If your boat comes in... try Vilamoura, its extended marina, and top new villas too

WE Irish love Portugal and the Algarve, for holidays, for sport from golf to sailing, swimming and surfing, for its accessibility, for its general relaxed lifestyle appeal — and we also love its property range.

Tapping into that Irish obsession with homes in the sun (it shines 300 days a year, without baking like spots around the Mediterranean increasing are) is the Algarve resort community of Vilamoura.

It's home to c15,000 properties so far, where a major drive to expand and enhance facilities is well underway, with a strong pitch to the Irish by a major international investor who also has its eye on Irish opportunities.

Behind a €500m investment drive is Arrow Global, a transatlantic investment and real estate company, having acquired a €100m portfolio here on the Algarve from Lone Star.

Arrow now controls major sites in the Portuguese resort, under an asterisked umbrella brand, *Vilamoura, including five golf courses, villa projects in train, sites for others to develop their own one-off villas, and finished product ready to occupy.

Also in the well-in-train project are sports facilities, an upgraded Equestrian Centre, an Environmental Park, improvement across all five golf courses (play one a day and take the weekend off?) and they also backed the extension of the local Vilamoura marina, adding 68 new and larger berths across three pontoons (for craft of 20 to 40 metres) to the existing and recently upgraded Vilamoura marina.

That marina is and has been a key attraction for the local and blow-in community alike, and it celebrated its 50th anniversary in November.

In attendance was a property press group from Ireland and UK, glad to spend 24 hours in 20 degree heat whilst the chillier isles to the north shivered in single digit temperatures.

Irish arriving by boat are less common than those flying in to the Algarve to golf, or surf, or beach balm (there’s 2kms of beach on the doorstep).

But it’s on the charts of the cognoscenti, and higher net worth boat owners are disposed to buy properties near where they berth craft which often can be worth multiples of the price of bricks and mortar with similar accommodations.

The weekend of the press visit to what’s now Portugal’s largest marina on its half century coincided with the Algarve being crowned World’s Leading Beach Resort at the World Travel Award.

Back in Ireland Arrow confirmed their interest in acquiring Irish golf courses and resorts to attract more American tourists to its five courses in the resort of Vilamoura, and offering packages to US golfers to play in Europe and add Ireland to their holidays with easy clearing of customs a boon for their return trip.

Irish buyers are being lured to invest in *Vilamoura with apartments (‘The Nine’), and the likes of A-rated luxury two and three-bed villas (149 sqm to 169 sq m) with plunge pools pools in a development called Natura Village.

There are 24 Natura Village villas finishing off, in distinctive terracotta shades, on secure plots, easy to lock up and leave, or to sail away from.

The project is 70% sold in Lots 4 and 7, with so-called V3 villas making between €860,000 and €980,000, two-bed V2 units are available at between €790,000 and €870,000.

In the new ‘plot 9’ phase three beds are coming along at €1.1 million to €1.3m, with Natura Village within a few kms walk on the flat, or an easy cycle lane spin, to beaches and boats at the marina.

DETAILS: vilamouraworld.com

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