Dream second homes for less than £500,000
These gorgeous overseas properties are worth the search, says Aunnunciata Elwes.


Tuscany, Italy €525,000 (£486,268)
In a peaceful borgo not far from Buonconvento and Siena, this three-bedroom farmhouse has a private garden and a vine-covered dining terrace.
It also has shared use of a swimming pool, tennis court and beautifully maintained grounds, with Judas, fig and apricot trees as well as the jujube tree after which the property is named. See more at Knight Frank.
Normandy, France €398,000 (£366,233)
Dating back to the 18th century, this charming thatched, timber-framed cottage in the Montfort-sur-Risle commune of the Eure département is less than two hours from Paris and 45 minutes from Deauville.
It has four bedrooms, 3½ acres of meadow and orchard, two barns and a guest house. See more at Chestertons International.
Nova Scotia, Canada, CAD$279,000 (£173,431)
Scented with sea air from nearby Digby harbour, this delightful Dutch colonial property resembles an upturned ship.
It has four bedrooms, a pretty verandah overlooking the garden and a grand oak staircase. See more at Tradewinds Realty
Co Kildare, Ireland £484,859 (€530,000)
Elegantly Georgian, Shamrock Lodge, on the edge of Athy Town, is set in four acres and dates from 1835.
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It has six bedrooms, a courtyard, a conservatory, a library, stables and other outbuildings as well as a gate lodge. See more at Savills.
Mallorca, Spain €490,000 (£450,035)
This lovely stone house in the village of Alaró, in a peaceful valley in the southern Tramuntana mountains, has been beautifully refurbished in a boutique style to include Moroccan mosaics and polished limestone walls.
With two bedrooms, it comes fully furnished. See more at Mallorca Sotheby’s International Realty.
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Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.
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