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| Italy Buying Guide Newsletter |
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| Greetings from a warm and sunny Italy! While the summer is a sight for sore eyes after months of rain, there are plenty of reasons why Italians are still feeling depressed. For a start, inflation is starting to leave people open-mouthed at supermarket check-outs. While Brits have traditionally measured inflation by observing the price of such staple foods as Mars Bars and pints of beer, Italians – predictably – use pasta and bread as economic indicators. The news here is not good. The price of pasta has gone up 19% in the past year, some sources say by as much as 22.4%, milk by 11%, bread is up 13.3%. Now that Italians are all hitting the roads on their annual leave, the price of petrol is spoiling that happy holiday high. Italians feel the pinch – Italy is the sixth highest consumer of petrol in the world, buying 1.8 million barrels a day, and almost all of that is imported to run cars. Car ownership in Italy is high - Italians own 60 cars per 100 inhabitants compared to the European average of 46. This is not just a problem for people’s pockets: air pollution is also a major issue in Italy’s more populated cities. Many cities have set up traffic restrictions so as to limit the amount of dioxides released into the atmosphere, but that limit in many cities is already exceeded by the 41st day of the year. Parma, the home of parmesan cheese, has made an effort to improve the situation by organising park-and-ride schemes. Once you have parked your car, you are bussed into town and have access to public transport all day for one euro. The scheme has cut car trips by 5,000 a day. Council bicycles are available with a special pass card. Buses can be booked in advance with a phone call. Car sharing has also become common in Parma: you pay a membership fee and share the use of a car when you need it. A Parma hospital now has a ‘mobility manager’, (which legally every business with more than 250 employees should have). Employees who can prove that at least three of them use one car to get into work are given a free parking place inside the hospital complex. This sort of organisation has been adopted by other cities such as Brescia, Turin and Padova. Another cause for depression is the lack of broadband, my personal cross to bear. One in three Italians regularly uses the Internet, but only 14% of the country has access to broadband. When Radio 3, our closest thing to Radio 4, announced this as its theme on its daily science programme, I immediately wrote in to complain about the lack of broadband in the hills behind Sanremo and was gratified to hear my text message read out half a minute later. Our local post office has now organised a petition to complain to Telecom about the wait. There are wireless systems available, but they are prohibitively expensive. And, as if all that were not enough, Italy didn’t even get to the final of the European Cup! So, there is plenty of reason to be downcast. However, summer in Italy is the opium of the masses and we are all looking remarkably cheery. The nights are warm, lit by fireflies, and serenaded by the songs of crickets and frog choruses. The smallest towns are in full swing with dancing evenings, concerts, open-air theatre productions, festivals and sagre. Sagre are food festivals, which in this area typically focus on certain dishes, for example a popular sagra involves an entire town eating only wild boar for the day, another goat and beans, another sagra will feature ravioli or another serves up salt cod. My own town’s sagra, held in August, is – mercifully – a sausage festival. As for festivals where food is present, but not central to the occasion, my personal favourite is the festival of St. Anna, held in the small town of Coldirodi. Every year, on the 26th of July, a group of singers armed with guitar and flowers visit every single Anne resident in the town, hand her a bouquet and sing ‘Tanti auguri a te’ (many happy returns) to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday to you’. The Annes are all suitably chuffed and traditionally invite the minstrels in for a glass of wine and a snack, so that the quality of the service perceptibly disintegrates as the morning wears on. And, while on the subject of summer festivals, let me digress with an amusing anecdote regarding Siena’s Palio, a biannual horse race, the first of which was held a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine was travelling in Tuscany a few years back and happened to have dinner in Siena a few days after the Palio. He chose a small family restaurant and, as he was eating, he noticed that there was a tremendous clamour coming from an adjoining room. Towards the end of his meal, curiosity got the better of him and he asked the waiter what was going on next door. The waiter explained that it was the victory dinner of the winning rione of the Palio (the town is divided into rioni, or areas, and 14 of them compete in the Palio). Then the waiter invited my friend to follow him over to have a peak at the party. What my friend saw was a long table crowded with jubilant locals, heaving with food and drink, and at the head of the table, as guest of honour… the horse. The table was set up so that it ended right by the door of an improvised stable where the horse, thoughtfully chewing on some fresh hay, was trying his best to ignore the chaos of his fellow diners, as they boasted and toasted the night away... This month’s feature discusses security – leaving a holiday home empty for long periods of time is a security risk, and this month we tell the story of a British family whose house was trashed while they were absent. The story, I am glad to say, has a happy ending! All the best to
everyone – we shall meet again at Ferragosto on the 15th of August
- for those of you who don’t know, that’s the equivalent
of the British August Bank Holiday and has been a feast day since Roman
times, when it went by the name of “feriae Augusti” in honor
of the Emperor Augustus. Gianna
Williams |
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Learn from your mistakes...Two months ago I was in our local estate agency when I received a call from the police chief of our town. He needed to telephone an English couple and explain a very delicate matter to them. He wanted to be sure that everyone understood exactly what was being said, and he asked me to conduct the phone call. The next day we met in the estate agency and he explained to me that this couple’s house had been broken into and badly damaged. The house is a beautifully renovated olive mill, right by the river, with an enchanting view of the town and hills around it. Next door is a much larger olive mill that is still derelict. A group of five or six local boys, all around 15 years of age, had been messing around in the derelict mill, and as they had got rowdier, had begun throwing objects through the window of the derelict mill onto the roof of the couple’s house. Having damaged the roof, they then broke in through the door and started throwing every object inside the house out into the garden, breaking and smashing as they went. The policeman knew all these details because, amazingly, within 24 hours of the crime he had caught them all. Now he needed to know what to do with them. We rang the couple in England and explained the situation. All the boys were minors, which meant that if the English couple filed an insurance claim for the damage and had the boys prosecuted, they would certainly be let off and, ultimately, receive no punishment. If anything, what they would learn from the experience is that you can commit crimes and get off scot-free. The police chief suggested another solution: ask the boys, and their families, to repair and pay for all the damage until the house was as good as new. This was made easier by the fact that one of the fathers of these boys was a builder and the other a glazier... The parents were all very upset and wished to do everything possible to make amends. The police chief suggested that the boys would probably learn a little more from the experience this way than by following traditional channels. The English couple were amazingly understanding – and quite impressed by the efficiency of the local police force – and agreed completely with the police chief, as long as everything really was put back good as new. They were due to come out to Italy in a months’ time and we would all meet there to inspect the repairs and to extract apologies from the boys themselves. A month later, the police chief led a procession of five sheepish boys, accompanied by their mortified fathers, to meet the English couple they had offended. At this point, the meeting took an unexpected turn, because we discovered then that the English lady in question happens to work as a parole officer with juvenile delinquents. Hence, one could say, she was in her element! She began by congratulating the boys for their hard work in getting the house put right. She had made a short list of things that were still missing and then and there agreed a small fee that would cover the purchase of these objects, which the fathers immediately handed over. She then, with hardly any need for translation, explained clearly and forcibly to the boys, but in an even tempered way – as if speaking to a good friend – that they were very lucky to be minors and to be sure not to do the same thing ever again because next time the outcome would be much more serious. She then asked the boys to come shake her hand one at a time and apologise personally to her and to each member of her family. During this improvised ceremony, each of the boys seemed to be doing his own personal impression of ‘Kevin the teenager’ while the fathers continued to look mortified. ‘I’d only just bought him a moped’ said one, while the other muttered: ‘My father would have broken my legs if I had done what he’s done.’ Another shook his head and exclaimed: ‘They don’t want handshakes, they want slapping!’ At long last, everyone took their leave of each other and left the English couple to enjoy something of a holiday after all the upset caused by a long-distance break-in. The problem of the derelict mill next door remains. It is a hard nut to crack – the owners want to sell the mill, and the estate agent warns them that if they board it up, it won’t sell. The sooner it is sold, the sooner it will be renovated. On the other hand, a derelict building like that invites crime. The only solution is that the owners of the building pay to have windows and doors put in. No small feat, as the mill is about 200 square metres and has many beautiful arches on two floors that will be very expensive to glaze. However…it has to be done. It is no wonder that local people are so glad to see foreigners coming in and doing up old and derelict houses – a town full of abandoned buildings is a sorry sight. Derelict buildings don’t look good and are dangerous. Some enlightened councils have understood this and will help fund restoration work, for example, paying for the cost of doing up the house front in a historic town centre. But this kind of aid varies enormously from one town to another, and many councils have not yet understood that helping people restore old buildings is a worthwhile investment. It also highlights another thing: it really does pay to make friends of your neighbours – and, in this case, the local police force! If you are thinking of buying property in Italy please do contact me and we can discuss what we can do to help you. We at the Italy Buying Guide have a number of reputable professional people that we can put in touch with you….just email me on: Gianna@OverseasGuidesCompany.com or go to: |
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The UK house price gloom and doom….by Smart Currency’s Charles Purdy.We are all aware that UK house prices are falling. How far this fall will be is the question. My feeling is that there was a need for sanity to return to the UK housing market as prices all over the country have increased out off all proportion over the last few years. But difficulty in selling a UK property is causing a problem for those who want to say good bye to Gordon Brown and head off for a happier life style elsewhere. There are some positives in the current environment. More people are renting rather than buying and this means that a property in the right area will rent very quickly. Also prices elsewhere in the world are coming down. Spain for example is in a far worse situation with a much bigger drop in house prices - property bargains there are becoming more plentiful. And finally, would you prefer to hold a euro or sterling backed asset? My preference longer term would be a euro asset because here in the UK we have some very serious economic problems which, even though Euro land isn’t immune, means that sterling will have further downward pressure in the coming months and years. So how can people still follow their dream? I would recommend talking to a range of experts. Some financial, such as Smart on currency and an IFA on financial planning, and others such as a property agents who are experts in the region you are interested in. The current climate means that you have to take your time, plan very carefully and listen to those who really know the market before acting. If done properly, you can still live your dream. To read the latest currency update go to: http://www.ItalyBuyingGuide.com/Currency240708.htm
Why
overseas property buyers lose money... This 10-page educational report outlines:
And just a couple remarks about the report from our readers...
To get a copy of the report at no charge go to: http://www.smartcurrencyexchange.com/freereport.htm To get a Better-than-Bank
rate go to: http://www.smartCurrencyExchange.com/smartsquotation.htm
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The lovely Villa Carina
The lovely Villa Carina is situated in the countryside of Carovigno, a village just 10 minutes’ drive away from Brindisi, and ten minutes away from the beach. The villa features a lounge with fireplace and cooking area, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It is surrounded by 1.2 acres ( 5,000 sq m ) of fenced garden with several fruit trees where there is also a swimming pool with Jacuzzi. At the back of the property there is a veranda with barbeque area. The villa is in very good condition and is just waiting for you to move in…..! Price: € 190,000 If you want to investigate this lovely property further please contact me at: Gianna@OverseasGuidesCompany.com |
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5 secrets to financial fitnessNext month sees the start of the Olympic Games, here are a few secrets to your own financial fitness!! Get motivated Get active Look after
your health Cut out
bad habits Build strength
and balance We have a wonderful Independent Financial Advisor (or IFA) to help you achieve the maximum financial benefit for your finances, both now and into the future – the key is knowing what to do with your funds, and when. If you need their assistance, please go to: | ||
ClosingThat’s all for now. I hope you are having a hot and happy summer…perhaps by the time you get this it will have cheered up!! Please keep in touch won’t you – I am always interested to know what you are up to on your Italy property journey, and if I can help you in any way you have just to ask… Alla Prossima – until next time…. Gianna
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