Before You Say Yes: renovating an old house in Italy

⭐ Renovating an old house in Italy rarely starts with design choices. It starts with discovery.

Behind plaster you find brickwork.

Behind brickwork: old repairs, moisture, improvised solutions, and decisions made decades ago — sometimes longer.

What many people underestimate is that renovating here is not only a technical process, but also a contractual and relational one.

When help arrives too quickly

Once you arrive — especially as a foreign homeowner — people will come forward offering help.

Builders, contractors, intermediaries. Often well-intentioned, sometimes not.

The first question is almost always the same:

“What’s your budget?”

This is a crucial moment.

Without clarity on scope, roles, timelines and responsibilities, a renovation can easily drift.

Promises are made quickly. Assumptions remain unspoken.

And once work has started, it becomes much harder to pause or renegotiate.

Renovation requires agreements, not just trust

Trust matters — but it is not a substitute for clarity.

Before you say yes, it helps to understand:

what exactly is included in the work

who decides when changes arise

how additional costs are calculated

when and how payments are due

and what happens if progress slows or stops

These are not abstract legal issues.

They are practical questions that determine whether a project stays manageable — financially and emotionally.

An informed perspective

As a lawyer with over 5 years hands-on experience renovating an old property in Italy, I’ve learned where things tend to go wrong — and what is worth clarifying early.

Not everything needs to be formal or complicated.

But shared understanding matters.

On this blog, I’ll continue to write about:

real renovation situations

common pitfalls for foreign homeowners

and how to approach projects with more control and fewer surprises

⭐

For those who need guidance, I work on a retainer basis.

Questions or next steps can be discussed after initial contact.

Sometimes the most important decision in a renovation is not what you build -

but when you say yes.

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