Renting homes & apartments in Italy …

A little bit of research on homes and apartments for rent by owners will save you considerable money, and may give you a much better experience when traveling to Italy.

Most people who decide to rent a home or apartment in Italy start by going to the more frequented and more “corporate” appearing web sites, or select an agency from the New York Times travel section. While this certainly works, our experience is that working with one of the “big names” rather than trying to do a “direct from owner” rental provides little extra benefit or security, if any, and can cost considerably more.

When we first decided we would rent a home in Tuscany during the summer of 2001, we took the traditional approach and borrowed a catalog from a friend … a catalog from The Parker Company. We were shocked at the prices. They seemed quite high.

We did a bit of searching, and found RentVillas.com. Their prices were much more reasonable than those from Parker. We settled on a property through them. There was ease in making the payment (they accepted credit cards) and in making the booking (through their web site). They sent us a packet of information by mail, along with our rental voucher and directions to the property.

When we arrived, we met the owner, and he immediately handed us his business card and asked us what we were being charged by RentVillas.com. He was quick to tell us that “next time” we should deal directly with him and save considerable money (like 40%). This immediately got us thinking that we would never use an agency or broker in the US to confirm a rental in Italy again.

My Italian got better and better after August 2001, and a year or two later we used a real estate agent in Fano, where we eventually bought our Italian apartment, to book a summer beach rental. Again, we were met by the owner, and immediately he asked us to work directly with him to save money the next summer. His discount was not as great as the real estate agency did not take much of a fee … 100 Euro or so for a two week rental.

We dealt with him directly the next summer.

The reality is that other than broker the booking, there did not appear to be a whole lot of “value add” that the agent/broker provided us in either situation ... whether they were in the US or Italy.

Sure, I’m confident that they would list the many benefits of working with them, how they quality assure properties, are insured, etc., but none of this was that valuable to us. We also saw plenty of reviews of properties on RentVillas.com that seemed to suggest that their quality control was lacking … or they simply allowed a self-selection to take place when properties they listed continually received bad reviews. In other words, they’d list the property and let the reviews sort out the attractiveness of the properties to potential renters.

Now, with the pervasiveness of the Internet, there are plenty of ways to identify, research, and book properties in Italy (and anywhere in the world for that matter), directly with owners, and save lots of money.

We have found the two most popular sites are SlowTravel.com and VRBO.com.

Slow Travel is a great site that has classified ads for rentals in many countries, and also has a very active community of message board participants. These people are often veteran renters, and are accompanied by people who live in Italy and rent out their properties, or by people like us who have a property in Italy, live in the US, and rent it out as well.

On Slow Travel, if you find a rental property, very, very often a quick posting on the message boards will uncover someone who has rented the property, or knows who has, or knows of the property because they live in the area.

VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) is a large classified advertising site whose name says it all … they list properties like ours that are for rent by the owner … and they essentially cut out the “middle man”.

If you are renting in Italy for the first time, or the 20th time, I strongly encourage you to frequent Slow Travel and VRBO to research and select your dream rental home or apartment in Italy. You won’t be disappointed.

One (older) man’s quest to learn Italian – Part 5

Even after using all of these materials, there is still something missing from one’s study of Italian: conversation. I’ve found several ways to solve this problem.

First, and certainly best, is to spend time in Italy and use the language. Since contracting to buy an apartment there last August, I’ve been back 4 times for a week at a time. The opportunity to use the language was bountiful, since I was checking on reconstruction, attending the closing, ordering an apartment’s worth of furniture, and constructing that furniture as well as buying the items necessary to make the place livable. This also gives one the opportunity to learn things the way Italians use them in everyday life.

But, I can’t continue these once every month or two trips … at least not right now (he says with a smile, thinking about the future and spending more time there).

So, I focused on getting more conversation here in the US.

I have a good friend, my best man, who has fallen for Italy almost as much as I have. He’s studying the language, and we do practice speaking and writing to one another. He lives 2 hours away, so this is not an ideal solution.

I also found an Italian “Meet Up” group here in central Ohio, and have joined that. See:

http://www.meetup.com/

Search for “Italian” and your city, and you might be amazed just how many other Italian students there are!

Finally, and I’ve left the best for last, find a native Italian speaker and hire them as a personal tutor.

After being frustrated with not being able to attend regular university or college classes in Italian, I sent an e-mail to the head of the Italian program at Ohio State University asking for her advice. She suggested the tutor route, and had a department administrator provide me a list of tutors. She stressed that I should only get one who is a NATIVE Italian speaker. I made my calls and sent my e-mails, and have been using a tutor for several months. The ability to converse weekly, ask questions, be tested on progress, and cover more complex sentence structures, tenses, etc., has been nothing short of fabulous.

My best man has done exactly the same thing, and he feels as I do, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” For what is likely to be less than $30 each week, you can get an hour or two of great one-on-one help with your Italian, and help out a “starving student”. The tutors we use or who we contacted are all Italian citizens here doing either another undergraduate degree, or advanced degrees, after earning a degree in Italy. None of them teaches Italian at their university here. They are studying in areas like women’s studies or very advanced philosophy (doctorate level). We find that their ability to provide more information to us than just rote lesson material is fantastic … plus, our interest in all things Italian makes them feel much more at home here in the US, and provides a bit of a connection for them with things at home. In addition to having tutors, we both believe we’ve now made a few more life friends who are Italian.

One last word of advice before I close this series:

Don’t fall for the “Learn a language in 10 days!” advertisements you see on the Internet. Learning a new language takes time and commitment. If you do not study regularly (several times a week), and with tenacity, forget learning much Italian. If you fall away from studying, get back on track as soon as you can and start again. You'll stumble along the way, so be prepared to get up, dust yourself off, and start back at it when your motivation returns. It will not be a straight line of progress. But, start now, do a little bit every day or every other day, be committed and be tenacious, don’t give up, and you’ll be rewarded every day along the way with steady progress that you can use on your next trip to Italy!

Buona fortuna & buon viaggio!

Ciao … Marco

http://www.italianrealestateassist.com