With new low-cost airline access - including a three-hour flight from Luton with Ryanair - and surging interest in Morocco's historic cities, Fez holds great appeal to foreign property buyers in search of the next Marrakech.While wealthy Moroccans regard the old town as the ghetto and prefer to live in Fez's French-built new quarter, overseas investors are eyeing up the palaces, dars (houses set around courtyards) and riads (houses with gardens) in the Fes-El-Bali medina, the world's largest car-free urban zone. Among its back streets are about 3,000 houses in a ruined state. Those for sale cost from £20,000 - a fifth of the price of comparable properties in Marrakech.
"It's hard to find beautiful houses with original features and a lot of people are put off by stories of the endless paperwork and having to track down all the owners before you can buy," says Louis McIntosh, a former DJ from Norwich who recently moved to Fez and bought a six-storey house with octagonal ceilings in the medina for £24,000.