Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: In Italy. And you're listening to the Magic Towns Italy podcast.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: We were about to do a podcast on a very sad topic of how Italy's beautiful natural landscapes are being built over and covered in concrete. But then we decided halfway through that it was so sad. We were going to answer some of your questions instead from when we published the Italian Buying Property Guide last week.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah, basically, Luca is restoring this beautiful villa near Venice and we thought that it was a nice topic to talk about, to share the practical lessons for anyone else dreaming of doing this.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm happy to provide my knowledge to our listeners.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: So my question is, how did you end up with this villa to restore?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Like, why it didn't fall on my lap, if that's what you're asking. And you know that because actually, Anna has been helping me a lot with the social media or for the project. This villa, Tenuta Augusta, was a. Was a bit derelict by the time I set my eye on it. I've done quite a few restorations around the world.
And when I came back to Italy a few years ago, I decided to help to the degree that I am the country by bringing some old and unloved properties back to life.
And Tenunta Augusta is exactly that. It is a 16th century villa in the countryside, in the hills not far from Venice. And just as you said, he was broken by this nobleman back in the 1500s, his family, and at the beginning it was a working farm. We know this because I went to the National Archives and they found his tax returns from 1671.
And at some point they decided to revamp it and live in it.
This family then fell into.
We don't exactly know what happened. They either ran out of money or they died out, or both. So since no one has that last name anymore in the area.
And then it passed from family to family and to. An older school teacher owned it for the past 40 years. She died maybe 10 years ago, and then it was just left there to rot.
So we made it our mission to bring it back to life.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: I think that renovating this property is like doing a puzzle, because you've discovered so many things just renovating each floor of the villa.
And an interesting topic that I thought about.
What makes us fall in love? We have this willingness of. To fall in love with places that we think could be something rather than just find a place that's ready to live in or in this case, to host people.
And sometimes it's better because you waste less time on problems.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Oh, it's certainly faster to buy something new.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but I'm talking about like the process itself.
At certain point, it becomes like a drug. Like you. You fall in love with the process of imagining of the potential itself.
Do you want describe a little bit of this?
[00:03:27] Speaker A: That is absolutely true. I have a great degree of admiration for Michelangelo, who, as a great sculptor, he described his creative process as looking at a stone and taking away the excess, what was on top of the shape that he imagined inside. In Sioux, he said, and that's too much for me. I think it's too much for most people to just imagine something new and then have at it, go from an idea to creation. Maybe a step down from that level of genius and divinity is to take something that was beautiful and restore it. In this case, unfortunately, the owners over the centuries were not very kind to the place.
And by the 1970s, they had stripped away all the wooden floors. They had filled up with trash and old clothes and old furniture.
It doesn't present itself very well. There was a lot of beauty waiting for us. And, yeah, it didn't take long for us to start seeing it. In the 1990s, they had actually turned this villa into a car repair shop. So what did we not find in there? So many things. As you say, it is a.
It's a bit of a drug to see that every day. That's another step towards bringing beauty back to the light.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: And is it difficult to respect the history of the place when you're renovating such a property?
I'm talking about the original materials. Like, for example, you use the original stones that were used for the house.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: And I see, oh, is it easy? No, it isn't.
Why? Because it's always easier to cut corners.
For instance, and if you check out Anna's Instagram, you'll see this. The doors were made for people from 400 years ago. Now, Italians don't have a reputation for being very tall. There are exceptions. But The Italians of 400 years ago were pretty short, 5 foot, maybe like elves. They don't know them. Elves.
So the doors were just not usable. And my partners have always been people in Northern Europe. I'm actually restoring this with a bunch of Danish partners, people that I've worked with in Copenhagen for many years.
And I was thinking, okay, if these guys get in, they're going to smash their heads against the doors. The stone surrounds of the doors were just stunning.
So we decided to do a.
See, this is not cutting corners. We had the local craftsman create stone surrounds that look exactly the same as the original ones. We kept the original ones, but we raised the doors 20 inches.
And then we had this sort of like stone transplants that showed the old avenue. So to answer your question, is it easy? No, it is not easy. Is it expensive? It can be expensive. You had to decide where you want to spend your money. For instance, all the wooden floors we threw out because it doesn't make any sense. They were partly rotten. They could have been restored.
It made sense in our case to essentially rebuild the plastering of the property with hydraulic lime, which is the same product that the Romans used 2,000 years ago.
So maybe 30% more expensive than the modern cement based stuff, but it was worth it. I think you can tell that we have been true to the spirit of the price.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know that, why did you decide to go for that material?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Hydraulic lime has many interesting properties. You're not going to have mold on it. But that's just.
That's the practical part of it, the cosmetic part of it is that when you think about going around Venice, imagine you're walking around Venice, it has just rained. What do you say in your mind? You see those beautiful buildings and the walls are all patchy, a bit wet, a bit dry.
That is the effect the hydraulic lime gives you the patina of time. So we went straight for that because it makes the place look.
It makes it look its age.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think that people will love, like the neighbors will love to see, finally see the beautiful shining.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: They do come over sometimes, you know, I would say we have never gotten a complaint, but. But we have gotten a lot of compliments. People come over and they say, oh, wow, you guys are doing such a good job. It's so nice to see this. Some people say, oh, I wanted to buy this, but actually it was for sale for 10 years, so.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: 10?
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah, about 10 years, yeah. That was quite an interesting process too, because they had started off of some crazy sum and they wanted a million euro for this.
And that's an Italian classic.
First the sellers are super greedy and then they become desperate. So you have to be patient with the carrier.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: And you mentioned that you've already done a lot of projects, but focusing on this area. Why do you think this place like this area, Veneto was great for project like this one.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Now it is difficult for me to look at this area with completely unbiased eyes because after all, I'm a Venetian heart.
I have a great degree of love for my own land.
We have a bit of a inferiority complex compared to Tuscany for instance, because it has been so good at selling itself in front of international audiences, the whole project was born in juxtaposition to Tuscany. I was out for dinner with some friends and partners of mine in Copenhagen about a year and a half ago, and some of these guys at the table, they're all Danes, right? All Danes except for me. They were saying, oh, I'm thinking of buying in Tuscany now. There's a lot of Danes buying in Tuscany. It's a bit of an obsession.
And. And I told them, listen, why don't you come over for a week and I will show you around. You think you're in Tuscany, but you pay a lot less and you're going to be much happier. Of course, this did happen. They did fly down and I was the tour guide for a week. We're friends, so we had a good time, went out for dinner, we cycled, we walked, we visited a few cities and then we made the little money pot and all of us put some money in, and that's how the project was born. But what I'm trying to say is, and I'm thinking about a conversation I had with Casper, one of these people, and he told me what impressed me the most, is that I kick off in Copenhagen at six o' clock in the morning and I landed in Venice and I was at Augusta by 9 o' clock in the morning. And that blew his mind. He could just not believe it was so close to home. And we had direct flights year round. To answer your question, why we invested here is because we think it is undervalued for the infrastructure it has of a Central European infrastructure. You have clear roads, good quality of life, but you also have that feeling that people like being in the hills. The Italian dream, the Italian vista.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Compared to you mentioned Tuscany, I think that the nearest airport, it depends on where you live, but like the average is 2 hours to reach it.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Actually, talking about Northern Europeans, is that they only had direct flights to Tuscan a few months of the year.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: You're flying into Florence, which is a minor airport by our standards. And then if you have a second home in Tuscany, what do you do with it? You have to fly to Rome the rest of the year and then drive two and a half hours there. So that is what blew their minds. He told me now that we work from home part of the week. I could wake up on Thursday morning, work from it today, Thursday, Friday, spend the weekend and go back to Copenhagen on Monday evening. And all of this without having used it up In a vacation days.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true. And it's also true that you can really feel that Italian feeling. People here are so warm compared to other regions on the north, compared to.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: What people say, because there is a spirit. I. But the people from the north are also. No, I don't think that the weather is so cold. I'm looking outside the window and we have. What is a window? Is it today 65 Fahrenheit, 22 degrees. It's the second week of November. Anyway, enough. I'm actually curious, since you've been acquainted with this project for six months or so, what impressed you the most? What is the memory of the place?
Have the dearest in your heart?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: There are so many. I still remember the day when you discovered that inscription upstairs.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: You should explain to our listeners what description you're talking about.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So basically, Luca found the date when this house was renovated upstairs.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: That was 29-11-1751. It was renovated in 1751.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: And that was shocking because just cleaning the walls, he found that. That inscription. That was rare, I think.
And then talking about like the aesthetic, as I said before, the tower, it was crazy for two reasons. The first one is the history of the tower, because you see that tower and you're already thinking about a castle, about medieval times. But it's the most recent part of the building.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yeah. It's only to round on your zone.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: That's crazy. Yeah, because you said basically they built this tower because it was something cool at the time.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: It was fashionable in the 1800s to say, Hey, I got a medieval tower. But actually it was not medieval at all. And everyone that goes there thinks, exactly. We used to end, it's a castle. No, it isn't. It's a villa where someone thought, it's like one of those diners where the waitresses are dressed like knights in armor. And it's called like the at the court of King Arthur. That level of authenticity, apart from the.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: History of the tower, like you said, it was reset and now it's white, it's shining. And I love what you want to do with that. The fact that you want to turn it into a sour.
I think the most unique part of.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: A of the building, towering the tower. Sounded good, right? It was too good to pass on.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Another interesting thing for people that want to invest in these kind of projects is the bureaucratic part, all the permits. So this is a protected building.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: So you have the highest degree of.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Protection and you had to follow certain restrictions. So what were those restrictions and how did you navigate them?
[00:14:54] Speaker A: In some countries, planning is dealt with at the state level. So it's centralized, and it is exactly opposite. It's matters of the town level.
So sometimes you're lucky. You find the town where the town officials are understanding and they want to work with you. They see the value of what you're doing. And in some towns, they're just, I'm. I work Monday to Friday. I have no intention of putting in an ounce of energy more than I have to.
So you can be lucky. This is in spite of what the law says.
The best way to deal with bureaucracy is before you even put in a bid on a property that you want to renovate to go into town hall and have a chat with the town officials.
This is not a form of bribery or anything. You're just having a conversation formalized with them where you say, hey, I'm considering this building to do such and such thing. I want to renovate them in such and such way.
And my experience is that town officials like to be consulted and they want to feel like they are in the loop.
This buys you a lot of goodwill.
They will tell you immediately if there are going to be any problems or things that you must do, things that, you know, you can skirt around. In this case, for instance, although the building has very high protection, and therefore, in principle, you could only follow the.
The paper says, the rules of scientific restoration. That's pretty scary if you ask me. Scientific restoration, I was thinking a team of people in code labs and, like, very tiny brushes brushing on the stone and thinking, oh, geez, that's gonna take 50 years to fix.
But they quickly made it clear. And what they were interested in is that the outside of the property remained the same, but in the inside, they were very open to being reasonable. Like they said, you can turn it into a disco. If you want to reject the bedrooms a little bit, et cetera, you can do that. Make sure you use materials that are not out of tune with the place. So no shiny concrete floors. We use wood, terracotta. And that was very much what we had in mind. So you could say that the best way to get around bureaucracy is through a negotiation process. You bring forth who your idea is and the people who are responsible for. Ultimately, they're responsible for protecting the town, the environment, and the building.
They're not unreasonable people, and they're generally well educated for the job. They will tell you, okay, you want to do that. These are the rules of the game.
If you go at bureaucracy with a sledgehammer, bureaucracy doesn't yield, it bounces back at you and crushes you.
The way to deal with it is with a kind word and being open minded and trying to find a way around obstacles. I would say that's a general good rule for living in Italy.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Communication.
Lots of people come here and just buy a property without being informed.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: They end up paying a lot of money to the wrong people.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: You're right. Especially when you talk to real estate agents there. There are good and honest real estate agents, but there are a real estate agents whose only sense of ethics is being loyal to themselves. They want to sell, they don't care what happens to you after you buy. And this is how many people end up buying a barn or an agricultural building without knowing that they can't turn it into a habitable space.
And this is how people buy properties that have a serious structural issues. You want to avoid working with people whose main interest is how much money can they squeeze out of you?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: And what about the language for those people that want to buy a property but don't speak Italian?
[00:18:52] Speaker A: That's a very good point with the Italians. If you don't speak good Italian, and mind you, Italians are very appreciative of people making an effort, so you don't need to be Dante and wow everyone with your perfect Italian. The fact that you respect people enough to not walk into the office and immediately start blurting out something in English or French or German and expecting people to understand you, frankly, that would be rude in any country. You don't want people barging into the DMV and start speaking Italian because they're going to say, you know, what are you doing? Be humble, be respectful, try to say a few words in Italian if you can. But if you can't get understood, find a local that will act as your guide. A good example in a renovation would be a good architect or a geometer, which is basically a quantity surveyor. Find a person that speaks good English and they will go into the town hall with you.
Ideally someone from the town itself.
So someone who is a known quantity, someone who has a reputation in the town for being not a maverick, but someone who can be respected and have that person be the go between. But do not abdicate to your seat at the table. You have to be there at all times too. Don't be seen as a foreigner who's just going to sit in a cafe somewhere where someone else does the work and takes all the decisions. You want to be there too, you want to be seen.
And people have to respect what you do if you are seen in person.
This is true for everyone. Armed officials, architects, the workers at your side. If you are seen in person and you become a person instead of a wallet with a foreign flag on it, then people will be less likely to take advantage of you. And you're going to find that you also build a better network as a result.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Even if you're a native in that area.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Exactly. Even if you're a native. This is true for everyone, not just for foreigners.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And what about the budget?
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Maybe I can give a couple of tips. I'm going to blurt out three golden rules for budgeting.
Number one, never hire an architect that works on a percentage.
Never hire an architect that works on a percentage.
And you must understand why. Because if you have an architect that works on a 10% commission on your works. Very interesting. The morning is. How do I get Anna to spend another €10,000? By making another thousand euro today.
Don't do it. If an architect insists on this change. Architect.
It has happened to me before. They even do it to me. No, I only work on a percentage basis. Okay, you work with someone else. I don't need you.
It is none of your business if I decide to have steep tile floors or super expensive oak floors. Because your job is the same. Second thing, get a lot of quotes. You find the company to give you a quote on the job. Ideally this is a bit of a cheeky trick, but it's a good trick. You tell them, hey, I want to renovate the place. Why don't you give me an estimate for the works? They have to make you a list of the work that they will have to do and give you the price. Then you get the same quote they gave you and you go to another company, you hide the prices and you say, how much would you charge me for this work? Then you go to a third company. How much would you charge me for this work? Eventually you get four or five quotes. You will see that prices will be within 30% of one compared to the other. Then you pick the one that has the best combination of reputation and price and terms.
Because if someone gives you 10% less, but they tell you that they don't want to commit to a delivery date, you could still be waiting after five years, after they took 50% as a deposit. So, combination of terms, reputation and price.
The Last of these three top tips is have a contingency fund. Add 10 to 20%, no matter what. Don't be the person that actually this has happened to. A friend of Mine, an architect, he did a renovation for this family and then at the end the family discovered that they had to pay 4,000 Euro to the utilities company to connect the electricity. And these guys said, we don't have the money for this, but do you want to live in a house without electricity? This should have been budgeted for before, but it is not really part of the work. So it wasn't the architects fault. It's just a theatrical suit. But there will always be some unexpected, some unknown unknowns.
So if you have 10 to 20% left in your pocket for any eventuality, that is a good thing. And if you don't end up spending them, that's great. I'd say that in these five minutes, that's the. That's my condensed wisdom. Then maybe in the future we'll do another episode about how to budget properly for a construction project.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thank you, Luca.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: It's a pleasure. If you guys have any questions. Now we're into this kind of property mindset because we spent three months writing this property buying guide. If you have any questions that are adhesion to this topic, feel free to send them over and then I will be happy to either answer them ourselves or we know plenty of experts that we can bring to the podcast to have a little discussion about them.
Thank you for listening.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Thank you. Bye. That's it for this week on MagicTowns Italy. You can create a free account at MagicTowns IT and explore over 2,000 towns, including those offering the 7% tax scheme, as well as download dozens of expat guides.
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