Selling a house in Italy
 

Hi,

My parents have decided to move back to the UK and are selling their villa in the Puglia region of Italy.

Can anyone recommend a good site to advertise their house...one that will target people in the UK or Europe looking to buy a house abroad??

Thanks in advance!!:thumbup:

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

We are also selling our villa in Puglia to return to the UK, we looked into Rightmove Overseas Property but have decided against it for now as we felt the cost of £300 a bit steep. At the moment we are using Casa.it which costs 85 euros for 6 months and advertising weekly in a local paper.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Why move back to UK. I prefer Italy. Love Florence. I have been there twice and want go back :) Have only good memories about it.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Well, we are in the fortunate position of having a little place by the sea in Puglia which we will use in the summertime, God willing. We want to move back to the UK to be closer to our family and grandchildren, we don't see enough of them.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

I know you are not supposed to advertise but I have a friend in puglia in real estate who I can vouch for

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Thanks but we have decided to sell privately hopefully saving both vendors and buyers (both sides pay in Italy) the 2% of house value from going to an agent.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

ok best of luck I think things are slow at the moment but after the election things should pick up either way, if brown gets back a mass exodus from England , if the Tories get in the pound go up and should make things more affordable

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Have you looked at the Move Channel site. I have a friend who has advertised with RightMove and, although the villa has not been sold, they have had several viewings.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Also, I'm told the German's are buying at the moment. Might be an idea to target their internet sites!

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Selling privately to save the 2% commission can be a shortsighted move - I am an estate agent, and you could say Im out to protect my profession, but anyone who buys without an agent will have to find someone to help, a lawyer, a translator, someone to do the visure ipotecarie etc - which can end up costing alot more than 2%. For the sellers you have to get your certficates of energy, plant and risparmio energetico, CDU if applicable, and so on - so an agent can be well worth the money you spend. Add to that your publicity - try www.immobiliare.it as an advertising site, they now accept private ads, or ebay case .... I reckon that unless you're very lucky, you'll end up spending more selling and buying privately than using someone who uses an agent.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Sorry I'm sure you are one of the good estate agent but I am currently going through a court case involving an estate agent (one of the big franchise at that) that sold me a house that was



1) illegal (cost me so far 9000Euros for condono)
2) described (all written in the property details) having certain features to find out that it was not true
3) he made sure that he didn't tell me new regulations were going to come into force 28/03/2008 and push for rogito by end of Feb 2008 because he knew the house wouldn't have any of them let alone the certificato di abitabilita'

Given that both vendor and buyer pay the estate agent here in Italy my conclusion is that the only loyalty agents have is to themselves so in my case it turned out to be very costly using one

Just to add that agency commission was not 2% but 3.5%

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

We used an agent when we bought the house 4,5 years ago. The agent only showed us one property( which we took after seeing more than 50 houses with different agencies)and did the compromesso.We sorted out the finances and the English speaking notary, so paying them 2% was too much for the work they did. An estate agency in the Uk does a lot more for their money.
Like Clint, our friends have taken an estate agent to court as they messed up with the sale, so now our friends do not own the garden.
In the future I will do our best not to use agents but to sell privately.

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

I think there are too many estate agents in italy all trying scratch a living, just try googling property and see how many there are, all paying google to come on top, every time I do a search I find more, I would bet there are more estate agents in Puglia than London, the big difference here to England is people try to sell what is basically a pile of rocks in a field to do up, I was reading the times online and there are adverts in the margin for Italian property on there, are properties selling at he moment when the world finances are in such a state? If you can wait for years and years to sell, selling your house your self is ok, I tried to sell my house in England myself , built a web page, used google , I just got fed up it was taking to long, used Bairstow Eves in the end I got ten or fifteen viewers a day and sold it in a few weeks

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

So, seems important thing is to use an agent, but to choose the 'right one':confused:....difficult but not impossible... If property priced rght it should sell:fingerscrossed

Re: Selling a house in Italy
 

Im sorry that you Clint had such a bad experience with an estate agent. However, Id like to clarify one point. Using a big franchise is not the best option. Many of the big franchises use the franchise technique to get round the law - as long as there is one registered estate agent in the province they can open innumerable offices. The law even technically requires that the person who shows you the house is a registered agent and not some flunkey. In my experience the franchises are the worst of the lot - they pay a fortune (up to 30.000 a year) for the name and therefore need to sell more than an independent.

However, the fact that an agent takes from both the buyer and the seller in ITaly is because he/she is independent and doesnt work only for one party. In theory. If the agent is found to be tied to one party they can lose their licence - though obviously it entails a Bleak House type of court case to get there.

If you buy through an agent and buy the first house you see, it doesnt mean that the agent hasnt earned his money. He may have spent a year getting the property together to sell - organising successions, catastamento, getting sellers to agree and so on. If the buyers then choose to organise their own finances and not accept the agents help then that is their choice - it doesnt mean that the agent hasnt earned his fee.

Estate agents are universally despised because they appear to earn their money for nothing. I too was of the same opinion before I started in this business. I work harder now than I ever worked in 'my previous life' - being on hand 365 days a year for clients who want to see houses on high days and holidays, and spend months sorting out difficult sales only for clients to change their minds at the last minute. The rule is, above in Italy, to use a legal and trustworthy agent - if nothing else they have insurance to cover them for negligence!