Peter and Hiroko Macfarlane, Cheswick, London UK
I first heard of the Borgo a few years ago and registered interest online, but in a rather-half hearted manner as we had no particular plans to buy a property abroad at the time and when the regular updates came through I did not pay much attention. However, last year my wife and I decided to give some serious thought to purchasing a property in Italy and, having been to the Tuscany/Umbria region a couple of times before, we flew over for a short trip and looked around at a number of places in the region. At this time I recalled the Borgo newsletter that I had been receiving regularly and so we included a visit there onto our itinerary, to check it out and see how it compared with owning a property outright.
Like many others, I suspect, the visit clinched it for us and though we were only there for one night in rather dull March weather, we soon realised that fractional ownership made much more sense for us than owning outright. We were already getting cold feet about the prospect of spending a large chunk of every holiday in our “dream home” doing basic maintenance and that would be after we had manoeuvred our way around the Italian legal system and building regulations required for the purchase itself. With the Borgo the financial outlay was less, the fully serviced nature of the place (and friendly staff, of course) was a major attraction and we we would not be as financially and emotionally constrained as if we had gone through with our original plans.
Already we’ve been back twice, once on our own and once with our two adult sons and, though we are not through exploring other parts of the world, we would still expect to visit the Borgo two or three times a year and are also hoping that there will be opportunities for family to join us or indeed to enjoy the experience on their own.
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