That so does not have the same ring to it as Under the Tuscan Sun. And there is a reason why: If you really want to learn about a country and it's culture, don't read a book, buy a house there.
I have no idea why I didn't blog about this wayyy sooner...Okay, so way back before last summer Max and I saw an ad for a house that we thought we might be interested- it was a small building, it was a 2br, had a large
cantina (basement space) and had a little strip of garden and a little room that you could use as an extra room. But, it only had one bathroom, the garden and extra room were a bit away from the house, the parking space was awkward and most of all the price was more than we could afford.. The guy from the agency, Mr Polli was one of the only real estate agents that isn't smarmy like all the other ones we'd met. He realized we couldn't afford much and wanted something other than a 4 walled box. He suggested us a couple of places including one on Dei Mille (Literally:
Of 1000, refers to an army led by
Garibaldi). It wasn't advertised very well because as Polli prefaced it: it's very particular and you must see it in person and look at it with an opened mind...which meant the house IS actually sort of particular and you must look at the potential because the house was a mess (i mean like where i was waiting for some sort of cable show like
Hoarders to come in and clean up the nasty mess and every one would be thankful and teary eyed after) and the owners were asking for a bit much (but when you are buying, it always seems like that, doesn't it?).
This is what will eventually be the upstairs study, all the house is like that messy. Just before we went back home in May of last year, we went back for another looksie, because it was one of the few houses with 2 ba and a little yard (and when I say little I mean,
microscopico, we are going to have to plant everything in bonsai, including the grass!). In Italy, having yard space or even a balcony is not a given, especially if you live in (or near) a big city and having a 2 or 3 br with just one ba is pretty common. I am an American from California, for me-those things are a minimum, so we went back to give it another chance. There are about a
mille (1,000, remember from above?) things wrong with the house, but that is at least a
mille things less than any other house we have seen and most of all the house has loads of potential. I think just cleaning the place up and smacking on some paint, could double the price. So, we put in a bid, like 50K under the asking price. This is the first of the many weird things I have yet to write about the process of buying a house: you have to write a check and leave it with the real estate agent for the amount you are willing to pay, but the seller doesn't cash the check, he just says whether or not he accepts it or not. (btw the re agent is just a go between he/she does don't work in the same way American ones do-like the agent/broker thing). Then we left for the summer and the seller decided not to accept our bid.
After the summer, we thought it over a bit, we looked for more houses on line and then thought about offering a little more/seeing how much the guy was willing to lower his price. By chance I had found an ad for the house online and knew that it had been on the market for at least a year and that they guy living in the house was the renter, not the owner-so perhaps the owner wanted to oust his slobby culo (the only way to get rid of a tennant is to sell the house) and might be willing to barter down a bit more. The international problem with buying a house is that when you put work into it, you become personally attached and often see the house for much more than what it's worth and since Polli doesn't act as our agent (nor their broker) we had to find a way to convince them. Polli set up a meeting with them. By now I was around 5 months pregnant and if you don't know, Italians go gaga for preggos and newborns. So we met with the couple and they were really nice, they asked a lot about the pregnancy and our other kid and we totally connected on the fact that would have 2 girls/they have 2 girls, both sets of kids were being raised bilingual (theirs are french/italian), I make jewelry/the wife sells beads and jewelry stuff. We upped our offer slightly, they lowered their counter and eventually we came to an agreement. I think the fact that they would be selling their beloved house to someone they connected with instead of an unknown, helped them come way down on their asking price (and vice versa for us). We also learned that the house is rented to the an acquaintance who has 4 kids. The only girl of the foursome went to school with one of their girls and that's how they know each other. The guy is divorced and I think the kids live with him-but I'm not sure, because they didn't have a lot of toys, they only had a lot of video games and the house was NASTY messy! My parents cashed some of their IRAs and wired us some
soldi (thanks M&D!), unfortunately that week was the nastiest and lowest day for the euro v dollar and we lost a bunch in conversion. Ah, but that's the way the dice rolls. We wrote a check for the down payment and got the paper work rolling to sign to buy the house, then we went to get a loan for the house (
yeah i know huh, backwards), and gave our 6 months advanced notice that we were moving out of our flat we rent (it's a standard contract requirement-yeah, a half year notice-
crazy huh??). This was back in September, which set the actual buying of the house/handing over the keys (the
rogito) on March 30. Sort of a bummer cuz I was hoping to be all moved in when Viv was born, but then I realized it would be easier to move without a big ol' belly and olus, when my mom came in Feb, it would be easier for her to take Sophia to school from our current place.
Soon, a sweet couple came to look at our flat, they really liked it and decided to move in. They even inquired about renting a garage downstairs, that has been on the market for years. (Btw if you buy/rent a house, the garage is sold/rented seperately-again,
i know, crazy, huh?).
In the meantime...we only got approved for 80% of the loan.
Yeah, I know f'n weird again. Don't ask me why they don't approve you for a certain amount and you have to find a house that costs that or less. And all this was because we didn't qualify for a 'first house loan,' because wayyyyy back in the day Max's parents bought him and his brother a house as an investment in Cuneo. The Nonna doesn't want to sell the house as long as she is alive (I know, it ain't an investment, if you don't sell it to make money). In the end Max's bro Ale did us a solid, he bought out Max's half of the house, keeping it in the family and letting us out of that contract-and I found out that a 'first house loan' really just means 'only owning one house loan' and we now qualified for much lower mortgage rates and 100% of the loan.
Yeah, I know crazy merda huh?
In our heads we are redesigning the house, the bathrooms need to be redone, especially the upstairs one. When they built the stairs, they miscalculated and the top step is only half a step and you walk into the wall of the studio. There are a thousand things that need to be done. We make an appointment to go back to the house to take measurements so we can see about buying new things for the house, because as you may or may not know-when a house is sold it is sold empty-that means the previous owners take the kitchen and closets (there aren't built ins here, everyone uses
armadios, which are like armoires, just not so fancy) with them. You could even end up buying a house without showers, toilets and bidets, just the holes.
I know, totally weird, huh? All the kids are home and staring at us like 'what the heck are we doing?' and the dad is in the middle of cooking dinner, so we don't take good measurements because we feel rushed. It's basically my fault too because it was all very confusing. There are columns that hold up the house, they can't be torn down or the house will fall and they are EVERYWHERE. Despite them being built into the walls they are thicker than the walls and so they jut out and those have to be written into the calculations and because of a miscommunication between Max and I am frantically scribbling on a teeny tiny badly foto-copied floor plan of the house and we really get nothing accomplished.
In February, we got a call to go to the real estate office, thinking it was to sign for some more paper work (it's now about a month before the agreed
rogito). Being February, I am mega preggo! I waddle into the office and we sit down in the waiting area for the owners to arrive. Just the husband comes in and he immediately starts babbling off at a kilometer a
minuto about how the renter doesn't want to move out.
WFT? Yeah I know, this is the craziest of the crazy stuff! Since the renter and owners are acquaintances, the owner only told the renter that he sold the house, but they didn't sign an official document for the
rogito. I swear I almost had my baby on the floor. By now Mr Zago (of the real estate offices of Dimensioni Zago) came out because Mr Polli was out of the office for personal reasons. I sucked the baby back into my uterus and we went into the office and chatted. Bascially Mr Zago (zigozago means to zigzag- there has got to be some pun in here with this guys name, but i'm so peeved just writing this I can't think of one) said that even if the renter/owner signed an agreement about the
rogito, it doesn't legally amount to diddly squat because the Italian laws side with renters and the renter could basically stay in there as long as he wanted.
WTF, once again! The owner kept babbling about the conversation between him and the renter, it was like watching someone struggling against quicksand. The more he said, it was just making the situation worse. Since we all signed the
compromesso (the agreement the house would be sold to us/we would buy the house) and the owner cashed the down payment check, if we don't do the
rogito on the agreed date, the owners would have to pay us back double the down payment. To avoid this, Mr Zago suggested that perhaps the owner could offer to pay for a few months rent to get the renter out, which would be a lot better than him having to give us back double our check. In the end, we left there disillusioned of hopes of being one step closer to owning our new house and with an agreement that
ci sentiamo (literally -we'll hear each other, trans to we'll get in contact) in the next few days. We are totally freaking out because, the baby is due any day now, we need to be out of the house at the end of March because we gave notice and someone else is moving in and we don't know if we will have a house by that time and don't even have enough time to look for a new place! Plus if we do rent somewhere, we will have to enter into another at least 1 year contract and another 6 months of
disdetto (notice of vacancy). Then, we were in limbo forever and we didn't
sentiamo anything for 2 weeks. Eventually had to call to find out WTF was up!
WTF???Vivienne is born, we leave the hospital and a few days later we have another meeting. The long of the short of it is that the owner talked to the renter again and the renter said that he wanted 10,000 euro to move out, the owner talked him down to 7,000. Yes, I know it's blackmailing, the owner even asked if that's what the renter was doing and technically it's not legal, but for the owner to get the guy out of the house so that we won't make him him pay us double our down payment, it's worth it. Despite having recorded the whole thing, he owner probably won't hire a lawyer to get his money back because that would cost more than the blackmail money. Ahhhh, Italy! Totally crazy, huh? Once the paper is signed and the check is cashed, ci sentiremmo (we'll get in touch-but in the near future) again, but for now the rogito is set for Feb 20.
In the meantime, another couple comes to look at the flat we rent because the first couple has changed their minds. This means they will have to give a disdettoto on their apt and we have a month's grace period to straighten this out or look for a new place!
And of course once again
ci sentiamo, un cavolo (which translates to
we'll hear each other, a cabbage but means to
we haven't heard jack crap). We still don't know if we will own the house or have to look for a place to stay. We call and call. The owner is often away in France for business, which is partly why we don't hear from him when we are supposed to. Yeah , I know not really an excuse, because for us, that's like saying he is in Oregon for business, still in the same time zone buddy! Anyhoo, we don't hear from him until...the yard problem. The latest and great and what was the catalyst to start blogging about this house, is that the house will belong to us, but not the yard.
I KNOW, WTF, right??? Okay this is the story of our house, it is an approx 100 old farm house called a
cascina. Don't think American farmhouse, because the style is nothing like that. It is a structure that has a bird's eye view of an L and was once made up of apts, place to store animals/hay/tractor etc. Those compartments were eventually converted into about 10 apts on two levels (apartments and houses are synonymous in Italy. All rented apts/houses are privately owned.). Okay, follow along because this is where it gets really confusing. The guy that originally owned our place, had 1 apt that was the end unit. It was on the first and second level (plus the attic space) and decided to split it into 2 apts: 1 would be the downstairs part and the second would be the upstairs part, plus the attic space. The apt/house we are buying is the upstairs unit.
Because having a totally separate entrance is an amenity here, the guy tacked a garage onto the side of the house, made a terrace out of the top of the garage, added a stairway to get up there, cut a door into the side of the house so you can enter from the terrace and closed off the little bit of house between the garage and the fence so it became a yard, all raising the value of the upper unit. Are you following me? So, the yard belonged to the original apartment, but when the owner split it in two, he didn't specify that the garden belongs to just the top house when he sold off the two houses. So legally the house bottom apt can use the yard if they want.
WTF?
Wait a minute I'm not done yet, I said the yard belongs to the house, but...it is not owned by the house (or it's owner) it is owned by the
condomionio (in other words the whole apt building/cascina
).
Totally confusing, I know, huh? This all came out because the external staircase was not documented that it 'belonged' to the house. The owner had to get this registered with the notary (who is the original notary that helped sell the house from the 1st owner to the guy we are buying the house from).
The notary said to the current owner, hey by the way don't forget that the yard 'belongs' to both the houses. So basically, the owners knew, but they just forgot and therefore didn't mention it. So not only are they idiots, but so is the notary because he should have realized the potential problem and specified the ownership of the yard. I swear this guy must have got his license in a
Kinder Uovo. It's more confusing than that, and here is where even I am more confused-on the documents of sale that we, the owner and re agency signed it is written/assumed that the yard belongs to the
condominio but exclusive usage belongs to the house, but apparently there may or may not be documents that exist that say otherwise. More to come about this later...
Today we have a meeting with the re agency to find out more or hopefully see these private documents and what the next step we have to take is. The light at the end of this tunnel is that hopefully we can buy the yard from the
condominio so that if and when we eventually sell the house, we wont relive this nightmare as now owners of the house (but not owners of the yard). As the profound comic strip Cathy says: AAAACK!!! Now how do I translate that into Italian?
