Villa in the village - Kenneth Curmi

Browsing through the property adverts from one of the continuously blossoming real estate companies that seem bent on maximising their profits at all costs, I came across one advertising the sale of a would-be villa. This may technically be a villa, perhaps, but certainly not the dictionary definition of “a large and luxurious” house. It looked more like a big IKEA showroom.

Still, it boasted spacious living quarters and the ubiquitous (if you’re ‘successful’, that is) pool. It had a kitchen with enough space for someone to actually cook in, a dining table which, while being far from anything remotely resembling luxury, was big enough to allow a family to eat their dinner in dignity, and the just as ubiquitous “open plan living room” to save space and sell a smaller house as a bigger one, err, I mean to “provide a holistic shared living experience and enrich the family ambience”.

So, while the interior would serve well as an illustrative collection of faux pas to those with interior design ambitions, the place still looked better than most of its matchbox competitors on the market.

Fancy a home like that? Well, it will cost you. Close to a million in fact. For a semi-detached...