Buy here the way someone from here would buy.
I work for buyers from all over the world purchasing property in Italy: the search, the checks, the negotiation, and the years that follow.
- 5YEARS IN THIS MARKET
- 75+COMPLETED TRANSACTIONS
- 1CLIENT PER SEARCH
Italy is not one market. It is a hundred.
Everybody arrives with a photograph in mind. The work begins when you find out what the place is like in the other nine months of the year, and who is selling, and why.
The lakes
In August the lake is the photograph. In February — grey water, half the restaurants shuttered, the lake road empty — it is the house you will actually own. I take clients up in winter for exactly that reason, on Garda as on Como. Thirty metres of elevation changes the view, the light and the price; two properties described in identical words are rarely worth the same money.
The cities
In the historic centres of Venice, Florence and Rome almost every apartment sits inside a protected building, so the works you are imagining need your neighbours and the heritage office before they need your architect. In Venice the ground floor floods as a matter of routine, which decides your insurance, your maintenance and what can be kept where.
The countryside
From the Vicenza hills to Tuscany, Umbria and the Langhe, this is where the value still is, and much of it never reaches an international portal. Farmhouses and villas with land, usually with some planning history to untangle and agricultural rules that decide what may be restored. They change hands between people who already know each other, which is the part you cannot do from New York, London or Dubai.
The coast and the islands
In Liguria and on the Amalfi Coast, in Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily, the land within three hundred metres of the sea is, with few exceptions, protected landscape. A terrace, a pool or a sea view may rest on a permission granted decades ago, or on none at all. On the islands, ferries, water and the length of the season matter as much as the house itself.
The mountains
Cortina, the Dolomites, Courmayeur under Mont Blanc: small, tightly held markets where the best chalets rarely come up, and almost never through an advert. Running costs are higher than buyers expect, and in Cortina and much of the north-east property is recorded in a different land registry altogether, inherited from Austria.
One point of contact, anywhere in Italy
The Veneto, from Lake Garda to Venice and Cortina, is the ground I know property by property. Everywhere else I work with local professionals I have chosen myself, people who know their own coast or valley the way I know mine, and I remain your only point of contact. I would rather name a limit and cover it with someone better placed than improvise in a market I do not know.
The agent is not on your side. He is not allowed to be.
That sounds like an accusation. It is not. It is the law.
What the law actually says
An Italian estate agent is a mediatore: a go-between, and expressly the representative of neither party. He is not being evasive when he declines to advise you — he is doing the job exactly as it is written. But it leaves you, in a country you do not know, reading documents in a language you do not read, with nobody whose work it is to say: this one has a problem, and this one is worth more than they are asking.
What I do instead
You tell me what you are looking for, and I go and find it. I walk through every house before you ever see it, so that your three days here are spent on four properties instead of fourteen. I read what the file actually says. I am the one who says the number out loud. And when the right answer is that you should walk away from the house you have already fallen in love with, I am free to tell you so.
The guide nobody writes for you.
Three editions: one for American buyers, one for British buyers and an international edition for everyone else, because the positions are genuinely different. Tell me which applies and it downloads immediately. No sales call attached.
- Nine chapters, written and kept current by me
- What a purchase really costs, line by line
- Your tax and residency position, in plain terms
- Every check that must happen before an offer
- What each area is actually like to buy in
- The mistakes that catch almost everyone
Where are you buying from?
The rules are different, so the guide is different.
What are you looking for?
This changes the tax treatment more than anything else.
Roughly what budget?
All in, including taxes and fees.
Where should I send it?
The download starts straight away, and I'll email you a copy as well.
Your guide is downloading.
If nothing happened, download it again. I read every reply, so write back if a question is missing.
Start with one property, or hand me the whole search.
Property review
You have found something yourself and want to know what it actually is before you commit.
I inspect the property, read the planning and cadastral file, pull comparable transactions and set out what I find in writing: the discrepancies, the constraints, a value range with the method shown, and the questions that must be answered before an offer. We then talk it through, and I tell you plainly what I would do. About one week.
a full mandate within six months
Full mandate
You want the search, the checks, the negotiation and the purchase handled by one person.
A written brief, then the published market and the properties that never reach it. I view everything myself and report only on what is worth your time. I commission and read the due diligence, run the negotiation, and stay with you to the deed. Four to eight months.
before anything begins
After completion
You own a house in a country where you do not live, and something will need doing.
Two fixed packages: a handover covering utilities, taxes, insurance, tax code and bank account; and an annual arrangement for a property that stands empty for most of the year. Renovation is handled separately, as project management on the value of the works.
Inside a full mandate.
Discovery
A call to understand what you are really looking for, your budget, where you stand on visas and tax. I decide here whether I can do a good job for you.
Mandate
A written agreement and search criteria we both sign. Nothing begins before we agree what we are looking for.
Search
Published market and off-market. I view everything myself. You receive a written report only on what is worth your time.
Viewing trip
Two or three organised days: viewings, inspections with the surveyor, meetings with the professionals who will handle the purchase.
Due diligence
Survey, planning and cadastral compliance, heritage constraints, service charges. Then the negotiation on price, run by me.
Completion
Preliminary contract, deed, and the months after: utilities, taxes, insurance, renovation if there is any.
The four questions that stall people.
What does a purchase actually cost, all in?
How long can I stay here?
Will I have to pay tax in Italy?
What goes wrong that I would never see?
How are you paid, and does it cost me more?
Elia Rezzante
I grew up between these valleys, and I have watched people arrive from abroad, fall in love with a house in an afternoon, and sign for it without ever understanding what they were signing. Not because anyone lied to them. Because nobody in the room had the job of telling them.
Licensed real estate broker, based near Vicenza: five years and more than seventy-five completed transactions in this market. Before that, inventory controller for Europe and the Middle East at Bottega Veneta, part of the Kering group, and a master’s in International Management from Ca’ Foscari in Venice, taught entirely in English. I have spent my working life explaining Italy to people who did not grow up in it.
Around me there is a notary for bilingual deeds, an architecture practice for surveys and renovation, an accountant used to clients who are taxed in more than one country, a lawyer for the contracts, and an interior designer for what comes after. Beyond the Veneto, local professionals I have chosen do the same on their own ground. Each of them invoices you directly, and I take nothing from any of them for the introduction.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes, nothing attached, and mostly me asking questions. Tell me what you have been imagining and I will tell you honestly whether it exists and roughly what it costs. I will not pretend to settle everything on a call: what matters gets looked into properly afterwards and comes back to you in writing, about your situation rather than in general.