants, bars and cafes.
Florence is a short two-hour drive away, while the coast, with Forte dei Marmi and the Cinque Terre, is also only two hours by car. A ski resort called Abetone is an easy trip of one hour and 20 minutes.
Crunching the numbers, the home’s owners are getting a pretty sweet deal by raffling off their home in this way. If their villa is worth £400,000, and they sell 20,000 raffle tickets at £25 each, they’ll make a total of £500,000 earning them a £100,000 profit.
However, the home’s current owners have committed to donating up to £50,000 from the raffle to The Children’s Society. Plus, they’ll give a £10,000 cash prize to a runner up.
Head over to the website to enter and to see more of your future home.