It’s Not Whether You Can Afford a Home on Lake Como—It’s Whether You Can Find One

Dina Branham first visited Italy more than a decade ago and, like generations of travelers before her, fell head-over-heels in love. “I thought it was just magical, the architecture, the charm,” she said.

More vacations followed, and Branham found a favorite spot, Lake Como, because it reminded her of her childhood spent close to Lake Minnetonka, Minn. With time on her hands during the pandemic, Branham, a real-estate agent based in Sarasota, Fla., began to research the Italian property market. In 2020, she began negotiating the purchase of a roughly 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bathroom condominium in a small, gated community with water views in the waterside town of Menaggio. 

It cost $254,000 and Branham said she found the process of getting a mortgage from an Italian bank “surprisingly easy.” Unable to travel to Italy, she bought the property on the strength of photographs, videos and research on Google Earth. Happily, when she finally managed to visit, in June 2021, the condo very much lived up to her expectations.

Since then, she has made seven more trips to Menaggio, and has been approved for Italian citizenship, giving her the option of retiring to Italy one day. “It is my little sanctuary,” she said. 

Buyers who want to emulate Branham, and the actor George Clooney, Lake Como’s most famous resident, will first need to deal with a highly nuanced market where not all picturesque villages are equal, and homes on the water cost twice as much as other properties.

Across-the-board, average sale prices around the lake have dropped over the past decade, due to the ongoing effects of the European financial crisis and the pandemic. But beneath the surface, agents say historic waterfront villas in sought-after towns and affordable family-size holiday homes above the lake are bucking that trend.

Paola Cleps, a real-estate broker with Habitat Real Estate, Savills’s associate in the region, said most foreign buyers prefer the lake’s west shore, between the town of Como and Menaggio, 21 miles north. 

There are more than a dozen small towns and villages in this stretch of real estate, and their location is ideal, said Cleps. “It is a two-hour drive to the coast. If you want to ski, you can get to the mountains,” she said. “You are close to the Swiss border and 40 minutes by train to Milan for the airport.”

Average sale prices across the Como province are low, compared with values in its prime waterfront villages. According to figures published by OMI-Agenzia delle Entrate, the Italian Revenue Agency, in June, property sold at an average of $147 per square foot in 2022, up 0.4% compared with 2021. This represents a drop of about 10% compared with the 2011 figure of $163 per square foot.

At the top end of the market, the performance is stronger. Estate agent Knight Frank reports price growth of 8% during 2022. Prime property sells at around $1,024 per square foot. For a waterfront home, prices are even higher.

A 3,000-square-foot historic villa in picturesque Cernobbio with direct access to the lake would cost $11 million and up, said Cleps. An identical property just one street inland would cost around $3.9 million t to $5.5 million. If that same property was half a mile up the hillside, which rises sharply behind Cernobbio, it would cost around $3.3 million, she said. 

Meanwhile, Cleps said that buyers willing to trek to the north end of Lake Como—a distance of around 40 miles from the town of Como—could pick up a similar lakefront house for around $5.5 million.

Part of the reason for this dramatic price variation is the very limited number of lakefront homes for sale. Many prime lots have been repurposed as hotels, restaurants or institutions, or been carved up into apartments. Those that survive as single-family homes are often kept within families for generations, and during the pandemic the supply of homes for sale dried up almost entirely, said Cleps.

People have stopped selling, said Yasemin Baysal, managing partner of Engel & Völkers Lake Como, because other investment options, such as the stock market, are currently seen as risky. This has driven some buyers to desperate measures, making direct approaches to the owners of lakefront homes they like the look of and offering them premium prices to move out. “We know recently some owners have been offered crazy prices for their properties, but they have no will to sell them,” said Cleps.

The key driver of the Como market is, and has long been, foreign buyers. Prepandemic, Baysal estimated, non-Italian buyers were responsible for 70% to 80% of sales, with buyers from Russia, the U.K., Germany, and Switzerland leading the way. Today, foreign buyers still dominate. But while Russian and British buyers have gone quiet, said Baysal, North Americans stepped into their shoes last year, attracted by the relative strength of the dollar.

At least some of these North Americans learned of Lake Como’s charms by the high-profile presence of George Clooney. In 2002, he spent about $10 million on an 18^th-century waterfront home, Villa Oleandra, in the village of Laglio. He subsequently bought an adjacent property, creating one of the largest private homes in the area. Photographs of the actor vacationing there with his wife, Amal Clooney, their 6-year-old twins, plus famous friends including Cindy Crawford, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, have heightened the global profile of Lake Como.

“Since he arrived, it has made a very big impact,” said Cleps. “There are other famous people living here, but there is something about Clooney. He created a buzz. At first, it was crazy, with flowers being left at the gates of his villa, people renting out homes nearby with telescopes looking into the garden. It was embarrassing. But now people are used to seeing him, and he is always very pleasant.” Clooney did not respond to requests for comment.

Buyers without a Clooney-scale budget can still find a home in Como. They include Spanish-born artist Jose Molina. He moved to Milan in 2001 after meeting his wife, Chiara Garrone, and in 2011, the couple were ready to leave the city. They decided to move to Gravedona ed Uniti, on the northernmost section of Lake Como. “It is the wildest and most natural area of the lake,” said Molina, 57.

In 2016, they bought a villa. Molina, who declined to share the purchase price, said it dates to around 1750, and measures about 2,500 square feet. “In the past, the building was a traditional trattoria, a real reference point for locals. And the funny thing about it was that my wife and I went to eat there when we still lived in Milan,” he said. “After many years the circle closed when we decided to buy it and to go to live there.”

The couple are still renovating their villa, which doubles as Molina’s studio, with space for his archive and for his wife to run the office. Molina estimates it is now worth between $440,000 and $550,000. Molina, whose work has been exhibited around Italy and beyond, said that exchanging a hectic city for Lake Como had a transformative impact on his work.

“My inspiration literally bloomed when I moved from Milan to here,” he said. “Some of my artistic projects are influenced by the strong link with nature, colors and light of the lake.”

Sara Zanotta, founder and managing director, Lakeside Real Estate, said most of her buyers are American, Swiss, Scandinavian and German vacation-home buyers. Armed with budgets of between $880,000 and $2.75 million, they are eager to buy a four- to five-bedroom villa, preferably historic, with a lake view and within walking distance of the water. Apartments in historic houses are also popular. “Outside space is a must,” she said. As a result of strong demand, Zanotta estimates that prices for this class of home have increased by around 20% between 2021 and 2022. 

Around 15% of Cleps’s clients intend to live in Italy full time. Those who do, she said, are often Americans, impressed by Italy’s good healthcare system. Italy’s flat-tax system is another attraction. 

Holiday homeowners often rent out their properties when they are not staying. According to Knight Frank, the average prime rental rate on Lake Como is around $450 per night. At the very top end are rentals such as Villa La Cassinella, a spectacular eight-bedroom property on the water in the village of Lenno. The villa is available to rent from $109,000 per week, said a spokeswoman.

But even a modest home can turn a profit, said Baysal, particularly in Como town. “If you buy an apartment in the old town, you can rent it out for the whole year, and this is popular particularly with German, Dutch and English buyers who will use it themselves from time to time and rent it the rest of the year,” said Baysal.

Europe’s economy is currently facing many challenges—war raging in Ukraine, a cost of living crisis, rising inflation, and rising interest rates. Given this, few agents are willing to speculate on what will happen to house prices. “It is a critical situation,” said Baysal. “I think that the lower market, people who need financing from a bank, will stop a bit, but at the higher end, properties over €1 million [$1.1 million] will always sell because the rich always have money and they feel safe investing in real estate.”