615 Buying property

Firstly I apologise to those I may upset or annoy. But I appreciate that everyone needs to make a living but it would seem from various enquiries I have made on various properties, these businesses refer my enquiry to another and another and so on. Obviously each of these companies will require to make a commission from the property, but surely this bumps up the price somewhat. I do realise I require the assistance of a "local" or "Italian speaker" (as I had no hesitation in appointing a wedding organiser based in San Marino when I married in Firenze as I appreciated the language barrier and legalities etc), but the chain seems to be endless in the house purchase. But like I said I appreciate we all need to earn an income.

Can anyone recommend an agent in Abruzzo or one that covers most of the country who does not keep referring the enquries down the chain and presumably the cost as it moves along the chain.

Or better still does anyone know of any private sellers (needless to say you will need to know what I am after etc).

Again may I apologise for those who may be annoyed by this message.
sincps

Category
General chat about Italy

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/16/2005 - 17:46

I don't know why anyone would be annoyed, it seems emminently sensible. To try to use contacts. House around Italy has a good reputation, have you tried them?

I don't know of any houses up for sale near me, OTOH if I did, I'd be into buying myself ;). Someone posting here wanted to sell a pair of houses in the north of Abruzzo, did you see the post in question?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 06/17/2005 - 08:31

If you want to go direct to the Italian agents, then [url]www.gabetti.com[/url], [url]www.remax.it[/url], [url]www.tecnocasa.it[/url] and [url]www.casa.it[/url] are the biggest portals, however they often don't have the same level of detail in the descriptions or photographs of the homes they are selling as you would expect to see in the UK.
The commission that agents charge is normally stated as 3%, although you are free to negotiate a lower rate, if you can.
I don't think that buying through someone who refers you an agent neccesarily increases the cost to you. Sometimes the agent is happy to give part of their commission to the referrer for finding a client who wouldn't otherwise have found them.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 06/17/2005 - 08:39

Another useful site that covers every region in Italy is:

[url]www.fiaip.it[/url]

This is the official site of the Italian Federation of Professional Estate Agents

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 06/17/2005 - 09:53

I'm glad someone else has mentioned 'house around Italy', I have been frightened to name agents in case of rebuke.
We have just come back from Italy, we visited about 25 houses with them (rather their 'scouts') we found all the people we saw very helpful. Athough my partner is Italian they supplied English speaking staff so that I could get the details first hand. (my italian is very limited at present). We have started the ball rolling with a property we saw and hope everything goes ok.