It was recently described in the South China Morning Post as "Tuscany without the English" and has been recently highlighted as a hot-spot for cost-conscious visitors to Italy this year. But Abruzzo, the mountainous Apennine region to the west of Rome, is also one of Europe's best areas to find property bargains, with prices a fraction of those in better-known regions such as Tuscany and Umbria.
In Abruzzo, a region that has been generally overlooked by property hunters until recently, you can buy a ruin for under £20,000, and a fully habitable house with garden and panoramic views for under £100,000. What makes it all the more remarkable, is that this is in a region where you're never far away from the Adriatic Sea, on which Abruzzo has a 129km coastline, and which hosts 21 ski areas as well as three national parks and some of Italy's most unspoilt landscapes and hill towns. Agent House Around Italy says: "The Abruzzo region is the most overlooked and undervalued area in Central Italy with house and property prices between 30% and 70% cheaper than Tuscany and Umbria."
Abruzzo is just one of the 'undiscovered' regions that offer cheaper alternatives to Europe's most established holiday home locations. In Portugal, Brits have flocked to buy property over recent years in the Algarve, driving up prices in the process. But the Silver Coast - on Portugal's Atlantic seaboard between Lisbon and Porto - offers some stunning scenery and excellent beaches backed by unspoilt countryside and villages you would not find anywhere in the Algarve. It is also significantly less expensive than the Algarve - one estimate puts the difference at around 25%.
And in France, a number of departments in the south-west are vying to offer an affordable alternative to the most popular, and expensive, regions of the Cote d'Azur and the Dordogne. Charente, around the towns of Angouleme and Cognac, was named by French property specialist VEF as one of last year's hotspots and provides a cheaper alternative to the Dordogne. VEF said prices are "15-20% lower than the national average", in a region that "ticks all the boxes".
The coastal departments of Languedoc-Roussillon - Gard, Herault, Aude and Pyrenees-Orientales - are all much less expensive than the Cote d'Azur, meanwhile. And while Montpellier and Perpignan may not quite have the glamour of Nice and Menton, the climate is arguably better. 2009 may well be the year in which some of these lesser-known locations get their fair share of attention.
Alexander Garrett is a freelance property writer who contributes regularly to The Observer and British Airways' Business Life.