Here in our cherished part of rural Italy we can buy the sort of hand-made, artisan food that would sell for a small fortune in London: pecorino cheese made from local sheep’s milk, honey, biscotti, sour dough bread that takes 3 days to prove and the sweetest juiciest cherries anywhere!

The Local restaurant, ‘Lu Gattone’ bears no resemblance to any English or American ‘Italian’. The big TV set is constantly turned on and the walls are adorned with a variety of strange religious artefacts. Its clientele ranges from the traditional Italian extended family to groups of rowdy teenagers tucking into beers and Pizza! Portions are generous if not to say huge.

As well as ‘Lu Gattone’ we have ‘La Cascina’ and a superb pizzeria. We can eat out every night for less than £20 something we certainly can’t do in the UK! 

All in all things in our corner of Italy couldn’t have been better and we congratulated ourselves on our good luck in picking up a gem of a property for the price of beach hut in England. Yes we still had an awful lot of work to do on the house but at least we’d got the major project of the roof repair out of the way without too many nasty shocks. We’d even been able to persuade our local builders, more used to working with cement and steel, to clean and re-use the beautiful old clay ‘Piannelli’ roof tiles.

Then in June last year we arrived at the house to find an enormous hole in the roof of the adjoining house, leaving our internal kitchen wall exposed to the elements. Apparently heavy snow in April had finally done for the century’s old ‘abite’ beams, riddled with wood worm and water.

In Italy if you want to carry out any sort of work on your house you generally have to engage a geometra who will draw up the plans and submit them to the local Comune for approval charching you 12% of the project’s cost. It’s a closed shop system, good for geometras not so good for the rest of us! This is why it’s very difficult if not impossible for DIYers to go it alone in Italy.

Your geometra should also be able to help you with other issues relating to your property including rights of way and connection of services. Like most Italians they prefer to deal with clients face to face and seldom if ever reply to emails! To Northern Europeans and Americans this can be extraordinarily frustrating. To be honest I have no solution to offer on this one. It’s part of the Italian ‘relaxed’ way of doing business.

Our geometra contacted the owner of the house but the situation soon got a lot more complicated. It turned out that the house, consisting of 4 rooms and various ramshackle ruins, was owned jointly by 8 members of one local family none of whom communicated! A series of meetings followed involving lots of travel for our geometra whohad to see every brother separately. We still haven’t resolved the situation and my last resort could be to go for a denouncia which would then mean getting the town comune involved.

We would probably also be stopped from working on our house for 2 years so this is not a decision to be taken lightly.

This situation, where a single house is owned by several different members of one family, is very common in Italy due to a law that makes it impossible to disinherit one’s children.It’s the biggest headache faced by potential buyers looking in rural areas and many sales fall through because of it. When potential buyers are shown any property in Italy they should always satisfy themselves that the agent is fully aware of the number of owners. 

It’s very easy for one member of a family to approach an agent with a property that they want to sell without informing any other relatives! Of course once paperwork is examined the problem comes to light. Unfortunately there are incidences of properties being shown to potential buyers without any paperwork being produced leading them to think everything is ok.

Most of Italy will be covered by these regulations which can complicate an otherwise straightforward building job and add considerably to the cost.

To help English speakers understand the challenges involved when buying a property in Italy, and in particular Abruzzo, I set up a website which chronicles our own experiences. It offers advice on looking for a house, restoring your property using traditional and environmentally friendly materials and many other aspects of life in Abruzzo. I hope that after your visit you’ll feel inspired and confident when it comes to buying your Abruzzo home.  For more information visit www.myabruzzohome.com