Search and rescue—house hunting in Tuscany

When I saw where the “mad” brother had lived for decades, and died in the 1950s, his battered old clothes still hanging on hooks on the wall next to the bare mattress on the dirty stone floor, shaving cream still over the sink, I realized I wasn’t house hunting in the San Francisco Bay Area anymore.

As you might have guessed from the last Itch, when I shared how we purchased our house in Tuscany, nothing is predictable about real estate in Italy. When we were looking for a house to buy we’d already put down roots in our village—kids in school, good friends, about eight percent of daily life figured out, and we were falling more in love with our village every day. One of our local expat friends who had moved from our village to the next town over regretted making this change and said there’s no recreating the first love of your initial bonding with a town in Italy. This meant that we didn’t throw a wide net over several regions to look at “appropriate” properties but went deep locally, looking at every house that might be available in our immediate area, like the mad brother dwelling above. Before we were able to buy the house we wanted all along we looked at about fifty houses ranging from ruins to completely restored, each one a complete surprise.

When you look at real estate in America there is a certain set of assumptions that from my newly found perspective seem pretty boring and to lack imagination, like presuming there will be a kitchen. Here every viewing was an adventure—is there a foundation here under all the brush? Will the tree growing through the roof be difficult to remove? Is that a dead … rat? pigeon? Don’t step there or you will fall through the floor. Can you give me a leg up so I can break through this window to open the door? How hard would be it to put in a road to reach this place? And the nearly universal question, will this smell ever go away? The latter is usually linked to houses where there are still livestock living on the ground floor, but not exclusively. One house, which we were very tempted by, was particularly malodorous with pigs and geese under one part of the house, a dog kennel under another, and rounds of beautiful handmade cheese ripening all over the dining room table.

The American obsession with staging real estate has grown from the old trick of baking cookies during a showing to Oscar-worthy set design that seeks to erase any possible remnant of the current owners so that prospective buyers can imagine themselves in a neutral space full of possibility. If a cosmic antimatter to staging exists it would be Italian real estate viewings. Even at the nicest properties we looked at the agent arrived at the same time as we did, and as Italian houses have thick wooden shutters on the outside of every window and door, we entered with the agent into a world of perfect blackness. The trick during a tour of a cave when the guide turns out the flashlights to show complete darkness would work perfectly at the first stage of a Tuscan open house. The smell of damp, old belongings, and stone is usually pretty ripe. As you stand in the dark the agent goes from window to window slowly revealing where you are standing. Although a couple of houses we looked at were beautifully furnished and restored, where this reveal was a positive one, most had been left in some sort of suspended animation after someone had died, or a family had left. The close family had removed anything of value and left what remained, usually a rather sad hodge podge of old electronics, furniture no one wants, clothing, and the detritus of personal grooming products. Old tools abound. There is no thought to clearing out the buildings before they are put on the market. And often current owners are there for the viewing, watching every response.

If you are lucky there are still glimpses into lost ways of life embodied in the walls. A hundred years ago Tuscan houses would often have stone sinks placed in the walls that drained directly outside—you can look at grass from the drain. Old stone fireplaces are common, although we saw a number of properties where thieves had gotten there first and hacked them out to sell. The ground floor of almost all dwellings were used to house animals—people lived upstairs—which helped to heat houses in winters. Many still have old feeding troughs and stone and brick corners of walls which have been rubbed smooth and semicircular throughout the centuries by animals scratching against them to give themselves massages. And yes, the smell of centuries of animals does come out after much sandblasting.

Some houses come with mysteries. We looked at one where Thomas Becket is said to have stayed when he came through town in the 1150s, commemorated by an ancient fresco. But even more mysterious, and easier to prove, is in the house next door to us that our friends just purchased—I will be writing about the restoration—that has three bedrooms, complete with beds with nasty mattresses, a small kitchen (so far all of this makes sense) and a bathroom with a tiny sink and toilet. There is not a shower or bathtub anywhere on the premises.

There’s an adventure and magic to the hunt here that I will always treasure, and even miss a tiny bit, leading me to drag visiting friends to view especially good deserted houses—with the side effect of increasing the Anghiari population by a couple of families who will be joining us when the properties are done. I love the unselfconsciousness and lack of preciousness of the process and, to me, it reveals more than just an abundance of deserted properties but also as a reflection of the Italian spirit. This is who I am, I am comfortable about the state I am in, and you can choose to be intrigued and go forward, or not. No presentation of perfection to tempt the slightly out of reach more perfect and evolved you that can exist if only you could acquire this house. Just don’t step on the goat poop on the way out.

How to buy a dream

Well, maybe not all dreams, but if buying and restoring a house in Tuscany is a desire of yours, here’s how it worked for us.

We knew from the start the house we wanted to buy, but it seemed impossible. The previous owner had lived there her entire life and died a decade earlier when she was in her 90s. She’d never married or had kids and it had passed on to thirteen heirs, some of whom we heard weren’t on speaking terms with others.

The house loomed just outside the walls of a beautiful village and on a quiet lane. It had been deserted for nine years, affectionately known by locals as the casa abbandonata, and the site of many a dare involving terrified kids trying to find a way inside. It was dark, shrouded by trees, and broken into occasionally, but we (and at least half the town) wanted it badly as it is in a terrific position looking up to the village and down to the valley, surrounded by a few acres, and a ten-minute walk from the piazza.

For years, whenever friends came to visit, we’d inevitably stand on the village walls which overlook the house and the land to “take in the view” but really to show them our dream house. We always added the caveat of “don’t point at it because if the village knows that the Americans are interested word will go out fast,” reflecting our American paranoia of potential bidding wars. Meanwhile the heirs, who seemingly agreed on little, were united that the best way to value the property was to add up what they all wanted to receive and use the total as the asking price, rather than getting a professional appraisal of what the place was worth and dividing by 13. The result was that you could buy a prime vineyard and restored villa in Montepulciano for what they wanted for the house. They hadn’t budged for nine years despite almost no viewings or offers. The house had been in their family since 1777, so a certain amount of irrational attachment was understandable. The villagers who had their eyes on the house had long given up and we had realtors tell us not to even bother trying to buy it because it was impossible.

In Italy the buying process can take years, if not decades (the family of one place we looked had thought about selling it since the 1940s but they still weren’t sure they were ready to part with it). Property taxes are very low, the houses are usually owned outright, and maintenance can be nothing as stone buildings take a long time to fall into ruin. It took us about three years to buy the house from when we first looked at it. We sent out some carrier pigeons about what we’d be willing to pay for the house and they sent out some return birds saying that would be acceptable. So we wrote up an offer with a two week response time excited to move ahead. Seven months later there was no answer and then fate intervened. Someone, or someones, to whom I will be eternally grateful, decided to break into the house and used a tree-trunk battering ram to break down one of the solid chestnut doors. (A villager later mentioned that she’d been driving by, recognized the intruders, and told them off. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be from the villain’s perspective?) Suddenly, as there was a whopping 700€ of actual hard cost involved with the property to replace the door, the heirs were ready to do the deal. Yesterday. December was upon us and they were in a hurry to close before Christmas because they worried that one of their family, a woman in nearing 100, would die, passing her shares along to her two daughters who hadn’t apparently agreed on anything since 1940. Then the whole deal would have to be renegotiated. The heat was on and the closing date set for December 23, 2014.

John and I had bought and sold a few properties in the U.S. between the two of us so we thought we had an idea of what to expect. As always, Italy is full of surprises. A notaio, or notary, reigns supreme over the sale. As Americans we had to get over our image of the guy at Kinkos with the book and stamp authorizing a signature. In Italy the role dates back to the Romans where they were the legal clerks for the Emperor. Their role evolved in the 1000s when a deed issued by a notary was given a privileged “public faith”, a particular strength. Today they must have a law degree to start, then specialized training to become one of a limited number of public officers of the State, guaranteeing that all parties to a signing are who they say they are and have legal authority to sell what they are selling. They also issue and hold the official deeds. Title company, registrar, and more, all rolled into one.

On the big day we all met at the notaio’s office. Very different from the U.S. where a closing often involves a trip into a sterile conference room at a title company to sign reams of paper, completely separate from the other party in the transaction, who you may never meet, an Italian closing is a spectacle. The office was large, lined with books, and had an enormous table in the middle. We were there along with the thirteen heirs, all seated in large blue velvet chairs. After everyone was assembled the notaio entered, formally dressed, with an air of gravitas. He took a chair, set apart of the others, at the center of the table. Then he started to read the document of sale. This long document contains the name, birthdate and place, fiscal codes, relationships, and percentages of the property of all the sellers. It details how much money each person gets, complete with the check numbers of the issuing bank. It then spells out in great detail exactly what parcels of land you are buying, with whom they are registered, and the relevant contents of the house, among other details.

As you can imagine, this document is long and tedious. Italian notaries have an ingenious solution. There is a particular rapid-fire reading style that they use, akin to an auctioneer, to get through the material. The blazing speed of this blitz of information did nothing to dull the interest of the sellers, however. They leaned forward listening to every detail of who got what, eyeing each recipients in turn. We finally got to the end and everyone signed every page wherever they want with the end document resembling a birthday card that a group has signed.

Then a special moment arrives when the notaio excuses himself. Traditionally this is when any applicable bags of cash are handed over to cover any gap between the recorded and actual sales price. We know people who have lugged significant numbers of paper bags full of money to finalize the deal, which fortunately we did not have to do. The notaio re-entered after a safe amount of time had passed, the keys were handed over, in our case a big wad of them including several antique keys, and big smiles, handshakes, and greetings were exchanged. The sellers, for all their initial reluctance, were warm and pleased that a new history with a family was to begin in their ancestral family house. The deal was done, and the adventure began.