adriatica's activity

Penny thanks for that...  its good that there is still a bit more time... and of course it allows geometras to still keeping earning....  however i know of two cases now where buildings have beeen ordered to be knocked down by comunes before completions of final acts.. well the notary has advised that the buildings have to be removed ... so its a work in progress.. i guess people are given the choice to pay for them to be registered or get rid of them...    its going to be fun for some and i still believe it requires people to be doubly careful when buying property here over the next year to make sure they are fully aware and have thing fully checked.. because during this transition period things are going to be chaotic..  one of the large problems is that Italian owners are reluctant to spend money and so they are trying to get rid of places without declaring any problems and it means even more so than before that selling a property requires a lot more checking before accepting them.. its sometimes a real nightmare..  and puts to my mind the advice of going to a local bar and doing a deal even more absurd unless you have excellent Italian and a good knowledge of all the property laws here..   

By far the safest way when buying land to secure its ownership is to have the people within any rights to purchase the land to sign away their rights to do so.. its standard practice and as an estate agency here i have never worked on a sale where this has been left to chance..  as regards use of land and the rights...  the main question to be asked is if the person is a registered farmer that works his own land then there can be problems..   however many registered farmers nowadays  are not full time farmers working their own land and so people with rights to take over land are becoming more limited... the historical reasons for the right of neighbors involved in farming to purchase land is based on the fact that farms were and still are quite small.. allowing neighboring farmers to add to their property would allow for more efficient farms and use of resources... paying over the odds for land is an estate agent talk to increase their commission by playing on the lack of knowledge of the purchaser and is easier say than putting in the research and visits to neighboring farmers to protect the purchase should it be needed.. often not.. how would anyone actually know that does not understand the system properly..  they would just accept the story that a person with land next door had the right as a registered farmer working his own land to purchase what you wanted.. and so it would be easy to suggest by paying above market value you would be safe...  

Flip.. this thread is full of my apologies.. i agree with your sentiments entirely...  re expectations .. and its a continuing and difficult area that i find myself in with people that will look at two properties and not be able to understand why one will cost pennies and others will have a normal market price.. people in their own back yards will understand price diferentials yet here a higher priced property is almost always atributed to ripping off foreigners..  there are excellent older properties and newer ones.. however if you choose say a new build off plan in Calabria on the coast dont be suprised if it follows the other previous apartment blocks into the sea or is just blown up because the mayor that owns the development company  suddenly realises its in a place where you are not allowed to build .. so saving any costs associated with making it habitable yet retaining deposits... however if you go fully into new builds here with reputable building firms and at realistic prices i have seen some wonderful homes... although not for me.. the same applies to older properties..  choose well ..investigate local prices.. above all have a list of immediate and essential requirements.. rule out all zone 1 sesimic areas.. should cut the choice a fair bit throughout Italy Wiki IT now gives the ratings on all comunes in its page so its very easy to investigate and not take an agents word.. why should you.. costs..  its going to cost a double fortune to make safe or restore a place bought in these areas and if it was safe it would be at a price you would not pay..  does that make sense .. not to me but it seems to me its how people look at places..  so expectations and lack of research and the belief in the dreaded "bargain" is what lets most people down .. there are no bargains here.. just lots of sharks        

Flip we have lived here for ten years and have bought and restored three older properties and cannot agree about accepting problems because we have never had an ongoing and impossible problem with either damp or condensation... and i also have had many debates over the fact that new italian homes are any better, as they cannot have DPCS here it does not work with their tech specs and seismic regulations or land slip problems... so all property virtually is built with no rising damp protection as it does not allow the building to be fixed with no fracture in between sub soil and above soil ... in fact i would avoid a new Italian home as i feel much more secure with seeing a house that has stood a couple of hundred years or so and has not fallen down than many of the newer properties i see with gaping cracks and white mold lining the downstairs walls..  by using accepted and well thought out traditional materials you can avoid all problems providing the property is not situated on or against a major damp source.. into a wet hillside and or on a natural spring area... there are choices we all make but i would not write off traditional properties because of their age.. maybe because of their condition and position... basic elements regarding which way the house faces can make a world of difference and its location with the land surrounding it... these are the most important factors to my mind in either new or old builds ...       

Badger... sorry too .. didnt mean to imply you were .. just acknowledging the fact that your price quotes are often more realistic than most .. and the mix up seems to come from me not making it clear this was a DIY type of suggestion not an alternative to a real heat source..  more a fix to the problems that so many face when they restore property here and seal of all air flow..  with an added warm air benefit..  you also have to realise that down here in darkest Abruzzo we have people that still work real days... and ripping a trench out of that nature in most areas will take them a half day..  and thats after a 4 hour lunch break.. you softeees in the marche obviously have harder ground or less muscle...

to be honest i have not investigated actual costs of ground heat systems .. and i know badger always has figures to hand as it is his expertise...  my thought is not that it would be a viable heat solution...  but for someone with reasonable DIY skills a simple and effective way of going about not only adding air but also to keep a holiday home reasonably warm feeling .. to do this on the cheap yes you will need to have a friendly neighbor or builder that will dig trenches with a machine...  i understand most people will not know someone but for us if we asked for a trench of that nature to be dug it would be done for free in a day.. however to add in some reality to the equation say 200 euro to a mate .... is quite common for a days work for a mini digger.. the piping is exceedingly cheap too..  i would expect to get a system installed if i was attempting it.. for less than euro 500... and that would include some sort of solar to battery store system for supplying energy to the fans..   all i am saying is that most people buy property in detached locations..  and being Italy most people have slopes.. the other point is the sort of soil here does give benefit to this type of heat recovery...  so providing your place is not surrounded entirely by rock its a do-able to my mind project that requires very little capital with almost free benefits ... that if you are not going for full fledged alternative systems that will make it a useless exercise.. ie geothermal or photo voltaic.. in combination with traditional heating methods from pellets and wood to gas or electric.. this will be a cheap and easy installation to cut costs... there are many designs on the net and advise.. a few simple precautions are require to ensure moisture escapes..  and that the system will function to its best.. i prefer air systems as a choice  because its in answer to a question regarding damp elimination... also no leak problems ..its a much simpler idea with no skills required ...   the real point is that there is a vast pool of knowledge and alternatives to all problems and thinking outside the box can sometimes be useful..  when one looks for something simple and to my mind very cheap.... so i would debate very vigourously the estimate if you were to investigate, plan and install this system yourself.. i believe it would be hundreds of euros...  

lining walls will often only hide problems in my opinion and agree with most regarding the use odf traditional breathable products as the better solution .. however providing circulation will often make probes go away very quickly and i would suggest that a simple breathing block  inserted into various rooms might well be a solution that is attempted before reaching a point of despair or a costly electrical bill...  in fact by law here kitchens and bathrooms have to have some form of air exchange system even if only passive ..ie vents... and a house without will not be regarded as livable in law... and in truth if you have gas.. GPL without air circulation then its not only unhealthy but highly dangerous more so than mains gas as accumulations of this heavier than air gas accumulates at low levels and requires low level ventilation...   anyway to add a further element to the debate.. and maybe another way of starting to keep temps up inside those with places that have sloping land could well benefit from adding a system that uses ground heat ..ie lay in a few hundred meters of pipe at aprox 2 meteres below ground and add a fan to draw the air in... and expel used air... the fan can be as small as a computer cooling fan... pipes need to slope away from house to let condensation roll downhill.. air sucked in will be at a pretty constant plus 12c .... not warm enough to live in but a much better starting base to add heat to than 0c... the other benefit is that in the summer its also a cooling system.. as 12c is a yearly constant... so not a suitable solution for all but its a cheap and sustainable simple heating cooling system that will air your house and pretty well eliminate all normal damp problems...whilst hopefully changing your fuel bills too and making a holiday home feel that little bit more comfortable when you arrive for a few days...

funny how this debate keeps coming back to haunt us.. not changing registration the debate about keeping a vehicle in Italy and avoiding paying for its use here    http://www.comuni.it/servizi/forumbb/viewtopic.php?t=68685&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0   heres an italian debate on the subject which shows its confusing to all not just UK questioners...so just so i make it clear i support the effort of the person making the choice to re-register   and providing the car is modern and common .. no changes made to it then going to the driving school and getting the papers including the italian tech specs for the specific vehicle is easy but costly...   for those that suggest that keeping a vehicle here is legal it seems to me that they are offering firm advice on an area where none was available.. up until quite recently..  it was illegal to keep a vehicle here longer than a year without changing its registration to an italian vehicle if it was eu..  and if non eu 6 months   now because of the amount of non italian vehicles being kept here by eastern europeans and indeed italians that import german vehicles the law has been significantly tightened so that should you be stopped and not able to prove that you are a tourist... then you can be fined and or have the vehicle confiscated..  for usual traffic violations a foreign vehicle is now subject to on the spot fines which if  not paid allows the police to confiscate the vehicle as well... further because of the general unhappiness that Italian motorists have towards non Italian vehicles being here because its used by many to avoid paying road tax and insurance these vehicles are getting reported more and more often...  its pretty obvious that it will upset your italian neighbor when he sees you have no tax payment on your vehicle when he is paying a fortune to drive his on the road...  anyway new laws were introduced summer 2010 for the mass exodus during august to tighten it all up.. and i wrote about it i think on the Fabruzzo forum or on a my FB page... more to talk about the laws regarding levels of alcohol and other laws relative to driving here for younger people... but it def included eu non italian vehicles.. so feel free to find it.. for example anyone towing a caravan or a proffesional driver now has no allowable alcohol limit and in certain autostradas the speed limit has been raised ..anyway there were about 15 pages of new road traffic laws.... i cannot be bothered much.. its an old debate and its obvious that its not legal to keep a non italian car here.. no matter what might be said and that in an accident if god forbids it ever happens you will be risking not only loosing pretty much all italian property you own , but prison as well if a bad injury or death is involved.. and all for what... am not sure.. a few thousand euro or even just a few hundred.. traffic accidents here have two processes civil and penal and an accident with injury gets dealt with by both courts with families having their own legal representatives that will do all the searching they can to either cancel a claim or make one...  is this really worth the worry...     

the Italian system is not that complicated its just an unknown and i think the story above shows how non Italians work with the worst of Italians to cheat people.. i agree about the notary system.. its a fraud against the whole of the italian property system... but its a fact of life here that these useless individuals rubber stamp contracts that have no real value..  however many governments have tried to simplify and change things here, only recently has it changed so that you can purchase a vehicle without a notary.. and there are appeals via the main estate agent associations for them to be removed from the process..   however i would say that a lot of the problems are that many people that attempt to purchase here are looking for under the table bargains without being aware that these days they are not available.. people think they can cut corners and save money and that is why its so easy to often sell  property with problems because people want to believe they are cheating the system..   the truth is that they are heading down a road that will not only lead to questions about how they got the property and how much they paid.. but high risks of being prosecuted themselves for tax avoidance...this then leads to so called house sellers here being able to operate without much risk as their clients have broken the law themselves... maybe by signing a final act where they declared they paid no fee to an agent or under declared the amount.. by doing this because they have either been persuaded its the way.. (and it isnt) or to save themselves a minute percentage of the whole they leave themselves open to all sorts of risk.. from prison to losing their property..   i agree and i have published this story elsewhere that it is a good sign that someone has been prosecuted.. so maybe distilling the myth that they are untouchable..    hopefully more people will read this and take lessons from the experiences.. the reality is that for most people buying a property in Italy is a relatively easy and safe experience yet this only applies because the people in the majority that buy property here understand the law.. ie they are native italians... dealing with native italian agencies.. not ex pats dealing with unqualified ex pats ... or even worse those so called estate agents here whose only qualification is the fact they speak english and are neither registered to run a business here or qualified... 

you might have a problem... a geometra and his work or an architect is protected by legal rights.. ie when you signed the contract with him he is entitled to his fee even if he does no work..and the drawings and plans that he submitted for you are his.. so even if you have completed the work without him but his are the plans you need him still...   i could say get another geometra but they will not be able to do anything until you have your original geometra release you from contract and maybe even then have to submit it all again..   i think its important that you if you can make friends with him again to enable you to move into your property or else get another geometra willing to work with you.. the new geometra will have to get the old geometra to sign the release on the contract.. which will most probably only be done when you settle his bill pretty much in full..the new geometra will then re submit the plans and they will then be checked and the certificates that are required checked.. the accounting on the build will very often be checked .. the finance police looking for any eveidence of payments made in black... and then the new geometra will have the certificate allowing you to actually live in your property released from the comune..   the thing with that approach is its going to cost you and depending on when you submitted the original plans  by changing geometras and re doing it all you might find yourself behind the law in the sense that many changes have been made regarding building work and that the certificate will not be released because your work doesnt conform any longer...   really try and get it all done by the original geometra ... i love the phrase sacked my geometra..thats impossible here.. he has to agree to release you from the contract after you have paid him off... and the proof of payment has to be registered and the geometra has to register that he is no longer running the project for you at the comune before another person can do anything on your property.. in fact what you did was most probably illegal in any case.. without your " sacked "geometras approval you are in a hole..   most of the above will seem unreasonable and unfair.. but i think its honest advice and should be followed