Our international property buying story began back in 2017 when we sold a Lake Tahoe ski cabin we weren’t using anymore and used that money to buy a flat in Barcelona. It was in the process of being renovated and was about 80% done when we closed. We oversaw the remaining work and later added another bathroom. The process was easy, and compared to where we live in the San Francisco Bay Area, cheap.
Fast forward a few years. We’d always loved Italy, having been there multiple times between us. It was a fun rabbit hole of a past time sending each other listings for incredible villas we’d find online. The novelty of looking at Italian “house porn” slowly moved toward the idea of really buying a home there. And one day, in the middle of Covid, we found the perfect place.
It was in a small town in the north we had never heard of: Pieve di Teco. The location seemed great – close to major cities, in a town with all the services we’d need, surrounded by gorgeous nature, and full of the historical architecture we wanted. We began emailing/Facetiming the woman who was selling the fully-renovated home. Just a few months later, we had our first Italian house.
We spent a good amount of time there – summers, Christmas/New Years – up to a month at a time. Pieve grew on us. The people were SO nice. We made friends. We enjoyed Pieve’s festivals and fairs and explored the region. It was better than we could have hoped for.
On one of our visits, a friend showed us a place for sale. It was the top 2 floors of a large palazzo. “This is great,” we thought, but unless we could get the whole building, we were very happy with our current home just a few doors up the street.
But then in January of 2022, a new listing (which we still looked at for fun) popped up. It was the bottom half of the palazzo we had previously toured. Painted ceilings. Stenciled walls. Incredible floors. It was filled with all the original details we wanted, although it needed a ton of renovation.
We’ll skip the negotiations with 2 different parties, the stress of having to close on one part before we knew for sure we were closing on the second part, and all the back-and-forth to guarantee we understood what we were buying. But in June of 2022, we were given a giant ring of keys to our new earth-to-sky palace and we started our adventure to bring it back to its glory.
Welcome to Our Italian Palazzo.
