The first rule to apply to buying a house in the Italian countryside is to see it, or at the very least try to imagine it, in deepest winter. Most people look at houses from Spring to Autumn, and it can be difficult to imagine just how harsh the Italian winter can be. Somewhere that seems romantically off the beaten track in the summer becomes inaccessible in winter. Before buying find out how much of the road to your house is owned by the local council, the comune, and therefore maintained by them. During snowy periods all comune roads are cleaned with snow ploughs, at least once a day, whereas a private road is the responsibility of the owner.
Living in town isn’t necessarily an easy alternative as the old town centres can be extaordinarily noisy. Activity starts early, around five thirty, with the bakeries delivering brioche to the bars, the clatter of shutters as shops open and people take their cars out of garages, and then in the summer months the bars fill with people until two am. Most small towns in our region, Le Marche, have a packed programme of festas, which ensure noise in town from the beginning of summer until its last gasp.
The best compromise is a property on the edge of town, but before purchasing it is vital to have someone check the town plan, to make sure that there aren’t plans to build a series of modern condominiums on your doorstep.
These are the three things to bear in mind when you choose a house, and these rules apply wherever in the world you are looking. Before you have even looked at the house itself, think about the area. There are obvious factors, like proximity to airports and train stations, but then you also have to take into account things that won’t be so obvious, like access in the winter (when the snow could be a factor for up to two months a year), services to the house (some farm houses in rural Italy have never been connected to the grid, and this can be a major cost in renovation) and then a whole new checklist depending on whether you intend living in the house full time or using it as a holiday house.