Yours to own: - a Marrakech palace

Chic Marrakech have some excellent real estate at the moment and impressive riad deals, which are exciting, but this magnificent riad /mini palace stands out above everything else currently on the Medina property market.

The 350m2 rectangular, structurally sound, brick built property is a truly grand and historic residence. I can't think of anything else quite like it. It is unique.

Unearthing riads like this nowadays is nigh on impossible.

The riad encapulsates everything people dream about owning in a Marrakech riad.

Its credentials are extra-ordinary: - its loftiness: its grandeur: its spatial layout with super wide rooms: its design features such as its ornate balcony and open colonnaded walkways: its proportions and whopping courtyard: its room volumes that boast 6m floor to ceiling heights; and its dizzying restoration potential.

Furthermore, the riad could boast the best panoramic views in the whole of the Medina from its multi-tiered roof terrace.

Price of the riad is circa 2.5m dhs.

Riad of the month

More and more, clients are approaching Chic Marrakech to help them sniff out interesting riads to restore with real design potential, that are genuine deals and massively undercut the prices of the international Marrakech property agents.

Well - this 190m2 beauty is just 800,000 dhs and there is no Medina real estate on the market that can match its price tag, or design potential. The property has it all. It would suit either a fabulous three to five bedroom second home, or a brilliant medium sized guest house.

It is a grand and historic riad that boasts a generous spatial configuration as well as the perfect four sided square shape. This in itself is difficult enough to find nowadays, but additionally, the riad has exceptionally lofty proportions and exceptional volumes. This puts the riad in a superior category of Medina property. For instance, the ground floor floor to ceiling height is 3.6m. Then on the first floor it is 3.2m. This is exceptional and can't even be achieved on a rebuild.

Furthermore, its rooms are fat, and the riad absolutely doesn't suffer from having long thin impractical rooms like the majority of riads. This is a big plus.

Interestingly, there is only one seller who is motiavated to sell.

The riad is at a brilliant price, it offers unrivalled panoramic views because of its exceptional elevation and boasts a 13.15m street frontage allowing for some excellent external decorative possibilities and an all important additional light source that will subtly change the dynamic of the riad from just being an internalized property.

One could either restore this house, as it has a proper old brick structure, or completely rebuild it.

It is situated with almost immediate car access in the heart of the Medina - which is another selling point.

As mentioned beforehand, the price is just 800,000 dhs. This breaks back to 4,210 dhs pm2 - which is significantly under even local pricing.

Owning your own private Marrakech spa

Having a Moroccan spa, or hammam as it is known locally, and massage room in your own riad is one of the most luxurious and indulgent aspects of Medina life.

For Moroccans, having a hammam at least once a week is a time-honored tradition.

They adore the unique full on body cleansing and massage ritual. It is considered one of the most important aspects to everyday life.

Unless you have indulged in a traditional Moroccan hammam, you genuinely won’t know the meaning of being truly clean. The experience redefines bathing - leaving one feeling rejuvenated and new.

The intense heat of the steam room opens all of your pores, the organic local soaps and scrubs moisturize and exfoliate every inch of your skin – (literally from toenail to scalp), and the combination of vigorous massage and scented vapour leave you blissfully lightheaded.

Hammams are directly descended from classical baths, like Turkish baths and interestingly, their use in Morocco dates back to Roman times.

There are public hammams aplenty in Marrakech, in fact one in each neighbourhood, as well as luxury tourist hammams and hotel spas and, of course, private spas in the riads of affluent Moroccans, or foreigners.

Historically public hammams served an important social and recreational function, not least for women, who suffered from restricted social interaction under Islamic law. For them, hammams became gathering points to freely gossip and natter with friends and neighbours.

However, over time, they didn’t just serve an important social and recreational function, but also took on a Muslim connotation with ablutions and cleanliness. Hence men most commonly frequent hammams for their weekly hammam fix before Friday prayers.

Although the experience of visiting a public hammam for tourists can be a bit hit and miss, it is always enormous fun and a great way to connect with locals, especially given how welcoming most Moroccans are in them. You can certainly expect lots of chit chat and banter.

However there is nothing quite like being pampered and massaged in the comfort of your own riad, because the spa experience is much more accessible and entirely centred on switching off and tuning out.

Hammams in riads are often buried in an innermost nook, or a subterranean sanctum like some hidden den where no outside noise can penetrate and you are lost in the hushed silence to the treatments in a Moroccan fantasy of steam, flickering candlelight, wispy scents and scattered rose petals.

Although hammams are effectively functional spaces in Medina homes, they are truly cool and beautiful, and can boast impressive architectural features.

They are certainly fabulous to design and fabulous to use.

They unquestionably enhance a riad and add to the attraction of owning a historic Marrakech home.

The Moroccan love affair with carpets

Moroccan carpets are the height of fashion right now and because of their beauty, versatility, and compatability with almost any interior, they are appearing in beautiful homes, hotels and interior and design magazines the world over.

Moroccans and riad owners have always had a long standing love of carpets. Carpets are cherished items, which are meticulously cared for. They are investment pieces that ground rooms and provide them with the basis for the palette of their decor. A beautiful carpet is indeed the foundation of riad interior design, not to mention artwork for a floor. Everything works off their vibe. Accordingly, here they are considered one of the most important furnishing of all.

Moroccan carpets therefore don't just serve a practical function in riads, they ultimately enhance the living space.

Carpets and rugs vary greatly in design and colouring from region to region.

There are two distinct types of carpets in Morocco: urban Islamic carpets and rural tribal carpets.

Rabat is the historic centre of the Moroccan urban Islamic carpet making tradition and its pile weave carpets are referred to as Rabat, or R'bati carpets. They are formal in style, and much more sophisticated, with extremely diverse coloration. It is not uncommon for them to require months of painstaking work to complete.

Urban carpet making in Rabat can be traced back to the 18th century, and was greatly influenced and inspired by formal styles and techniques from neigbouring Mediterranean countries and the Middle East from where there was always a marked cultural exchange.

For Moroccans, urban carpets are utilitarian as much as works of art.

Urban carpets tend to be thicker and have larger borders than rural tribal carpets. Their designs, like any Islamic art form, consist of stylized geometric patterns. These are centred upon a central motif that works its way to a highly detailed border, which echoes the central motif - like in the above photo. One of the most striking features to them are their rich yarns and lustrous colours.

The other type of carpets are rural tribal carpets, which are produced by the hundreds of different ethnic tribal groups, of mainly Berber origin, scattered across Morocco.

Tribal carpet making pre-dates the urban tradition. It is considerably older in fact and is, interestingly, centred predominantly upon less formal, pre-Islamic designs and styles.

Berbers historically, were insular by nature and their carpet making was not influenced by the outside world. Traditionally carpets were made for simply personal and domestic use by women for their own families, who passed weaving techniques down through the generations. The designs and techniques they employed were therefore a remarkable and authentic expression of their unique culture – as they still are today.

Carpets are normally used as bedding, floor coverings or blankets. They are flat-woven, though some are pile rugs, and their designs feature abstract expressive and individual imagery often reflecting superstitious and spiritual beliefs such as wards against the evil eye. For example, wedding blankets are thought to be filled with baraka, or divine blessings, and their mass of sequins supposedly ward off the malevolence that brides are believed to be vulnerable to.

The colouring is more natural than in Rabat rugs and the most sought after carpets have little repetition of design.

Undoubtedly my favourite carpets come from the Beni Ouarain - who are an important Berber tribe from the Middle Atlas mountain region.

The main characteristic of a Beni Ouarain carpet is the shaggy pile - (as above).

Beni Ouarain carpets are all hand loomed in lovely soft bouncy wool shorn from sheep rather than wool removed from a sheepskin. It means they are especially warm and comfortable under foot.

Each carpet is a unique organic piece and highly collectible. No two are ever alike.

Somehow they never fail to compliment and enhance space, and I simply love the creamy golden beige shaggy piles I have in our Marrakech home – that function so nicely on the cold tadelakt flooring. Their zigzag and lozenge designs are particularly cool.

When it comes to buying a carpet, you should inquire about knot density and both the type of dye and fiber used. Better quality carpets have a higher number of knots per square meter, are handmade and constructed from 100% wool or 100% nylon.

Cheaper carpets made of, for example, olefin, are readily available, but these carpets are highly flammable (moving a chair across the carpet can even create scorch marks), they attract more dirt and gray over time. It is also worth noting that synthetic dyes produce bolder colors, but are more likely to fade over time, whereas natural dyes produce lighter long lasting colors.

Chic Marrakech are happy to recommend some reputable carpets dealers.

The Medina planning process demystified

Time and again clients approach Chic Marrakech with preconceived ideas that the processes and bureaucracy involved in purchasing riads then planning applications and renovation might be complex and protracted, whereas the reality is quite the opposite.

Every aspect of the Medina property market is, in fact, simple and straightforward, and extremely easy to negotiate without the hindrance of either red tape or corruption.

For me though, the key is not just being well versed in all its intricacies to ensure that clients are looked after properly, but also having the support of competent, reliable professionals.

This is especially true in regard of planning applications and the planning process.

One of the main areas of my work is design and architecture for Medina properties. This involves managing the whole planning process on behalf of clients – (from the beginning of a design brief, right through to the submission of a planning application and following it through to its receipt), so clients don't have to do a thing.

I am helped enormously with this by the head of the planning office – who has, for some time, been working closely with me on various elements of my design work, such as the structural detailing on plans, the collation of the paperwork for planning applications and their submission. This relationship provides me with a unique advantage in being able to turn around planning applications with the minimum of fuss – especially as he is responsible for signing them off!

A lot of clients don’t have an appetite to undertake major building work in the Medina and look to purchase riads that simply require cosmetic work and modernization.

In this case, all that is required to undertake the restoration of a riad is a permit for small works. The planning process entailed for this is immediate and effectively free, and can be turned around in just two to three days.

Where clients take on riads that require structural work and renovation, or ruins, which need rebuilding, a full planning application is required to obtain planning permission and a construction permit.

The plans and detailing required for this are comprehensive and thorough. This is imperative as building work will not only be responsible for stabilizing a riad, but also those of neighbouring properties that will often have fragile mud party walls and no foundations whatsoever.

An application must include plans of the existing riad or ruin, full architectural plans of the new riad – (containing elevations of the courtyard facades, derb frontage and cross sections of the floor plates with floor to ceiling heights compliant to regulations), and a breakdown of the technical aspects of the project in an engineering folder. This folder will contain, for instance, plans of the foundations and structural columns, the composition and marriage of the foundations and earthworks, the detailing of the different foundations for the differing points of the riad, the breakdown of the reinforced columns, and the marriage and composite cross sections of the floor plates. It is reassuringly comprehensive.

Having the head of planning personally assist me with putting applications together then oversee their submission and approval is truly advantageous. Not only does it enable applications to be fast-tracked and turned around in a mere three weeks, it also provides leeway with planning restrictions on features like swimming pools and externalized windows.

There are exceptions to this though, most notably with riads situated next to any royal palace, or in the Kasbah district where applications are rigorously scrutinized due to the proximity of the Palace of Mohamed VI.

There is a small government tax on a construction permit - i.e. tax urbaine, but it is worth pointing out this is the sole administrative cost a client is liable for throughout an entire project.

Finally for clients wishing to open a declared and licensed guest house, a full planning application with additional paperwork is required.

In addition to the full architectural plans that show compliance with statutory guest house requirements such as a minimum of five bedrooms – (which are at least 12m2 each with en-suites), as well as the technical detailing for a rebuild, or full renovation with structural work, an application would include an administrative dossier with supplementary papers like fire and utility certificates, along with studies on security and structural solidity.

There is considerably more work for us in turning guest house planning applications round, but submissions can be processed in just six weeks.

It is worth noting that for guest house planning applications there is a second tax to pay - i.e. tax mairie.

For more details on the planning process in the Marrakech Medina, or the unique service we offer, please feel free to get in touch.

Slashed price on this prime Medina deal

I blogged about this 120m2 gem of a riad earlier this year, which I thought then was the best deal around.

For me, it is the perfect small Medina property that ticks all the right boxes for an affordable Marakech real estate investment.

When my post on it went onto the Chic Marrakech blog, the house was snapped up almost straightaway, but sadly the deal fell through due to unforeseen personal circumstances.

Subsequently, the family selling the riad have now decided to further slash the price.

Its price tag is now a mere 725,000 dhs - which represents a really tasty opportunity.

For more information on the property, kindly see the original post: -

http://grantstonerrawlings.blogspot.com/2011/03/prime-riad-for-sale-that-is-absolute.html

Riad of the month

This delightful structurally sound 81m2 riad that Chic Marrakech have just taken on is one of the prettiest, well located and most affordable bits of Medina real estate to come up in ages.

As a specialist estate agent trawling the Medina property market day-in day-out for exciting opportunities, I can quite safely say, riads such as this, in prime locations, don't appear often.

For me, even though it is only a small home, it still manages to encapulsate everything that is magical about riads.

One of the most interesting aspects to the riad is the fact that it is an old brick construction, so the walls and building are truly sound and the restoration required is minimal.

Another is the overall aesthetic created from original cement tiling, the forged iron balustrade, stained glass and the ubiquitous decorative woodwork. They marry so well and provide such a soft, sympathetic decorative scheme.

It is certainly worth noting how rare it is to find antique woodwork in such good condition.

The woodwork is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also a big cost saving. Proper wood is perhaps the most expensive item in Medina construction and not having to replace it is a big plus.

The ground floor boasts a characterful entrance hall - (off from which is a neatly enclosed staircase, a traditional bathroom, and cupboarding space), a well proportioned courtyard and three principal rooms.

Then one of the main features of the first floor is the master suite, which is approximately 9 metres long by 4.5 metres wide. (Please see the photograph below). The generous size of this room is due to the house extending out above the alley outside, thereby increasing the floor plate to 100m2. Additionally there are a further two smaller rooms on the first floor, accessed via the feature balcony.

Lastly, it is worth noting the roof terrace is unusually wide above the suite, and also above the central portion of the house where there is a generous amount of space because the terrace extends out to the line of the first floor balcony. This creates another major selling point.

The riad is situated in a prime location in the historic heart of the Medina in amongst some super smart private homes and commercial riads.

Importantly there is parking nearby, along with car access, and many of the main tourist spots are in the immediate vicinity of the house as well as popular restaurants such as the Foundouk.

The price tag is an unbeatable 635,000 dhs.