Category: Blog

It has been brilliant to have this time in the house before completing the purchase. We’ve had a chance to really get a feel for the place, problems that need addressing, what works and what doesn’t, what furniture to keep and of course start making plans about what changes to make.

Working out what we want to change and improve is the exciting part and we’re having all sorts of grand ideas. It’s also the expensive part, but reality, budgets, prioritisation and the like can wait for a bit. For now it’s about finding and agreeing our picture of how we’d like it to be.

We’ve been in touch with two potential building companies and already met one of them. The company we have not yet met asked us if we could send any plans we have, some photos and an outline of the work we want to do. I spent a lot of time compiling this into a document that I have stuck in the cloud and shared with both builders. It has been an invaluable exercise to document what we currently have and to get down on paper all the jobs and projects we have identified. We can now update it as we think of things and our ideas change.

In Italy you need permission for nearly everything you do to a house and you need a geometra to help you do that. They also help plan and oversee the work. They’re a bit of a cross between a surveyor and a junior architect. They know the rules of the local commune and how to get the required permissions. Obviously we want to find a good one that we can communicate with and the geometra we used for the purchase doesn’t fit the bill. The builder we have met came along with a local geometra they have worked with in the past. That may be the way to go but we’d need to be sure there was not too much of a cosy relationship there. He should be working for us and keeping the builder honest.

We have been advised that rather than doing a succession of smaller projects and getting permission for each, it is better to plan out everything you want to do, get the permissions and then execute in phases. Coming up with a master plan is a challenging thing to do. Back home, we’re more used to just deciding on what jobs we’ll do in the coming year. Still, we’ve made a start on a plan and we’ll need to get a better handle on how flexible things can be once we embark on the work.

One interesting thing we got from the geometra who visited is that there are currently a bunch of building bonus schemes funded by the government to kick start the building trade as Italy emerges from the pandemic. They are a kind of tax credit paid out over a 10 year period. For some, you don’t need to be a resident or even pay tax in Italy. The credit can be against someone else’s tax e.g. the builder. You can even sell the credit to a bank – they take a cut but you get the rest immediately. These schemes are generous (50%, 90% or 110% of the applicable costs), but time limited so they may influence the order in which we do work on the house.

Domenico came to visit again on Wednesday 7 July. He lent us his electric chainsaw and hedge trimmers (so kind) and we toured the garden recording what he knew of the trees and shrubs in it. I now have a little hand drawn and annotated map of the garden which I need to find a way to record better. As far as fruit trees go, we have apricot, kaki (persimmon), olive, pear, fig (may be dying), cherry and nocciola (hazel nut). Hopefully we will get some ripe fruit before we leave.

Domenico reiterated the issue with the hedge and our neighbour, so next day I attempted to tackle the situation using his chain saw. Nightmare. I didn’t feel particularly safe or in control wielding a chain saw above my head in order to reduce the hedge to 2m. Not only that, but the chain soon came off the saw. Time to retreat and make a better plan.

The next day I started on the hedge with secateurs and a pair of loppers that we had brought from the UK. This was harder work physically, but I felt more in control. Had a chat with Lino the neighbour who was delighted that I was making a start. It soon became apparent that I couldn’t reach all the branches with the loppers we had brought and it wasn’t long before we headed off to the brico to buy long loppers along with other household and garden tools. We also priced up petrol strimmers and mowers.

Once I had the long loppers I set to on the hedge again. When I say hedge, it had been so long since it was trimmed that it stood about 4 or 5 meters tall in places and the thickest branches were more than an inch in diameter.

The hedge in question – laurel

Then disaster struck. On the evening of 12 July while removing larger branches with my long loppers I realised I had disturbed a birds nest with chicks in. I found it surprising that birds were still nesting in July – shows how much I know. I backed off, determined to leave the hedge for now and desperately hoped the parents would return and the chicks survive. I fear that was not the case.

While I was doing battle with the laurel hedge, Fenella tackled the area outside the back door. She removed a rather unimpressive hedge growing along the wall outside the kitchen, pruned two camellias and removed an ugly wire fence. A big improvement, but we’ll have to do something about the wall which is not at all attractive – all in good time.

Also on 12 July we headed down to the agricultural suppliers looking for a strimmer and a mower. They only had one option and it was a battery operated system with the various tools sharing the same battery. My experience at the allotment had been that battery power tools were underpowered and that the battery ran out quickly. The size of the battery (a whopping 82V) and the shop owners assurance that recharging was only 20 minutes reassured me somewhat. Wanting to spend money locally we took a punt and bought the highest power battery on offer, a charger, a strimmer and a mower. I have to say, they are really good and of course we have access to power for recharging (unlike at my allotment). May well go back for a hedge trimmer, but I think it will be a while before I risk a chainsaw again.

On Wednesday 14 July we met with Andrea who is the gardener and family friend of Domenico. He brought along his daughter Alessia to act as interpreter. She’s a bright cookie and her English is pretty good. We talked about the garden and how Andrea might help us get it under control and keep it that way. He was happy we had bought the house and told us the locals were also pleased. He had helped Domenico’s parents look after the garden when they were alive and said it had been beautiful. He’d been frustrated that after their death he’d only been allowed to visit twice a year for minimal maintenance. We told him we wanted to get the garden looking good again and wanted him to visit and care for it in the periods we were away from the house with which he seemed pleased. We booked him for three days in early August to tackle some specific things: remove the magnolia from the front of the house, get the laurel hedge bordering Lino’s house and garden back under control, remove the hedge from around the pool. We’ll see how that goes, but we warmed to them both and are hopeful he will work out in the longer term.

In this period, we also visited a garden centre and bought plants to fill some of the pots in front of the house. Makes it look cared for and creates an opportunity to chat with the neighbours during evening watering. Using the water supply to the house for watering the garden is a real no no, but there is a standpipe outside our neighbour’s house that is fed from the gora (stream) that runs across the back of our garden. In the early evening, there is a steady stream of people filling bottles and watering cans from the standpipe. Watering our pots presents an opportunity to meet and chat with the people who live close by.

One of the garden delights is looking up from the house in the early evening at the sun streaming down the path.

On Monday we went out in search of a pharmacy to conduct lateral flow tests in order to conclude our quarantine. The chap from the health authority had told us we could just go to any pharmacy and get a test. The two local pharmacies, however, did not have any such facility and both suggested the Farmacia Comunale in Lucca.

We headed over to Lucca only to be told by the pharmacist that we would need an appointment and that the first available was 16:00 on Wednesday. We took the appointment and decided we would start doing normal things in spite of the lack of a test as we had anyway done our own lateral flow tests brought with us from the UK.

We parked in our usual spot, walked round the walls and went for lunch in the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro. Felt like freedom.

When we returned for our tests on Wednesday, the pharmacy manager told us he could not do the tests as the computer system was down for the whole of Tuscany and had been since the day before. We asked him to do the tests and issue us with paper results, but he was not willing to do that. We then told him we would need to contact the health authority to let them know our situation and asked for his name. That seemed to galvanise him and he made a bunch of phone calls. In the end he took us off into the room where they conduct the tests and issued us with negative certificates WITHOUT ACTUALLY CONDUCTING THE TESTS.

We knew we were fine and had done the best we could so decided we were now OK and would wait for the health authority to contact us regarding the test results. THEY NEVER DID. No better than the UK then.

We spent the remainder of our quarantine cleaning, airing the house, taking junk down to the stable, writing long lists of things to buy and making a start on the garden (mostly chopping stuff down).

I ordered an Italian SIM from Iliad which is a kind of Italian Giffgaff (fixed monthly cost, lots of data). We need an Italian phone number for a bunch of things and also sensibly priced data until we can arrange proper broadband.

Domenico turned up on Friday with the man from the agricultural supplies shop and two large gas canisters so we could cook during quarantine. He also brought the key to the stable so we could put the junk we were clearing somewhere. Of course it was pretty full of junk already. He helped us locate the rubbish collection calendar online (complex) and told us where the local recycling centre is. We made a date for him to return once we were out of quarantine so he could take us round the garden and help us identify the shrubs and trees.

Our neighbour lost no time telling us he wanted us to trim our hedge adjoining his garden and house. He had also complained to Domenico who offered to lend us his chainsaw and hedge trimmer.

We stuck to the house and garden and just got on with jobs of which there are plenty.

Removing the ivy and creeping fig that were attacking the house

We woke up excited on the first morning after very little sleep.

First things first. Coffee. Slight problem. No water. We searched around the house and garage and while there were plenty of stopcocks to turn, they all seemed to be on already and the water stubbornly refused to flow. Searching outside finally revealed the main water meter and stopcock so we were in business.

Coffee made and consumed, we looked round the house which appeared to be in pretty good shape but smelling a bit of damp on the ground floor. We threw open windows and doors. We worked out what the keys we’d been given were for and found a bunch more.

We soon realised that we’d not just bought a house with furniture, we’d bought a house with stuff – and plenty of it. Every cupboard was full of stuff. Every store room was full of junk. It seems that it’s quite normal for Italians to leave everything in the houses they sell and that certainly happened here.

The simple plan of attack was to concentrate our efforts on weeding and cleaning the kitchen and the two bedrooms we’d picked (all on the first floor). We decided to move all the stuff we wanted to get rid of down to the ground floor and then out to the stable for removal once we were out of quarantine and able to leave the house. One problem, however, none of the big rusty old keys we could find would open the stable door. We emailed Domenico to ask how to get into the stable and continued to accumulate junk on the ground floor.

We also both reported in via the Toscana health service web site so that they were aware we were here and quarantining. They phoned back pronto and told us to stay at the house till Monday and then go and get a test.

We had our first meal here at lunch time in the outside seating area.

After lunch I checked out the gas bottles for the cooker. One was completely empty, but the second seemed to have gas and I could light the cooker. Turned out different come supper time. Fenella had done the prep for our first cooked meal here. She switched on the stove and the flame lasted a few seconds before dying completely. Hugely frustrating and upsetting. We had 5 days of food in the fridge and no way to cook it.

We checked out the local pizzeria online. It does takeaway, but not delivery. We called and explained that we couldn’t leave the house and they very kindly agreed to deliver. The owner and her daughter came up about half an hour later with two pizzas. We had met the daughter when we ate at the restaurant last year. She was studying at Nottingham then and this year had just come home after finishing her degree.

Disaster was averted and we had a fine supper of pizza and salad. No leftovers.

We still had the problem of no gas however. I checked my emails and Domenico had replied. He had the key to the stables and said he’d pop over from Lucca to deliver it in the morning. We asked about the gas situation in case I’d just connected it up wrong and he offered to drop into the local agricultural supplies shop and order us two new gas bottles on his way over in the morning. What a lovely guy!

On Friday 25th June we lost our nerve and decided to travel as soon as possible. COVID-19 cases in the UK were rising fast – fuelled by the Delta variant. There were indications that EU countries might move to tighten restrictions for travellers from the UK driven by a hard line stance from Angela Merkel. We decided to rebook for Tuesday 29th in the hope we would still be able to drive.

The French entry requirements were a negative lateral flow test taken within 48 hours of departure, full vaccination and a written declaration that we were COVID-19 free. The Italian requirements were more stringent: a negative lateral flow test taken within 48 hours of arrival, a completed locator form and 5 days of quarantine (to be monitored by the local health authority who we would need to notify on arrival) followed by a further lateral flow test.

So the main challenges were to get across the Italian border within 48 hours of being tested and to stock up with 5 days of food before entering Italy (as we would need to drive straight to the house without stopping).

This is how it went. We drove to a test facility at Heathrow for 9am tests with a 1 hour turn around.

We continued from there to Dover and received the test results by email before we got there. We went through French border control before boarding the ferry. They wanted to see the negative tests and our vaccination status via the NHS app. They were not interested in the written declarations. At 2pm we set sail – first major hurdle cleared.

Never seen a ferry car deck this empty before

We drove till supper time and stopped in a hotel near the motorway outside Reims. We knew the next day would be a marathon so we turned in straight after supper.

Early breakfast and on the road by 8:30.  We had already filled in our locator forms for a 17:00 crossing via the Mont Blanc tunnel so that is what we were aiming for. We stopped to stock up on food at a Carrefour in the French alps and made it to the queue for the tunnel by 17:45.

5 days of food bought

The tunnel was only operating in one direction at a time so we had a lengthy wait. We watched our predicted time of arrival at the house ticking up and up. It was extremely frustrating and aggravating. After about two hours, it was eventually our turn and we were just waved through Italian customs without having to show anything.

The moment we hit Italy, we also hit roadworks – one set after another. The ETA kept on going up. Then we hit Genoa and found that the E80 motorway in the direction of Livorno (and more to the point Lucca) was closed. We tried heading down alternative roads, but our sat nav kept bringing us back to the same closed section of motorway. If you’ve ever driven round Genoa you’ll know how winding and confusing the roads are. It was near midnight and we were tired and fractious and were getting nowhere fast.

Eventually we switched from our sat nav to Google maps which seemed to know about the motorway closure. It took us along the old SS1 coast road instead. Half an hour or so later we were back on the motorway with another couple of hours driving ahead of us.

At about 2:30am we pulled up at the house, fished out the keys and let ourselves in. We then spent about 10 minutes searching for the main electricity switch with only the torches on our phones for light.

Once we had light, we unloaded everything from the car into the entrance hall and put the car away in the garage. We fired up the fridge and put all the food shopping away. We found beds and settled down around 4am totally shattered and pretty overwhelmed.

The signed compromesso and the keys arrived by DHL before Christmas. Domenico had agreed that we could go over and stay in the house between the compromesso and rogito, but the UK was in lockdown and Italy was only letting residents in.

So we just had to wait. In the meantime, we got on with whatever we could do. We took over the accounts for electricity, water and rubbish collection each of which was rather convoluted and time consuming (the Italians do seem to like their red tape). We opened a Euro bank account. We switched our car insurance, breakdown cover and travel insurance to Saga who are geared up to long holidays abroad.

We waited and we kept checking the rules for travel as they chopped and changed. We both got our first vaccination done in January as we were volunteering on the vaccination programme, but this did mean we would need to wait till the end of April when we would be fully vaccinated before we could sensibly travel.

At one or two points it looked like we might be able to go out using the house purchase as a reason for travelling. With Italy lagging far behind on the vaccinations, however, we decided that we would quite possibly get off to a bad start with our new neighbours if we rocked up at a time when their cases and deaths were rising. So we decided to keep on waiting.

Planning for Martin’s 60th kicked in and a date was set for the celebration on the weekend after the planned end of UK lockdown. We sent out tentative invitations to about 100 friends and family. We started tasting wine and finger food; we bought a gazebo and recyclable bamboo plates and cutlery. We also set a firmer date for our departure for Italy in mid July (a couple of weeks after the party).

Then the new Delta variant started kicking in. We stopped party planning and waited to see how it would pan out. A few times we thought seriously about heading off to Italy, but stuck it out hoping we wouldn’t have to cancel the party. Well, that didn’t pay off. On 14th June Boris announced the by then expected delay to the lifting of restrictions. The party was off.

So we are still waiting and hoping that travel to Italy will be possible on the date we have planned (14 July). We’re happy to take any tests needed and quarantine at both ends of the trip if needs be. The rogito is scheduled for 26th July. Here’s hoping…

We started planning for the compromesso. Our intention was that either both of us would go over in November for the signing or just Martin if needs be. There was plenty to sort as the whole process would need to be done in Italian and English.

We needed a notary who spoke English and an approved translator (to translate documents and to act as interpreter at the signing). We needed a geometra to assure that the property actually matched the details on file at the cadaster (land registry). We also wanted an engineer’s report (survey) to be sure the house was structurally sound as it’s in an area subject to earth quakes. Oh, and we had to get the money across to the notary’s escrow account.

We relied heavily on Martina to recommend the people to use and to help us navigate the processes. In Italy, the agent acts for and is paid by both the seller and buyer. They are also properly qualified and regulated. We did occasionally worry a bit and wonder if it might all be a bit too cosy between the Italian participants, but it has all been fine so far.

As the scheduled date for the compromesso approached, COVID-19 started interfering with arrangements. The UK went into lockdown and we could not travel. The Italian notary drew up a power of attorney so that Martina could act on our behalf. We had to sign it in the presence of an Italian speaking notary here in the UK and get it apostilled and couriered over to Martina along with the signed compromesso in time for the appointment. We made it – just.

Then the Italian notary contracted COVID-19 and had to self isolate. The compromesso had to be rescheduled with an alternative notary.

Finally the deed was done on 3 December. We were stuck here in London and just had to wait to be told when it was complete. It was nerve wracking, but the word came through at 3:51pm along with photos.

Handing over the keys. Domenico on the right, his sister on the left, Martina in the middle.

Domenico and his sister accepted our verbal offer and we asked Martina to draft a formal letter of offer. Exciting and a little bit scary!

The purchase of a property in Italy has the following main stages:

• La proposta: a formal proposal to purchase that is signed by both the sellers and buyers. A small deposit is paid and both parties commit to the transaction. The seller takes the property off the market.
• Il compromesso: equivalent to exchange of contracts in the UK. This takes place at the offices of a notary and is accompanied by a more substantial deposit.
• Il rogito: equivalent to completion in the UK. Again this takes place at the notary’s office and the balance of the purchase price is paid.

The plan was to sign the proposta when we got back to the UK and then return to Italy for the compromesso in November 2020. From that point we would be able to stay in the house and start planning what to do with it. The rogito was scheduled to be completed by the end of September 2021 with the expectation that we would complete in July.

We signed four copies of the proposta in the UK on 2 October and sent them to Martina by post and email. Domenico and his sister signed on 16 October and we paid the deposit direct to Domenico.

We arranged a second viewing and in the intervening days we visited the village and the surrounding area a few times. We ate at the village restaurant and the pizzeria. We had a drink at the bar and scoped out the shops. The village also has a church and a school. The vibe was good and the area attractive with a short and quite scenic drive into Lucca.

We went for the second viewing on 14 September and took lots of photos some of which you can see here. We tried to look at everything dispassionately as we were really there to decide whether or not to make an offer. Domenico was there again and we were able to ask lots of questions.

After the viewing, we met with Martina, the agent, in the village bar to discuss our situation and how to proceed.

We explained that we had never intended to buy on this trip and would not be in a position to do so until the summer of 2021. We also made clear how keen we were on the house and that we really wanted to buy it if at all possible. We asked her to discuss with Domenico whether he would accept an offer based on us paying about half on exchange of contracts (the compromesso) and the balance on completion (the rogito) next summer.

We held our breaths while Domenico discussed our offer with his sister and co-owner.