Buying a second property in italy

You could be the agent Richard 😀.

Did you look into those areas offering a house for 1 euro Tracey? I know they go for more than that. But they would have public notary assigned.

Sadly, I only know enough Italian to s**tpost in the language :D.

Property in Italy is a different beast. From what I recall of my uncle's buying a house there, the process is more intimate in that the buyer and seller often meet each other when signing the contracts. There is also enormous variation from region to region. A house in Palermo will be much less than a house in Milan. Generally speaking, the north will be more expensive, and if you're anywhere near the famous cities (i.e., Florence, Venice or Rome, you will pay more).

If you have the money, my recommendation is Tuscany. You'll rent it out as a holiday home with no issues, and Tuscany is (in my opinion) the nicest region of Italy.

Questo consiglio è buono :). Jokes aside, I wouldn't buy property in Italy without a a native speaker's being present.

Be careful. Different culture, legal system, taxes, geography. Consider living there for up to a year before buying.

The Italian embassy in Dublin or the Irish embassy in Rome may be able to give you pointers.

Importantly, different parts of Italy are subject to things like volcanoes, earthquakes, glaciers, rockfalls and snow avalanches. Temperatures can reach into the 40s in summer and stay below freezing for extended periods in winter.

Costs and cost structures might be quite different, e.g. water charges and higher property taxes, but that might include bin charges.

What will access to services be like? Shops, schools, medics, jobs, flights to Ireland.

Hi, I think if you check the askaboutmoney forum there is some threads about buying in spain/italy etc.. good luck with purchase.

A friend has a property in Spain and some squatters broke into it and just took it. No police or anyone at all were interested in helping. After about 2 years he finally had enough and went over and hired some heavies and they went in and beat the crap out of the squatters. He had to stay while the place was fixed up and then rent it long term before he left in case the original squatters or others moved moved back in after he left. He is trying to sell it now.

There's a girl in Instagram, 'stephmylife ' she is irish and husband English, they bought in abruzzo in Italy, she has a few highlights about it, why they picked there, how the process went etc

Be very, very clear on why and where you want to buy. As others have said, when it comes to the realities of day-to-day life, "Italy" is a catch-all term for a huge number of different regions, each with their own customs, climate and local regulations. If you don't already know where you want to buy, and why, then at the very least, your first step towards buying should be to visit at least a dozen different areas at different times of the year and be able to say "I'd like to buy a house here, because ..."

One word of caution: if you're thinking of having this second property to provide a supplementary income, don't assume that property rentals work like they do in Ireland/GB. Living in France, I'm surrounded by British people who thought it would be great to "buy a second property in France" and for whom the dream turned sour because they didn't take account of the different approach. It has less to do with being able to speak the local language and more to being ripped off or fobbed off because they never really wanted to live in the area, just own a property here. I see the same in Spain and Italy.

Why would you find this difficult to believe? In most of the world, little English is spoken.

About 5% of the world's population have English as a first language (and most of these live in just two countries, the US and India). Another 13% have some command of English as a second language. 82% have no functional English at all.

In Italy, about a third of people say they can speak a second language, and for about half of these the second language is English. That would suggest about 17% of the population have some functional English, but for many of these they learned English at school, and it's now fairly rusty. By and large, only Italians working in tourist-oriented business have much opportunity to use, and therefore retain or even improve, the English they learned at school.

Relevantly to this thread, estate agency is not a tourist-oriented business.

Most people who think about buying a property in Italy are considering a rural location. (Who wants a holiday apartment in Turin? Besides, there are plenty of cheap but attractive rural properties in Italy; not so many cheap, attractive urban properties.) But competnence in English is strongest in the cities of the north of Italy; weakest in the rural parts of central and southern Italy.

I know (and am madly jealous of) a couple of people who have second homes in Italian villages. They both say that it's desirable but not essential to have Italian when buying a home, but it's pretty much essential to have Italian if you want to live in it. The tiler, the plumber, the electrician, the guy who comes to sort out your broadband, the assistant in the hardware store or the grocery — they'll all have little or no English.

Ireland is the only native English speaking country in the EU, why should people living in Italy speak English because of that?

Those are countries where people speak English as a second language.

Ireland is the only native English-speaking country in the EU.

I'm shocked sometimes by the amount of Irish people who think everyone should speak English, while most of them don't even speak Irish!