“The ceiling is two and a half metres high, you see,” said Olita, the estate agent, in a self-assured tone. “No, it’s two metres seventy,” came the impassive correction from Luigi Buttini, our hired geometra. A geometra is a typical Italian professional, whose expertise encompasses everything from architectural engineer to planning specialist. He is virtually indispensable when buying and vetting a house. We hired Buttini to inspect the house in the Oltrepò which we set our heart on. We were already pretty taken by the house but we wanted to avoid ending up with a fool’s bargain. The fact that we couldn’t trust our estate agent Olita in this respect had already become clear at our first viewing.
“Two metres fifty,” countered Olita, annoyed and abrupt because of Buttini’s correction. “Let’s measure it,” concluded Buttini, sure of himself and equipped with all the necessary tools to make this possible. The result of this little duel of masculine egos was that the height was established as two metres seventy- five, meaning our geometra won. We suppressed a smile. Both men had been trying to get on top for some time now, Olita always on the alert for any mistakes Buttini could be caught making.
Buttini checked everything: did all the measurements tally with those in the land registry? Had anything been modified or extended illegally? Was the size of the plot of land correct? “È tutto in ordine, non ci sono problemi,” Olita shouted out time and again, offended that we brought in a real expert to check on him. But we were well prepared, and we bore firmly in mind all the disasters that could befall someone trying to buy a house in Italy. There was already something that didn’t seem to be right: the piece of land that Olita’s advert promised us was at least two thousand five hundred square metres. On our first visit, he showed us the borders of the land, which according to him extended to the end of the little brick building, called the rustico.
Back home after the viewing, in the middle of the night, awake with excitement over the fact that we had probably found our dream house, I suddenly realised that this couldn’t be right. I thought that the amount of land around the house seemed to be too small (where was the swimming pool supposed to go?) and this could be a reason not to buy. But wait a minute, I thought: the house itself measures 11 by 11 metres, which is 121 square metres. The house should fit into the land over 20 times. But that was impossible on the piece of land that Olita had shown us.
Now that we had brought our own surveyor, this question should soon be resolved. The stocky figure of Buttini was wading through the tall weeds (an outstanding job for Olita?), stumbling across leftover roof tiles that had been thrown away haphazardly by roofing workmen. Olita was bounding along behind him like an overexcited puppy. Panting for breath, he called out one more time, warning us that the grounds beyond the rustico did not belong to the house and that we shouldn’t be trespassing: it was proprietà privata! With slight panic in his tone, Olita shouted across to the owner to ask for his support. But the owner stood at the front of the house and didn’t hear him. Buttini pushed on, entering illegal territory. Or maybe not? No, because he concluded that our piece of land stretched completely to the walls of the neighbouring house. The land registry documents confirmed this fact. Two nil to our geometra!
Olita was becoming ever more miffed and he had already started the day off in a bad mood. “You are late,” he called out in annoyance. “I don’t think so, we agreed half past nine,” I said. “Nine o’clock!” he insisted. The owners had also had to wait half an hour, but they didn’t hold it against us. “È tutta colpa sua,” said the lady of the house smiling at me. “It’s all his fault.” It was clear that they weren’t on the best terms with Olita either. We could turn this to our advantage. I asked the woman if there was any other interest in the house at present. “There is some interest,” she said, but she didn’t sound convincing.
Olita rang us a couple of days later to ask us in an aggressive tone why we hadn’t let him know yet whether we were going to make an offer on the house. Namely, everything was in order, we only needed to pay a deposit and sign a temporary sales agreement. But we - being well-prepared - had other ideas and we made this clear to him: “First we do a perizia, a survey, then we examine all the paperwork: the land registry, the ownership documents, outstanding debts, etc.. Then we will see how it goes.” “Shouldn’t we actually check if the neighbours would want to buy the land?” we asked our expert. According to the law, neighbour farmers have the first priority to buy when someone is selling farmland adjacent to their properties. “No, no, non ci sono problemi,” called out Olita immediately, but he was going to check just to be on the safe side: we were right.
In an hour or two, Buttini came to the conclusion that it all looked pretty good, and even better: a house as big as this for this asking price was a real affare, bargain. Now we only needed to go to the town hall in Montecalvo to make sure we would not stumble on any difficulties regarding the land-use plan, and then we could finally make our first offer on the house. We felt the tension rising. Could anything still go wrong?