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Rocking the Casbah

25th October 2005 | back to article listings BACK    print this article PRINT

Something strange is stirring in the deserts of North Africa. On scrubby ground outside the Moroccan city of Marrakech, plots are being fenced off and hundreds of thousands of dollars are changing hands for non-descript strips of red brown soil.

The property market in Marrakech is about to expand in a big way. Forty years after the city first gained a reputation as a bohemian magnet for rock stars and fashion designers, the traditional apartment market is saturated and property investors are arriving in a big way.

Some of the biggest names in villa development are now preparing to move in, with the UK's Hampton International and Knight Frank planning the launch of a £25 million, 40 villa complex next month, to be constructed around a New Four seasons hotel and spa on the outskirts of town.

Properties will start at £300,000 for a two-bed property, rising to £1 million for four-bed villas. The hotel will arrange rental tenants through the year while the owner is away. Savills property investment is planning its own more modest complex of £100,000 apartments, with use of clubhouse and spa, outside the city walls.

Many, many more are planning further developments. "There’s so much construction going on, Morocco feels like a mini Dubai. The city is changing completely," local estate agent Alban Pamart told the Times.

The city remains something of a gamble however, with some predicting that the city's hopes to attract three million tourists annually may be over ambitious. Unlike many of the new jet to let and holiday home boomtowns around the world, Marrakech is landlocked, with no beaches to attract the traditional sun and sand seeking family villa owners.

"Developers may be in for a shock," says Elisabeth Bauchet-Bouhlal, who moved to Marrakech in the mid 60's to open the fashionable Es Saadi hotel.

"For as long as I can remember, new investors have been promising to create new homes here and attract a new market. Riads have been successful because they are authentically Moroccan, but there is no precedent for villas, which traditionally sell to families. Most families with children want to be near the beach, not sharing a pool in the desert," she added.

Others, like Scottish property investor Jimmy Boyle, who is constructing two £500,000 villas outside the town and who has just paid £150,000 for enough land to construct nine more, is confident that the holiday home market is now diverse enough, and Marrakech exotic enough, to lure rising numbers of visitors - especially with a UK flight time of three hours.

"There’s nowhere like Marrakesh. The buildings, the market, the mountains, the food - the whole place is one big exotic adventure. Anybody can go to the jolly old seaside but here, drinking beer in the sun while looking at the white peaks of the Atlas Mountains, well, that’s unique."

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