We have made an offer on a house! Joe Guida, our British-Ciancianese realtor,
very patiently drove us around Cianciana on a dizzying tour of at least a dozen
houses here and one in the nearby town of Burgio over the space of two
days. All of the houses blended together
with the exception of three.
Casa Stephano (asking price €28,000)
Casa Stephano is situated right next to one of the 4
churches in Cianciana and is on the main street of Corso Cinquemano Arcuri. Three stories tall, it has perhaps the
largest garage in the old part of Cianciana.
Two bedrooms and one bathroom – it has the potential to be made into a
three bedroom two full bathroom home. It
has some lovely detail in the house however it has two downsides:
1.
While it does have a balcony, the view is
limited – in a town with such a spectacular view, it does seem to be a waste to
buy something that doesn’t make the most of it.
2.
Because it is on the main street and only 2
blocks from the main piazza, it is very noisy.
Cars, trucks and tractors go by at all hours of the day and night. I should explain what I mean by
tractors. Imagine a typical John Deere
type tractor from about 50 years ago.
Now, strip everything off it except the internal workings, the seat and
the wheels. Oh, and the muffler,
especially strip off the muffler. These
tractors drive along this main street with regularity sounding much like how I
would imagine a tank would sound travelling down the same street. And the people. Sicilians, it seems to me, have two volumes
when they speak – normal and loud.
Certainly this is an exaggeration but not much of one. As they walk back and forth along this main
road to the piazza at night, they call “Buona sera!” to each other and have
conversations that may be between someone on the street and another person on a
balcony two stories up. Loud is a
necessity, especially when a tractor goes by.
Also, did I mention the church?
Twice a day, the bells chime insistently, calling the faithful to
mass. Each time the bell does not ring
just once but several times at 9am and 9:15 and then again at 5:30 and
5:45pm. You would imagine the sound of
church bells to be musical and lovely – and they are, the first two or three
times you hear them. After several days
of church bells they become somewhat less appealing (pun absolutely and
entirely intended.)
Casa Cusumano (asking price €28,000)
It took us a couple of days to get into Casa Cusumano as the
renters were in the process of moving out.
It sits at the top of the hill on the road to Palermo. It is a three-story house with the back
facing the hills and with a view of the sea from the top floor window and with the
front facing the town. As I mentioned,
the house had been rented out and, sadly, had been looked after neither by the
tenants nor the landlord, yet we could see so much potential in this
house. With some work (or rather a great
deal of work as our British contractor Scott told us) it could be
phenomenal. A rooftop terrace added on
would give 360-degree views. It has a
massive master bedroom with a balcony but the ensuite (could you really call
the hole that is the bathroom an ensuite?) needed to be completely ripped out
and started over. The first floor has a
double sized bedroom and a sitting room also with a balcony. The kitchen would have to be ripped out and
redone. This, actually, isn’t really all
that uncommon in Italy. Homes are often
sold with absolutely nothing left in them short of bathroom fixtures. All kitchen appliances, countertops,
cabinets, etc. are taken and the buyer is required to fit a new kitchen. This is not such a costly undertaking as it
would be in Canada as a new kitchen in Cianciana including appliances could
cost as little as €2000. It is a lot of
work – about €27,000 including the VAT (value added tax). The house itself would be stunning when
finished but we would have paid probably €10,000 more than the house would
be worth in the end. Still, this house has
caught our attention and we can’t completely dismiss it.
Casa Giordano (asking price €30,000)
Casa Giordano is a 4-story (5 if you include the top
terrace) house in the old part of Cianciana about 4 blocks from the main
piazza. Even though it is close to the
piazza, it is on a quiet street and, much to our delight, we found that a very
kindly older couple live next door. The
ground floor is not officially a garage, but the neighbours have told us that
the current owner has used it that way, albeit with a very small car. Once the car is inside the ground floor, it
goes back far enough that another very small car could likely fit in behind
it. This house has bedrooms and sitting
rooms and full bathrooms on the first and second floors and a huge kitchen on
the third floor. (Keep in mind that in
Italy the floors are counted from the bottom as ground, first, second, third
whereas in Canada we would say first, second, third, fourth). There is some structural work that would have
to be done but Scott assures us that it is not an expensive or difficult repair. A kitchen would again have to be added and the
roof on the storage room on the top terrazza would have to be replaced
immediately as it is made of asbestos.
In fact, there is very little work that would have to be done as the
house is in quite good shape. What truly
sells this house, however, are the two terrazza. Yes, two.
There is a medium sized terrazza off the kitchen with a lovely view and
some shade so even in the heat of the summer, it will be possible to sit
outside and eat our meals. From the
kitchen’s terrazza there is a metal spiral staircase that goes up to the top
terrazza. Joe could not have
orchestrated a better way to show this house if he had planned it himself. The house itself has many nice features: high
ceilings with lovely detailing, large bedrooms each with its own sitting room,
bathrooms on every floor, garage, and massive kitchen with a terrazza. All of these things make the house a nice
choice, but climbing that last spiral staircase to the jaw-dropping 200-degree vista
of Cianciana nestled in the surrounding green and golden hills gives this house
something truly special. Scott came
through this house with us, as he did with the others, and gave us a rough
estimate of about €8500 to complete all the work needing to be done.
Just a note on Joe and Scott:
Nick and I feel we really have fallen on our feet here. We met Joe, electronically at first, by
searching for real estate in Sicily. Joe
has done such a good job at advertising Ciancianese real estate on English
language websites, that when you search in English for inexpensive houses in
Sicily you find, almost exclusively, property in Cianciana. We contacted Joe about one of the houses he
had listed (interestingly, it turned out to be not one of our top three). We emailed back and forth a few times and I
began to check to see if I could find information on Joe and the agency he
works for, My House. With just a little
searching I discovered that My House is licensed and that every comment about
Joe and My House on every expat forum I read was glowing and referred to how
honest Joe is. Finding a licensed
realtor is extremely important when buying property in Italy as the unlicensed
ones may not actually know the ins and outs of buying real estate when you are
not a resident of Italy or not proficient in Italian. Purchasing property in Italy can be fraught
with pitfalls – houses may have numerous owners as they may have been passed
down from the grandparents to the children and then to the grandchildren. Every owner has to sign either in person or
by proxy to agree to the sale. If even
one has not signed, the sale is not legal.
Yikes! Joe has been wonderful so
far. He is knowledgeable and patient and
has answered every question we have had.
He has also put us in touch with other Canadians in town, a nice
perk. His Sicilian is impeccable (or at
least sounds so to my very untrained ears) and moves smoothly back and forth
between English and Sicilian.
Scott is a licensed and British trained tradesman/project
manager. He came to Cianciana five years
ago to buy a house in order to renovate and then sell it. He fell in love with Cianciana and has never
left. His work is done according to
British standards, which is a real bonus as the Sicilian tradesmen here work
according to Sicilian regulations.
These regulations are considerable more lax that one would find in
Canada or northern Europe. Scott
introduced us to Thomas and Lillian, a Danish couple who plan to retire here
for good. They kindly invited us into
their home to see the work Scott had done.
It was absolutely impeccable.
Their house, bright and airy, is the stuff of Better Homes and Gardens. Thomas assured us that we couldn’t find a
more trustworthy person to work on our home than Scott and this is certainly
the impression he has given us. After
looking at these three houses, Scott sat down with us at Bar Antico Trieste for
an espresso and to discuss our options.
Casa Stephano we discounted right away because of the noise. Scott walked us through the work and costs
and the pros and cons of the final two houses.
He did not at all try to steer us towards the house that would give him
the most work. Instead he gave us a very
unbiased look at both.
Our Decision
We were truly torn between Casa Giordano and Casa
Cusumano. Finally, we decided to make an
offer on Casa Giordano with the plan that if we couldn’t get Casa Giordano then
we would try for Casa Cusumano. Thus,
yesterday morning we went to Joe’s office and made an offer of €25,000. And now we wait.
