For someone familiar with the structured and disciplined process of house buying and selling in the US, Italy is a foray into an unregulated, free-for-all world where anything can happen.
To start with, there’s no such thing as a listing agent. Stated a little differently, everyone’s a listing agent, and it seems they can each advertise the property for a different price. Shopping is therefore encouraged, and you can see the multiple properties through different agents, as we did. And even though it’s the honorable thing to do to buy through the agent that showed you the property, I get the sense that it’s not required.
Commissions are similar to the US, although they’re shared by buyer and seller, and not born solely by the seller as in the US (at least where I lived).
Once you enter into the offer-contract-closing stages, there’s a formal process that’s followed, which I won’t go into here – there are plenty of web sites that cover this aspect, and we left most of it to our realtor anyway.
Not long ago, Marche was relatively unknown for property investment, particularly when compared with its neighbors to the west, Umbria and Tuscany. That’s changed in the last 5 years or so, with prices increasing year-on-year by as much as 25%. And while it’s still cheaper than its more illustrious neighbors, it’s not the bargain that it used to be.
However, with a countryside that rivals those of Umbria and Tuscany, quaint hilltop towns and rolling rural farmland, there are plenty of real estate options available, from restoring a pile of stones, to moving in to a restored apartment in an old village castle. As a result, traffic has been brisk, particularly from the UK, and renovations are in progress wherever you go, bringing with them accents (verbal, not architectural, thank heavens) from all over England. Americans are also starting to come in growing numbers.
Over the course of two trips spaced 3 months apart in 2004, 3 realtors showed us around 25 properties that ranged in price from about €65,000 to around €250,000. Most were traditional brick-and-stone farmhouses in various states of repair (or disrepair, as the case may be), with a few town homes/apartments – one in a delightful village square – and a number of more “modern” (read: not brick-and-stone) homes.
While none were in the “pile of stones” category, the degree of renovation ranged from minor to substantial. In some cases renovations would have been necessary to atone for “quirks” of design (a kindly, optimistic view), such as common thoroughfares in the house going through bedrooms. In some cases, the extent of “design creativity” was irretrievable, and would have required wholesale organ transplantation in order to revive a semblance of taste. These unfortunates, needless to say, never made it past the 10-minute minimum visit to preserve a modicum of courtesy to the person showing the house to us.
Among the houses we saw, there were one or two that I would have been happy to pursue, not least because they were immediately livable, and the destination was more important to me than the house itself. However, none passed the German muster, and it wasn’t until the last day of our second visit when we were shown a last-gasp, just-on-the-market, slightly-over-our-budget house. It met our primary criteria – good view (of the Apennine mountains just a few miles to the west), character (which we firmly believed was there in liberal quantities under the bright pink walls), and location (out in the midst of rolling farmland, just 10 minutes from pleasant Tolentino, 25 from the university town/city of Macerata, and another 15 to the ocean).
On our return to the US (October 2004), we put in an offer some 10% lower than the asking price. The seller accepted it immediately. It was done.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Marche - Italy in one region ... and a few unusual destinations to boot
In his 1957 book Viaggio in Italia, Guido Piovene had this to say: “If one had to decide which Italian landscape was the most typical, you’d have to choose the Marche … Italy, with its range of landscapes, is a distillation of the world; the Marche is a distillation of Italy.”
My lack of knowledge of the nether lands (of Italy) prevents me from verifying the claim, but if I ever fill that void, I’ll be sure to proffer an opinion.
One thing’s for sure, Marche is diverse, and not just in landscape. For example, according to the wholly unbiased Marche Tourism Department, it has the largest number of museums and galleries in Italy, 200 Romanesque churches, and 71 historic theaters, amongst many other impressive and arbitrary statistics.
There's plenty to offer a variety of tastes, from the common place to the obscure. Here are a few examples:
In a little town just 5 miles from the Adriatic coast, is a plain stone building that draws thousands of religious pilgrims every year. That’s because it’s believed to be the birthplace of the Virgin Mary and the childhood home of Jesus, transported here by angels towards the end of the crusades to spare it from the clutches of the Turks.
In a beautiful hilltop university town in the north, is an unassuming house on a steep cobbled street. This was where Renaissance artist Rafael grew up, developing the craft that was to garner him widespread and lasting acclaim. His house is just one of a clutch of veritable gems in this charming and popular town.
Nestled in a bowl deep in the Apennine mountains is an innocuous tarn, steel blue in its stark surroundings. The legend goes that Pontius Pilate is buried here. The legend also goes that the Sybil, priestess and guide to the underworld, lived here in a cave with a hundred mouths, and that her whispers would resound and echo here for all eternity.
Not far from this place is a canyon that splits the mountains, an awesome creation of the River Tenna. Within it runs a “road” (the term is used liberally) that at one time went all the way to Roma. Today it’s the home of a hermit monk living in a church that he built by hand, perhaps a fitting fixture in a chasm that goes by the name Gola de Infernaccio (Hell’s Gorge).
In a small town not far from the coast, is an industry that fuels a hundred folk music traditions around the world – the manufacture of accordions. It’s said that the world’s first piano accordion was manufactured here in 1863.
Promoting shoes from Italy isn’t exactly ground-breaking, but normally one associates it with Roma and Milano, the country’s fashion capitals. But tucked away on the Adriatic coast is a zone that features one shoe factory and outlet store after another. The Italians know about it, even if the rest of the world doesn’t.
Marche enjoys a coastline on the Adriatic of 180 kilometers (just over 110 miles). Beaches alternate between stone and sand, and welcome thousands upon thousands of Italians and other Europeans during the busy summer months. Also scattered amongst the lido regiments and their orderly ranks of beach chairs, are a few grassy hills and tree-clad cliffs, creating coves and bays of deep blue and incredible beauty.
Of course, one advantage of central Italy is its proximity to so many other areas of not only Italy, but Europe. In Marche, your options are expanded significantly thanks to the busy ferry port of Ancona. A genuine, pleasant city in its own right, Ancona offers car ferry access to Venice, Croatia, Greece, and even Israel and North Africa if you’re looking to travel further afield.
I could go on, and if left to my own devices, I would. But I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate it, so I'll leave with a destination for those that want more: www.le-marche.com
My lack of knowledge of the nether lands (of Italy) prevents me from verifying the claim, but if I ever fill that void, I’ll be sure to proffer an opinion.
One thing’s for sure, Marche is diverse, and not just in landscape. For example, according to the wholly unbiased Marche Tourism Department, it has the largest number of museums and galleries in Italy, 200 Romanesque churches, and 71 historic theaters, amongst many other impressive and arbitrary statistics.
There's plenty to offer a variety of tastes, from the common place to the obscure. Here are a few examples:
In a little town just 5 miles from the Adriatic coast, is a plain stone building that draws thousands of religious pilgrims every year. That’s because it’s believed to be the birthplace of the Virgin Mary and the childhood home of Jesus, transported here by angels towards the end of the crusades to spare it from the clutches of the Turks.
In a beautiful hilltop university town in the north, is an unassuming house on a steep cobbled street. This was where Renaissance artist Rafael grew up, developing the craft that was to garner him widespread and lasting acclaim. His house is just one of a clutch of veritable gems in this charming and popular town.
Nestled in a bowl deep in the Apennine mountains is an innocuous tarn, steel blue in its stark surroundings. The legend goes that Pontius Pilate is buried here. The legend also goes that the Sybil, priestess and guide to the underworld, lived here in a cave with a hundred mouths, and that her whispers would resound and echo here for all eternity.
Not far from this place is a canyon that splits the mountains, an awesome creation of the River Tenna. Within it runs a “road” (the term is used liberally) that at one time went all the way to Roma. Today it’s the home of a hermit monk living in a church that he built by hand, perhaps a fitting fixture in a chasm that goes by the name Gola de Infernaccio (Hell’s Gorge).
In a small town not far from the coast, is an industry that fuels a hundred folk music traditions around the world – the manufacture of accordions. It’s said that the world’s first piano accordion was manufactured here in 1863.
Promoting shoes from Italy isn’t exactly ground-breaking, but normally one associates it with Roma and Milano, the country’s fashion capitals. But tucked away on the Adriatic coast is a zone that features one shoe factory and outlet store after another. The Italians know about it, even if the rest of the world doesn’t.
Marche enjoys a coastline on the Adriatic of 180 kilometers (just over 110 miles). Beaches alternate between stone and sand, and welcome thousands upon thousands of Italians and other Europeans during the busy summer months. Also scattered amongst the lido regiments and their orderly ranks of beach chairs, are a few grassy hills and tree-clad cliffs, creating coves and bays of deep blue and incredible beauty.
Of course, one advantage of central Italy is its proximity to so many other areas of not only Italy, but Europe. In Marche, your options are expanded significantly thanks to the busy ferry port of Ancona. A genuine, pleasant city in its own right, Ancona offers car ferry access to Venice, Croatia, Greece, and even Israel and North Africa if you’re looking to travel further afield.
I could go on, and if left to my own devices, I would. But I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate it, so I'll leave with a destination for those that want more: www.le-marche.com
Thursday, June 15, 2006
OK, so Italy - but why Marche?
It’s one thing to move to a country with a different language and culture, but it’s another thing to go to a part of the country that most people have never heard of. So then why Le Marche?
It was eventually a very deliberate decision, but it wasn’t even necessarily going to be Italy in the beginning. While it was always the one and only choice for my wife, Spain initially had the inside track on my betting sheet. It wasn’t until I started reading about Le Marche in International Living that my own interest in Bella Italia perked up. Words like “undiscovered”, “the new Tuscany”, “mountains”, “ocean”, all contrived to put me on a plane for a 12-day solo research trip. From then on, there was only one horse in the race.
As it turned out, getting there was fairly simple – a flight into Rome, then a train to Ancona, Marche’s biggest city and a busy ferry port on the Adriatic. A reasonably-priced car rental gave me the freedom to explore its entire Adriatic coastline as well as the interior to the Appenine mountains.
Not insignificantly, the car rental included a rescue service, which came in somewhat handy when – on a darkening Easter Sunday afternoon – Hertz’s agent drove some 40 miles to jump-start my dead-as-a-dodo car at the top of a steep and winding dirt road just recently opened after the winter’s snows. None of those that helped me – from the keeper of Mount Sibilla’s wooden refugio, to the mechanic who drove from Sarnano – spoke a lick of English, and their reaction to my crash-course Italian was all sympathy and no understanding. But somehow we managed to communicate enough with our animated “humanspeak” to get the job done.
I have an indelible picture – as we waited for the mechanic in the deepening gloom and dropping temperature – of the refugio manager’s nonna, clad in quintessential black and with a back so bent that it made me stand up extra-straight to compensate. Every now and then she would wander off, wordlessly, face fixed on the ground, in no apparent direction, but seemingly summoned by a silent, beckoning call. Her granddaughter’s response – to the consternation of my formal, respect-thy-elders upbringing – was swift and scathing, scolding her back into her assigned rank with a sharpness that she (nonna) reacted to in the same way that she appeared to react to everything: as if it hadn’t happened. Such is the wisdom of our elders.
Marche captivated me, from the singular and dramatic seascape around Monte Conero, to the grandeur of Ascoli Piceno’s Piazza del Popolo; from the mist-shrouded statue of Francesco di Assissi on Sasso Simone, to Emperor Augustus’ two-thousand-year-old entrance gate to Fano at the end of the first road to reach the Adriatic from Rome. Brodetto on the coast, olive all’ascolana in Macerata, and a lot more than the renowned Verdichhio and Rosso Conero to savor it with in the unassuming trattoria or osteria that every hilltop town offers as a fixture of its architecture.
In short, it was for me a revelation, a discovery of a world that I never knew existed. That was probably what clinched it for me – a place where we could get away from the masses, and still have it all right there, and in a form perhaps more authentic than any tourist-throbbing hub such as Firenze or Venezia or Roma. And if we ever wanted to explore the undoubted jewels of those places, we could get in a car and be there in a matter of hours.
And so Marche it was, and now is…
It was eventually a very deliberate decision, but it wasn’t even necessarily going to be Italy in the beginning. While it was always the one and only choice for my wife, Spain initially had the inside track on my betting sheet. It wasn’t until I started reading about Le Marche in International Living that my own interest in Bella Italia perked up. Words like “undiscovered”, “the new Tuscany”, “mountains”, “ocean”, all contrived to put me on a plane for a 12-day solo research trip. From then on, there was only one horse in the race.
As it turned out, getting there was fairly simple – a flight into Rome, then a train to Ancona, Marche’s biggest city and a busy ferry port on the Adriatic. A reasonably-priced car rental gave me the freedom to explore its entire Adriatic coastline as well as the interior to the Appenine mountains.
Not insignificantly, the car rental included a rescue service, which came in somewhat handy when – on a darkening Easter Sunday afternoon – Hertz’s agent drove some 40 miles to jump-start my dead-as-a-dodo car at the top of a steep and winding dirt road just recently opened after the winter’s snows. None of those that helped me – from the keeper of Mount Sibilla’s wooden refugio, to the mechanic who drove from Sarnano – spoke a lick of English, and their reaction to my crash-course Italian was all sympathy and no understanding. But somehow we managed to communicate enough with our animated “humanspeak” to get the job done.
I have an indelible picture – as we waited for the mechanic in the deepening gloom and dropping temperature – of the refugio manager’s nonna, clad in quintessential black and with a back so bent that it made me stand up extra-straight to compensate. Every now and then she would wander off, wordlessly, face fixed on the ground, in no apparent direction, but seemingly summoned by a silent, beckoning call. Her granddaughter’s response – to the consternation of my formal, respect-thy-elders upbringing – was swift and scathing, scolding her back into her assigned rank with a sharpness that she (nonna) reacted to in the same way that she appeared to react to everything: as if it hadn’t happened. Such is the wisdom of our elders.
Marche captivated me, from the singular and dramatic seascape around Monte Conero, to the grandeur of Ascoli Piceno’s Piazza del Popolo; from the mist-shrouded statue of Francesco di Assissi on Sasso Simone, to Emperor Augustus’ two-thousand-year-old entrance gate to Fano at the end of the first road to reach the Adriatic from Rome. Brodetto on the coast, olive all’ascolana in Macerata, and a lot more than the renowned Verdichhio and Rosso Conero to savor it with in the unassuming trattoria or osteria that every hilltop town offers as a fixture of its architecture.
In short, it was for me a revelation, a discovery of a world that I never knew existed. That was probably what clinched it for me – a place where we could get away from the masses, and still have it all right there, and in a form perhaps more authentic than any tourist-throbbing hub such as Firenze or Venezia or Roma. And if we ever wanted to explore the undoubted jewels of those places, we could get in a car and be there in a matter of hours.
And so Marche it was, and now is…
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Who indeed would want to move here? Well, ...
Yes, who indeed would want to move to a country as confused and misdirected as Italy? As it turns out, there’s a small family that has several reasons. There is, after all (as everyone knows), another side to this place. Ewart talks of “volcanic passions” and “benevolent sun”, Shelley of “fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven”, and Addison of “immortal glories”. This family’s reasons are all of these, albeit a tad less poetically conceived.
And so here they are, perhaps more reflections of the self than reasons to move to another country.
From the 10-year-old American son, the simplest (and arguably most honest) – pizza, pasta, gelato, and that other staple of the Italian tavola, wild boar.
From the German wife – slow food … the eye in the design … happy, dancing words like “pommeriggio” … whole festivals dedicated to truffles … hand-hewn tunnels whose two-thousand-year-old chip marks are still visible.
Above all, the opportunity to go beyond those two- and three-week snapshots that render lyrical recollections, and be able to swim in it all, drink it all in, and feel it all around, every day, all of the year.
And from this 47-year-old South African, just two – first, adventure: new world, new language, new way of life, new challenges. Lord knows how important challenges are at this sprightly age.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, to leave a life that’s focused on work, for a life that’s focused on life. That’s not to say there won’t be hard work ahead – if anything, making ends meet is likely to be harder. But it’ll be part of the whole, not a means to an end like it is now, or a claim to an empty title. It’s about weaving the fabric and being woven into it at the same time.
Of course, romantic notions can breed anything from a valley of riches to the food of love, but can it put beans and cabbage on the dinner table? Well, we shall see what faith and application can conspire to produce...
In spite of an analytical mind, and a penchant for security, the decision to move to Italy was, after all, one of the heart. As I reflect on it now, it feels like it was the only way to make it, given where we are going …
And so here they are, perhaps more reflections of the self than reasons to move to another country.
From the 10-year-old American son, the simplest (and arguably most honest) – pizza, pasta, gelato, and that other staple of the Italian tavola, wild boar.
From the German wife – slow food … the eye in the design … happy, dancing words like “pommeriggio” … whole festivals dedicated to truffles … hand-hewn tunnels whose two-thousand-year-old chip marks are still visible.
Above all, the opportunity to go beyond those two- and three-week snapshots that render lyrical recollections, and be able to swim in it all, drink it all in, and feel it all around, every day, all of the year.
And from this 47-year-old South African, just two – first, adventure: new world, new language, new way of life, new challenges. Lord knows how important challenges are at this sprightly age.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, to leave a life that’s focused on work, for a life that’s focused on life. That’s not to say there won’t be hard work ahead – if anything, making ends meet is likely to be harder. But it’ll be part of the whole, not a means to an end like it is now, or a claim to an empty title. It’s about weaving the fabric and being woven into it at the same time.
Of course, romantic notions can breed anything from a valley of riches to the food of love, but can it put beans and cabbage on the dinner table? Well, we shall see what faith and application can conspire to produce...
In spite of an analytical mind, and a penchant for security, the decision to move to Italy was, after all, one of the heart. As I reflect on it now, it feels like it was the only way to make it, given where we are going …
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Who would want to move here?
It was the ugliest election campaign in the country’s living history, with the leading candidates sledging each other in a way that would make Karl Rove and Dick Cheney beam with admiration. Drunkards leaning on lampposts … sex chat line surveys … testicles … boiled babies and fertilizer – nothing was beyond the pale in a vitriolic contest that in the end centered around … nothing. There was no debate of substance, and it would be surprising if any of the electorate really knew what policies or policy differences, if any, they were voting for. The 49.8% to 49.7% result, while crowning a victor on paper, reflects perhaps more a change of underwear than a change of the guard…
Who in his right mind, after all, would want to take charge of an economy that roared along at 1.2% in 2005, and that is optimistically projected to “accelerate” to 1.4% by 2008. Wow! Hold on to your horses, cowboy! No wonder that it was left to a buffoon and a “bland sausage” to contest for the reins of the most tepid economy in a struggling region, in a country with the zone’s highest tax rates – no mean achievement – and, both delightfully and somewhat unsurprisingly, the most pervasive and routine practice of the sport of tax evasion.
Talking of sport, it’s enough to force one to turn away from politics and business and try to get a little distraction and diversion. But turning to soccer – the next biggest thing to Catholicism (if it’s even second at all to anything in everyman’s true and honest heart) – the news isn’t much better. With World Cup 2006 just days away, the country’s footballing fraternity is reeling under a series of top-level scandals and resultant resignations that have everyone crying anything but wolf. Flamboyant tales of match-fixing, “irregular betting patterns”, and the withdrawal of an already-appointed World Cup referee (because of “consultations” with club officials associated with the scandals), have investigators unsure which way to turn, not for lack of material, but rather for the gluttonous surfeit of it. It’s a veritable Machiavellian feast, right in his own back yard.
Ah, but that’s all at the top, you say. Life at eye level – or “I” level, perhaps – is more normal, surely. Well, perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. Where else would you find a water bill for 1.4 million liters for a house whose owners were over 4,000 miles away, and whose water meter was rusted so fast that it couldn’t be opened? Frustrating enough, yes, but nothing compared with the task of sorting it out. With a bureaucracy that embodies and enthusiastically embraces the very term’s caricatured reputation, repeat visits and cast-iron proof yielded … a 1% reduction in the bill. “Must be a commercial venture,” says the water authority earnestly of the rural, vacant property, secure in their fantasy and with a hand hovering over the red “disconnect” button.
Who, then, in their right mind, would even consider moving to a country as confused and misdirected as this one? Yes, who indeed…
Who in his right mind, after all, would want to take charge of an economy that roared along at 1.2% in 2005, and that is optimistically projected to “accelerate” to 1.4% by 2008. Wow! Hold on to your horses, cowboy! No wonder that it was left to a buffoon and a “bland sausage” to contest for the reins of the most tepid economy in a struggling region, in a country with the zone’s highest tax rates – no mean achievement – and, both delightfully and somewhat unsurprisingly, the most pervasive and routine practice of the sport of tax evasion.
Talking of sport, it’s enough to force one to turn away from politics and business and try to get a little distraction and diversion. But turning to soccer – the next biggest thing to Catholicism (if it’s even second at all to anything in everyman’s true and honest heart) – the news isn’t much better. With World Cup 2006 just days away, the country’s footballing fraternity is reeling under a series of top-level scandals and resultant resignations that have everyone crying anything but wolf. Flamboyant tales of match-fixing, “irregular betting patterns”, and the withdrawal of an already-appointed World Cup referee (because of “consultations” with club officials associated with the scandals), have investigators unsure which way to turn, not for lack of material, but rather for the gluttonous surfeit of it. It’s a veritable Machiavellian feast, right in his own back yard.
Ah, but that’s all at the top, you say. Life at eye level – or “I” level, perhaps – is more normal, surely. Well, perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. Where else would you find a water bill for 1.4 million liters for a house whose owners were over 4,000 miles away, and whose water meter was rusted so fast that it couldn’t be opened? Frustrating enough, yes, but nothing compared with the task of sorting it out. With a bureaucracy that embodies and enthusiastically embraces the very term’s caricatured reputation, repeat visits and cast-iron proof yielded … a 1% reduction in the bill. “Must be a commercial venture,” says the water authority earnestly of the rural, vacant property, secure in their fantasy and with a hand hovering over the red “disconnect” button.
Who, then, in their right mind, would even consider moving to a country as confused and misdirected as this one? Yes, who indeed…
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