Quintas D'Al-Gariya is a new development project from the BES Real Estate Investment Fund located next to Morgado de Reguengos golf course, north of Portimão.
The project covers 439 hectares and far from offering hundreds of apartments, town houses and the inevitable spa the company is to build just 12 individual homes on plots of between 27 and 64 hectares each. This may have been a planning requirement from the council but the opportunity is an interesting and welcomed departure from the norm.
The development is being promoted by Espírito Santo Fundos de Investimento Imobiliário and will be managed by Espirito Santo Property in the Algarve.
"Each owner is free to choose their architectural design, they can create from scratch or choose one of the proposed layouts for a turnkey option which includes design and construction," said the company spokesman.
Quintas D'Al-Gariya is located seven kilometres from Portimão in an environment "that combines the privacy and tranquility of the countryside with the best beaches and golf courses of the Algarve," according to the blurb, and is “just minutes from the towns of Portimão and Silves,” – this of course is quite a few minutes, but then promoters are prone to imagine journey times that require excessive road speeds, including the “30 minutes from Faro airport” when travellers know it takes ten minutes to reach the motorway from the airport and another 40 minutes at legal speeds to Morgado Reguengos.
This notwithstanding, the proposed development is a departure from the normal tourist offering as the promoter will already have witnessed the failure of neighbouring Morgado golf’s property ambitions.
Morgado is part of the collapsed, and now rescued, CS Group, where top-end houses were at first offered on vastly overpriced plots, even during the pre-crisis period of property fever. In fact BES ended up part-owning Morgado Golf twice as developer collapsed, but the company management seems to have learned from other developers’ past mistakes of cramming tourist houses together in areas where tourists do not want to live.
The resulting development on offer, according to Espirito Santo Property, is "a unique and innovative concept that allows owners to take advantage of the space in a completely independent way, where they can, for example, plant an organic vegetable garden, build a tennis court or even a mini golf course,” - presumably depending on the normal Council merry-go-round of red tape and paparwork delays measured in years.
Aniceto Viegas is the administrator of Espirito Santo Property, and is convinced that "Quintas D'Al-Gariya is ideal for those who choose space and tranquility in an environment where nature is highlighted."
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