Column: Gremlins!

"But why didn't they sort it out right away?" That is the desperate reaction of an innocent foreigner when an Italian does not do what you expect as a deal-is-a deal-North European from service providers, officials, business partners and so on.

When we hear this cry again, we respond, tried and tested in Italian mores and customs, with a superior smile or with a bored-arrogant 'This is Italy!' Then get that! Yet we have to admit that it took us a long time to understand how different things are in this beautiful, sunny country. Laughing at it is the best survival strategy.

Take the Italian real estate agent* now, to grab an involuntary 'service provider' by the throat, pardon, collar. At the thought of some of these gentlemen (they are almost always men) my blood begins to boil, yet I am the lucky owner of a hereditary low blood pressure.

Only after our umpteenth experience did it dawn on me what their standard way of working is. When a real estate agent puts a house up for sale here, he immediately gets to work with… doing nothing. Nothing! He does not request land registry data, does not check the title deeds, does not check whether all building permits have been applied for, nothing.

Okay, maybe he'll write a text and he (or his assistant; subordinates are always women) quickly take some pictures if he happens to be near the object for sale, but it shouldn't get any crazier! It is not for nothing that a house for sale is referred to as vendesi, 'sells itself'.

Publicity is work, work costs money and there is no money yet. It only gets interesting when a buyer shows up on shore. If they succeed in signing a preliminary purchase contract, the commission is insured and work can be started!

If you're up for a relaxed evening of laughter, I can recommend that you browse an Italian real estate website and view the photos of the houses. I recently came across the following beautiful photo of a sewer well in an advertisement.

What would the message be? Buying this house is like throwing a few tons down the sewer? The other photos to convince me that this was the house for me consisted of a sunset over the sea, a sunset over the sea, sea view, another sea view, a photo taken from the lower street of the facade of the house and an irrelevant photo of the garage. Sometimes it seems like they don't want to sell the house...

About my previous experiences with Italian home sellers I wrote a few horror stories that you can read in my book Italian Conditions en in Boundless Magazine.

Recently a new 'experience' was added, thanks to our Dutch friends Cora and Marco! Their (not yet completed) adventure is as follows.

Cora and Marco had discovered the house of their wildest dreams all by themselves, by driving around in the area. There was no sign for sale at the gate, but the house looked deserted (and, as I discovered on a later visit, it was freely accessible because the cellar door was unlocked and inside hung a bunch of all the keys to the house!).

Fortunately, by searching the internet, they found that it was indeed for sale. At a broker near you. Made an appointment and on it. For the curious duo who received us at the real estate agency, a nickname was quickly coined: the Gremlins.

One older gentleman was wearing shorts with two white knobby legs sticking out. His most notable feature was also a slight facial paralysis which hindered his speech a little. The other gentleman had a hunched back and it looked as if his head had slid from his neck to his chest. Statler and Waldorf would also have been appropriate nicknames.

When everyone was seated at the table after the first greeting, there was a silence, as if the brokers didn't quite know how to handle this. A customer! You'll never see it otherwise! Fortunately, after a hesitant opening on our part, the conversation got underway, which soon forced the gentlemen to call in their heavily pregnant assistant.

It soon became clear to us that she was the cork on which this office floated. File at hand, pen and paper at the ready, ready answers to all our questions. Although, all? There were, of course, no land register drawings and extracts and so on. But they would quickly request and e-mail them.

The initial meeting went well and we left the office with modest optimism… and a little worry about how things would turn out if the assistant went on maternity leave in a month's time?

After a few days we received the promised email. What immediately struck me was that the Gremlins hadn't gotten their hands dirty on this either; the data came from a geometry, a construction engineer, an Italian jack of all trades. We already knew from our own buying adventure that this person is much more useful than a real estate agent.

Unfortunately, the email only came with a map of the house and a title deed. No cadastral map, no extract from the mortgage register, nothing at all. So we decided to request a few things ourselves, as had always been necessary until now. Long live the internet!

Upon inspection of the documents obtained (the brokers were not at all surprised when we came up with them ourselves, but responded along the lines of 'we could have provided you with that too') immediately a few problems emerged that the Gremlins had to deal with. (let) solve.

Part of the property was still under a different name from the seller's, and the house had no official address. 'No problem, non ci sono problems,' cried the brokers. The still heavily pregnant assistant noted the action points. No problem, no, but there is a delay!

The date foreseen for the transfer in the purchase proposal could already be postponed by one month. Unfortunately it didn't stop there. Because when all the bumps seemed smoothed out, the appraiser discovered that the arcade, an open gallery, had in reality turned into a (closed) conservatory.

Doesn't fit, can't, adjust! And so we are now about six months later. Will it still work? The coming month will be decisive! Buying a house in Italy requires patience, a lot of patience.

* Undoubtedly there are also serious, skilled and reliable Italian estate agents. Nothing against them! Unfortunately I have only come across specimens of the species described here.

Want to read more fun stories about life in Italy? You can find it in the three parts 'Italiaanse Status' by Stef Smulders, available at bol.com.