2926 Hello everyone - and where to buy with small budget.

Hello Everyone,
It's a relief to have found this great site with all your experiences to draw on. At present we're living in France but are planning to buy a holiday home in Italy soon which we can use as a base for exploring before deciding on where to buy and settle permanently in a few years.
We have only £65,000 euros for the holiday home but are hoping to find a habitable property in the hills of Liguria,or Abruzzo.
A bit fazed by all the legalities involved as our Italian is very basic and I've been reading some of the problems some of you have encountered when buying. When we bought our house in France, some friends translated for us during the signings at the Notaires-is that permissible in Italy?
We're going to look at properties in Liguria and Abruzzo during a two week trip in April-can anyone recommend any good estate agents in both/either area.
Looking forward to any replies
Jo

Category
Introduce Yourself - Piacere Conoscerti

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 12:43

Welcome to the forum, hope you find it informative! Cannot help you on the recommendation question as we decided to settle in Lazio. If however you decided to look in this area after all, just send us a PM! Good Luck with your search. As a matter of interest, why have you decided to leave France?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 13:51

Hi DavidandLinda and thanks for your reply. We've decided to leave France for several reasons-the weather's not as great as we'd hoped and although we've met lots of lovely French people, we are hoping that Italians might take life a little less seriously (nuf said!) We also have an ongoing love affair with Italy but weren't able to move there when we moved to France 4 years ago because at the time it was much easier to get back to the Uk to visit family.
Funnily enough-after I'd posted my message, I came across a site advertising a property finding business in Lazio and have been looking for info on that area since then! We had dismissed it as being too expensive because of the proximity to Rome but that doesn't seem to necessrily be the case - so any info on buying there would be very useful thanks. Jo

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 13:52

Oops-just realised what a PM is! Sorry if I've sent this to the wrong place....

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 14:09

As far as looking in Liguria is concerned I would recommend the [url]www.casa.it[/url] portal. Many estate agents properties will appear and you can search by province and comune. Depending upon what you are looking for, on your budget in the Imperia province, you might be able to find a small apartment in a centro storico in the entroterra or a small rustico in need of full conversion/restoriation with a bit of land for a little more you might get a small place already converted. Apartments in the costal resorts begin at considerably more.

I would recommend you work through main stream estate agents - there are plenty of them as owning a second home in the riviera area is very popular for Italians. Once you visit you can tour them all and pick up the paper with listings in CercaCasa from outside their doors.

If you wanted to be in the Argentina Valley eg Molini di Triora there is an English run agency [url]www.casaantica.com[/url]. We found them helpful but decided against the areas where their properties were located.

Good Luck it may be more difficult to decide where you want to look than to find something you want to buy.:cool:

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 14:26

jogra glad you made a mistake on the pm posting - found your post very interesting. We are just south of Rome and there is no doubt that some places are VERY expensive but we found our little jewel with a combination of internet agents (casa.it) etc and a couple of local agents. We knew exactly the commune we wanted to be in - some leave rubbish in the streets for days, the next door commune clears it away before you know it's there. This kind of information came to us by firstly being familiar with the general area around Rome and then just driving around - we thought Ladispoli could have been interesting as we weren't too familiar with it and it was at the coast, new housing etc etc.. Made an appointment to view several new builds- all very nice houses but when we drove to get a coffee in the local town - scary. Decided to go for a place nearly falling down in an area that felt comfortable for us - in the end we found several more possibilities within our price range once we started to dig deeper - if you don't know your area, you really need to start by just driving around and getting a feel for the place (just the same as in the UK really)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 15:01

Thank very much for your replies-plenty of food for thought. We're away for the next few days and won't have access to the internet so I'll look forward to carrying on with reseach when we get back-will have to make do with perusing maps for a few days!!:(
Jo