Almost ten years ago now we decided as a family to return to Italy. Choosing Abruzzo, a region I knew well since childhood having a family vacation home in Castel Di Sangro. We decided to make our new home in Teramo based on ease of access, facilities, schools and within easy reach of the Adriatic coast and the mountains.

Since already having a qualification in commercial activities here in Italy it seemed almost an easy choice to return to school here and enrol in the estate agents course. Laws and practices had changed since my ten years away in the United Kingdom, so there was much to learn and after attending this refresher I passed and was enrolled in the list of estate agents here in Abruzzo and with the Chamber of Commerce in Teramo.  All  necessary before I could start my own estate agency here in Italy. I began slowly working mainly with other agents here in Teramo and adding to my practical knowledge. Making contacts and learning my profession rather than jumping in at the deep end I felt I needed the backing in those first few years of the experience of others. After all someone purchasing a property here is reliant in many ways on you, even more so when buying a property in a foreign land with to be honest some pretty strange rules being applied that even a native Italian finds confusing.

Thanks to those early years I built a good local reputation amongst the other professionals I need to work with here, geometras and notaries, lawyers and building companies and when I set up my own offices and agency I felt confident that I could provide a service to my clients that would ensure that any property purchase I was mediating in arrived at a point that both of my clients the seller and the purchaser were happy with.

Of course here in Italy every mediation is a unique experience, more often than not final problems not being fully sorted out to the satisfaction of all parties until sitting down at the notaries table where miraculously it seems all parts suddenly come together, legal problems resolved, ownership issues finally sorted. This methodology is not reserved for the foreign purchaser it’s the norm that even Italians have to go through, its just easier for them as the language is familiar and the system also.

So I am an estate agent here in Teramo , Abruzzo and I work only in this area, from mountains to coast, city to country. I am very familiar with the areas I work in and I do not often take on properties where I have no knowledge of the area. My work is not exclusive to non Italian sales , indeed the larger percentage of my work is with local Italians here in Teramo, but I enjoy working with the English speaking market as it allows me to keep up to date with my second language and meet new people that have an interest in Italy. A fact that makes me proud that people choose to come and live here and become part of Italian culture. The food, the wine, the lifestyle. The hardest point in all this is the choosing of the correct property and going through the purchase process hopefully my role in this allows people to say afterwards that it was not so bad.