Home purchase passes milestone

Italy is still in my veins. The reason I haven’t been blogging is that we have entered our most work-intensive time of year, and all of our energy has been focused on our road maintenance business. The only reason I’m not making phone calls or sending business-related e-mails right now is that the power has inexplicably gone out, right in the middle of a warm weekday evening. But before it went out, we received an e-mail from Italy that our house purchase passed a major milestone today.

Our kitchen

Our friend Angelika, representing us in a meeting between the sellers, real estate agents and our notaio, signed our preliminary contract and made a large payment on our behalf, almost half the price of the house. The sellers have agreed to meet all of our conditions, and our geometra has confirmed that the house meets the city’s legal requirements. All that remains is to make a final payment of 76,000 euro and sign a few more documents, and we’ll get the keys. We have already booked a flight to Italy in October to take possession.

We will only be in Italy for two weeks in the fall, but next February through April, we plan to spend our usual three months in Montecarlo. Although this will be our sixth extended stay in the community where my grandparents were raised and married, we expect that it will be different actually owning a home instead of renting. We will miss Luca, Roberta, Enzo and Gilda from the Casolare dei Fiori, and we won’t see our other friends from San Salvatore as often, but living on the main street in Montecarlo will challenge our language skills more, allowing us to meet new people and further integrate into the community.

Although the house is about 75 percent furnished, Lucy has already been shopping to fill the other 25 percent—and now we won’t have to pack everything in boxes when we leave as we had to do when staying at the Casolare.

“I’m very content, because it just feels like home,” Lucy said. “I’m glad for our time at the Casolare, but this is home, where our kids and grandchildren can come and stay. It will be a heritage.”