House in Italy

Abruzzo

Abruzzo is a less-well-known part of

Italy

. Like the rest of the East coast, the beach is a long sandy stretch of umbrellas, palm trees and tacky restaurants. The centre of Pescara (a once peaceful fishing village) is a relatively small pedestrianised almost-but-not-quite glamorous shopping area, surrounded by modern apartement blocks that stretch back into the poorer greyer suburbs and overcrowded traffic jams. Pescara is a good place for sitting on the beach, getting a tan, having an ice cream and letting the kids run wild in the numerous play grounds. There aren't any waves and the water is shallow, which is great for small children and also good for the water temperature which is generally very agreeable. You can get cheap food and hang out in the down-town bars. The number of tattooed tourists from the

is rising due to cheap air fares and it wouldn't be surprising if fish and chip shops started to appear. If I were to twin Pescara with another town in Europe, I think I would choose Malaga.

Taking the nice new motorway out of Pescara towards the mountains, the suburbs give way to rolling green hills, and further-in, to reasonably-high, snow-capped mountains. This is the abandoned beautiful region, and to the left, the Gran Sasso area of Aquilla province. Here is where you'll find broken-down but beautiful half-empty villages, where the elderly look-on hoping for some action, and where tourism hasn't quite realised what it's all about. If you know where to look you can stumble across magnificient restaurants (or agrotourismos), breath-taking valleys and empty stretches of vast open plateaus.

Where to find your "bonheur"

Like a typical Brit, I wanted to get my foot on a fast moving property ladder. Having contemplated the whole of eastern Europe through Internet sites, I realised, much to my disbelief that in Italy it was still possible to buy a house for as little as 15K Euros (especially in Sicily - in Abruzzo it starts at about 30K unless you want a pile of rubble). The other factor that attracted me.. even though I'm not sure if its true, is the lack of capital gains tax. So, like a typical naive customer, having never bought any property abroad before, I packed my bags and invited my mother over to Pescara for a week of shopping. We hooked up with an estate agent based in the airport that showed us up to 20 houses and apartments a day. In the beginning I took photos and notes of everything... by the end of the week I didn't bother going in the front door if I didn't like the view. On Wednesday I had seen what I thought I wanted to buy, but by Saturday the estate agent told me that it had already been sold.

Only two hours before my flight and .. no house. I had only chosen the village. Ofena is known as the "furnace of Abruzzo" and being from cold

England

and living in Paris, I wanted summer to make up for all the grey grizzly winter days. Also Ofena is South facing and has a bit of life to it : a primary school, a restaurant, a bar, a little shop, a pharmacy. More importantly, the valley in front on the village, although not the most beautiful in the area, is free of roads and buildings.

Which house ?

We arrived in the village with 30 minutes to go before we had to leave for the airport.

The house the estate agent had in mind wasn't anything like what I wanted. I thought it was all over, until he suggested another rather big house that makes part of the village wall.

We visited the house in 15 minutes. Not even being able to remember how many bedrooms it had we shook hands. It is definitely the best deal compared to all of the other houses we had seen (although maybe not the best deal if you look more seriously) : It has a roof that doesn't appear to have leaked since we bought it, solid walls (we didn't notice the cracks at the time but the house is still standing), natural original clay tiles in most rooms, arched ceilings throughout, two fire places, two kitchens and a large cellar : about 150 square metres for 42K euros... totally over my budget !

The friendly estate agent takes the stress out of buying a house ?

Most of my friends and family were concerned that I would get ripped-off or attacked by the mafia if I bought a house in

Italy

. Well, when you have two opinions, the truth is normally somewhere in-between. I had read-up on buying a house and had worked out how much tax I should pay. As I mention above there is no capital gains tax apparently for the moment in

Italy

, if you don't sell within 5 years. However, you get fleeced when you actually buy the house. Most books say that the cadastral value of the house is usually much lower than the asking price, however, in our case it was much higher (63K euros), thus pushing up the amount of tax that we had to pay. And, surprisingly, the notaire failed to tell us any of this until the day that we arrived to sign the papers. Furthermore, the notaire also failed to explain properly to us (his English was lacking and he kept looking at his watch) about the neighbours that were trying to prosecute the former owners because of their cave that is under our house and that has cracks in the roof (we didn't get it either). The next week, we started receiving threatening e-mails from the Notaire and the neighbours. We still receive them. However, in Abruzzo

most people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. That said, it's advisable to get a lawyer.

Are you sure they are parallel ?

Once we had bought our house we started to invite various builders from the area to have a look. (The geometra report that we had asked for from the estate agent only seemed to talk about the nice view!) If you buy an old house (ours is about 150 years old) take some valium before inviting builders to have a look at it. After visits from certain builders we were too afraid to touch the wall in case it fell down. However, my boyfriend's father came over and was more reassuring, pointing our that the walls are half a meter thick and lean inwards and not outwards... even if there are parallel cracks that run down the front of the building. Either you are minted and can pay for all of the repairs straight away, or you aren't ... and in that case it is probably best to do nothing for the first year or two in order to be sure about what is essential and what can wait.... whether we want to keep the house long-term or sell it after five years and find a house with a garden, nearer to a lake, etc. We are pretty useless at DIY - so it might be better to buy a small house with little repairs to do.

Things to do

One of the aims of this blog is to share ideas about things to do near Ofena and in the rest of Abruzzo. So far we have discovered two lakes which are great for swimming and snorkeling, the local agritourismo on the hill-side which has the most outstanding bed and breakfast and restaurant perched on a terrace with swinging garden chairs, the Ofena restaurant, which although just looks like a local bar from the outside, has a fabulous menu, Sulmona and its summer cat walk show, the scary snake festival, ski-walking on the mountain, roller-blading along the Pescara promenade, and the Chinese restaurant on the beach.

House in Italy

Ofena

samedi 17 novembre 2007

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Aim of the blog

Pescara, Roma-plage

Abruzzo

Aufinium

Noisy ... but

Typical street

Where to find your "bonheur"

Our house

Which house ?

The cellar

Strange Italian planning

A word of advice

It's a cupboard ?

The pink room

The friendly estate agent takes the stress out of buying a house ?

Needs some paint

Are you sure they are parallel ?

Great for swimming

The best place to stay in Abruzzo

Things to do

Archives du blog

Our view

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