Our Real Estate Agencies

Since 1999, Mr Vincent BENVENUTI studies the real estate market of Marrakech. Jemma el Fna real estate is created and established in one of the most strategic point of the “Red city”, boulevard Mohamed V.

Today, reinforced by his experiences and his French-Moroccan team, Jemaa el Fna disposes of more than 700 values, situated in Marrakech, Essaouira, Rabat, Fes and Agadir.

 
MARRAKECH

Marrakech is berber origin and more africaan than arab. It has been the country’s capital on two occasions. Firstly when it was founded in the 11^th century by Berber Muslim tribesmen, the Almoravids and again, in the 16^th century, during the Saadians dynasty. The city was built by the Almoravid leader, Youssef Ben Tachfine, who chose it as a place to pitch camp based on its location on a warm plain protected from the Saharan winds by the mountains. He immediately constructed a Kasbah and a mosque and to overcome the water shortage, planted pipes (khetara) made out of baked mud in the ground, to carry water into the city, from the High atlas, still in evidence around the Palmeraie just outside the city. When Youssef died, his son, Ali succeeded him and built the city’s original ramparts. In 1147, after many battles, Marrakech eventually fell to the vehemently religious, Almoravids who became the next dynasty. After demolishing many of the Almoravids main monuments, the Almohads rebuilt Marrakech adding such relics as the Koutoubia mosque, which had to be rebuilt 50 years later as the previous one was not completely in the line with Mecca, the El Mansour mosque and Bab Agnaou, the gateway to the Kasbah, all of which are still very much in existence today.

MARRAKECH TODAY

The Marrakech of today is basking in the glory of yet another heyday. Home to some of the world’s most beautiful gardens, hotels, houses and monuments, resided in by some the world’s most famous designers, writers, artists and entrepreneurs, host to the glamorous International Film festival and recipient of over one-third of all visitors to the country, a figure set to rise in line with vision 2010.

It is a city of noise, entertainment and color that thrives on attention and appears to blossom the busier it gets. From the snake charmers, storytellers and acrobats of Jemaa el Fna (see below) to the hustling, playful chitchat in the souks, the honking horns on Avenue Mohammed V, the dashing bursts of bougainvillea and the art galleries, exhibitions and boutiques, it is a city where the old and new seamlessly join and you feel as comfortable on the black of a braying mule as you do in the front of a polished 4x4.

It is also a city where in amongst the opulence and affluence, there is severe poverty. Migrants from the rural Atlas looking for work to feed their families, beggars and street children rifling through dustbins, hustling tourist and conning the naive in order to get a bite to eat or a scattering of loose change

Once recommended by Winston Churchill as having the air to cure bronchitis, it is now one of Morocco’s most polluted cities where every road is a traffic jam and the smell of fumes, overpowering.

Despite this, investment in Marrakech is soaring. The combination of a young, forward thinking monarch and a highly effective regional governor Mohammed Hassad has done much to improve the quality of life in the city. Social housing projects are underway to get the city’s poorest out of the shantytowns, the bureaucracy, notorious for impeding investment and entreneurialism has been hacked down to manageable sized chunks and touts who harass foreigners are at risk of arrest by heavy-handed tourist police.

The main investors are the French many of whom still feel they have something of a hold over the city and, expatriate Moroccans looking for a project they can sink their hard earned foreign currency into. The last five years, though, have seen a sharp growth in the number of British people buying property in Marrakech either as second homes, guesthouses or holiday lets.

ESSAOUIRA

Essaouira is arguably Morocco’s most loved town. Its 10 Km of sandy, white beach, dunes and sea dotted with windsurfs, the whitewashed UNESCO protected medina enclosed within pink sandstone ramparts, the lively, bustling fishing port and colourful wooden boats, fish grills, souks, artisan workshop, art galleries and white paved piazzas have long appealed to artists, musicians and cosmopolitan crowds of visitors. Jimmy Hendrix, Orson Welles and Hollywood directors Ridely Scott and Oliver Stone have all lived or worked in the medina, located on the south west coast of Morocco in between Agadir and Casablanca.

ESSAOUIRA TODAY

For many, what most appeals about Essaouira is that everywhere is reachable on foot. There is very little need for a car in the town as the medina is compact and fully pedestrians, walk able from end to end in 20 minutes. The sea smacks against the medina walls and the beach is opposite the southern gate. The Ville nouvelle is outside Bab Doukalla, to the north of the medina with streets as bustling as inside the walls. The fact that the layout of the medina was specifically designed as opposed to simply evolved like many of Morocco’s more sprawling cities, means that it is easy to navigate.

PLANS OF ESSAOUIRA

The town has been chosen as one of the six cities to be developed with a luxury costal resort, in line with the government’s Plan Azur. The Belgian luxembourgeois group, Thomas Piron/ TPR l’atelier is responsible for station balneaire de Mogador, the 356 hectares site 4 km south of Essaouira , which is currently under construction, due to be complete around 2008. There will be 525 luxury villas, 32 hotels and guesthouse, 2 golf courses, spas, a beach club, cafés, parks and gardens. Quite what the impact of this will be on properties in the medina is not yet clear. Essaouira has always prided itself on being a town that attracts independent travellers as opposed to large package tour groups. Such a development will bring different clientele to the town, it might also decrease business for guesthouse and holiday lets inside the medina as more people stay in the luxury resort visiting the medina only for day trips. On a positive note, it is expected to give a boost to both the local economy and employment rates in the area, although the lack of educational institutes in Essaouira means that highly skilled personnel are traditionally, sourced from the big cities such as Casablanca, leaving the lowlier, unskilled positions to the locals.

AGADIR

After the earthquake, just four years post independence there was a strong desire to rebuild Agadir as a modern city that showed the country with its feet firmly entrenched in both the east and the west. As it was the start of the 1960’s, utilitarianism was the trend and the general theme of much of the city centre is low, white, featureless building made out of cement and lacking in any of the ornate character, which gives Morocco its alluring appeal. Somehow, however, the city seems to get away with it. Its wide streets, 300 day a year of sun, 10 km of sandy beach, non-pretentious crowds and holiday atmosphere make up for the dull architecture. Admittedly, few go to Agadir to get a real taste of Morocco, it is a tourist resort full of large all-inclusive hotels, casinos, nightclubs, ice cream parlours, volley ball, bronzed bodies, gay men, the dreaded karaoke and an increasingly large number of Brits, scorned by Maroc-ophlies as being an unfortunate extension of Spanish Costa. Charter airline and package tour companies tout it as a winter sun destination offering some of the cheapest flights to Morocco. Very recently, there has been a surge of British people buying retirement homes in Agadir to use either year round or as winter getaway homes.

The only historical relic of note is the Kasbah sitting on top a hill 750 feet above the city, looking out over the Atlantic. It was built a defence against attacks from the Portuguese. Following the earthquake, only a section of the original ramparts and the main gateway remain.

Construction has begun on a new 240 Km highway that will link Agadir with Marrakech. This is part of the 1000 Km national highway joining the north of Morocco to the south. Expected completion date is 2009. This will break the isolation of Agadir, which has always been relatively cut off from the rest of the country, accessible only via mountainous, winding roads.

FES

Fes el Bali

Fes el Bali is the oldest and largest medieval city in the world. The whitewashed medina was built in a valley by the banks of the river fes and is surrounded by green hills. It spans 300 hectares of which there are around 550 inhabitants per herctare. Unlike other medinas, such as Essaouira, which have been logically built in a grid-like layout, Fes el Bali has simply evolved over the centuries as new houses have been built up and down the surrounding hills and passageways added. This means that there is no rhyme or reason to its design. Alleyways lead off main thoroughfares, some ending in doorways others in brick walls, the medina is almost impossible to navigate without the help of a guide. There is no point hunting around for a map as no such thing exist. One of the more reliable ways of telling your location is to see whether or not you are heading up or down hill as much of the meidna is on a steep gradient. The old city is split on either side of the river Fes. On one side is the ancient Andalucian quarter and on the other, joined by just two bridges, the more recently built, more touristically and more exlusive, Karaouyine quarter.

If Fes el Bali is your first port call in Morocco, you could find it intimidating with its crowded, cobbled strrets, dawdling mules and overpowering stench of pigeon dung and fermented chaff used to treat the animal hides, that wafts across from the ancient but fully functioning leather tanneries. Note: there is talk of a filtration system being installed in the old medina to reduce the smell, which is a shame as it an alluring feature of Fes. Many of the streets are no wider than 6 feet, with six storey high building and all street signs written in Arabic. This is where its appeal lies, along with its spectacular properties hidden behind towering doorways, its elaborately decorated mosques including the Karaouyine mosque, second biggest in north Africa and able to accommodate 20,000 people, Koranics shools with courtyards paved in marble and the coverd market with its vast array of little stores and workshops. Hours can be spent simply watching craftmen at work; carpenters, goldsmiths, embroideres,engravers, weavers, blacksmiths often squeezed into spaces little bigger than an elevator. The streets are alive with the sound and smells of a city unchanged in centuries. Goat’s feet, quinces and fresh cheese sell on chabby wooden boxes and barrows overflow with avocadoes, artichokes and mint. Altogether there are 10,539 little shops in the old medina selling anything from pig’s trotters, offal and spices to tambourines, jewellery and doors.

The best way to learn your way around is by getting to know your own neighbourhood. The medina is made up of 187 quartiers, each one required, by law, tohave a mosque, a Koranic shool, a communal oven where families can bake their own bread, apublic hammam and a water fountain- both the water fountains and the hammams are served by 70Km traditional water supply network, running throughout the medina. There are 4000 water fountains in the hole medina. A large number of households obtain their water from these fountains, as private water supply into the home is expensive.

Fes el Bali has won accolades for being the world’s largest contiguous car and bike free zone based on population size with just one road penetrating the city walls that does not enter into the heart of the medina and offers only minimal parking opportunities.

Fes el Jdid

Fes el Jdid is the newer medina built in 13^th century, 10 minutes walk to the west of Fes el Bali. It was ariginall built as a military town to house troops loyal of the medina sultan, so its arcitecture is much more plain and functional the that of Fes el Bali. Half of Fes el Jdid, over 80 hectares, is taken up with royal palace, acessed via place des Alaouites, which includes within its walls, a mosque, a medersa, pavilions, squares and gardnes. Compared to Fes el Bali, there is little of historic or cultural interst in Fes el Jdid and most tourists only pay white washed city a morning or afternoon’s lip service before returning to the sights next door. Perhaps of most interest is the mellah, the jewish compound, thought to be the largest in Morocco. The mellah was constructed by the Merinids to accommodate the jews who they moved away from the outskirts of the Karaouyine mosque in order to create more space for the building of medresas. It became a highly illustrious neighbourhood filled with jeweller’s shops, synagogues and specific architecture ( wooden balconie, high walls and windows with wrought iron grills), which to this day, even after the majority of jews have left and neighbourhood replaced by rural migrants, sets it apart from the rest of the medina.

RABAT

The region Rabat-salé lies in the north west of Morocco along the Atlantic coast, north of Casablanca and south of tangier incorporating to its east agricultural fields and the 134,000 hectare forest of marmora, with is crok oak, eucalyptus, pine groves and wild pear. 75 per cent of the region’s 2 million people live in the cilties of Rabat and Salé, which lie on opposite bank of the Bou REgrag estuary, around half an hour’s walk from one another. Rabat has an area of 9500 hectares, Salé, 15,000 hectares but a smaller population. Despite being the nation’s capital, home to all ministeries, the permanent residence of theking and the 80 or so foreign embassies, Rabat has a small town feel to it, shops shut for a lunchtime siesta, nightlife ends around 10pm and the strets are calm and free from the trafic jams thet asphyxiate most Moroccan cities.

There no flights to Rabat-SAlé from UK or North America. To reach the region, one must fly to Casablanca and take either the 50 minutes train journey or one of the two roads leading to the cities, ( the coastal one being scenic, the highway being fast). There are three highways altogether heading out of the city, theRabat-Casablanca, Rabat-KenitraTangier and the Rabat-Khemisset-Meknes-Fes and Marrakech-Rabat. There are also two train stations in Rabat and one in Salé with connections to most stations in Morocco.

The climate of the the Rabat-Salé region is generally temperate like most Atlantic coastal climates are. Spring and fall are the most pleasant times to visit with temperaturres around the 20-24° C mark. During the summer months, they rise to around 28° C and fall to 17°C or so during winter with most rain between December and February.

The history of Rabat-Salé is one of extremes where the two cities have yo-yoed from the grand to the backwaters and back again. Rivalry and alliances have been the hallmark of the last 800 years ever since the mid 11^th century, when the berber inhabitants of SAla Colonia, a port built by the Romans and now knows as Challah, moved across the estuary to Salé, to escape he orthodox Arabs who had set up a rabat ( a community of warriors fighting for religion) to rid them of their heresy. Sala Colonia, sank into obscurity, while Salé gradually became a propoerous port. Rabat was revived during the reign of the Almohad caliph, Yacoub el Mansour who following a series of successful compaigns against Spain, decided that it should become the Imperial City and built surviving landmarks such as the Oudaia gate, which was attached to the Oudaia Kasbaah, 5 Km of pisé fortifications and the Hassan mosque. He died in 1199, before the mosque was completed and the capital was rapidly relocated to Fes leaving Rabat to fall into decline.