Italia Mia

Commercial logos on historic sites may seem crass, but in Italy there may be no other way to preserve cherished monuments.

Vacation rental is a term in the travel industry meaning renting out a furnished apartment or house on a temporary basis to tourists as an alternative to a hotel. They are often referred to as self-catering rentals or villa rentals. As one would expect, there is a large amount of rental property available in Italy from large villas with extensive grounds and swimming pools to exquisite apartments in the many historic towns but still Vacation Rental is one of the most exciting investment niches of the future how evidenced by the recent HomeAway Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona (HomeAway is the world’s largest vacation rental conglomerate).
The concept of renting out your home is extremely new in the historical scope of hospitality.
Current owners and managers all seemed to feel lucky to have stumbled across this investment niche when they did. As if they’re on the inside of a secret that the rest of the investment and travel world has yet to truly discover.
The owners of the properties aren’t terribly experienced in running small businesses but there are loads of companies looking to make themselves helpful and fill that niche.
People from US can count on Evolve Vacation Rentals, whose service is designed specifically for property owners who don’t want to do any of their own marketing and on MyVR.com who builds personal websites for owners who want more online presence.
Italian owers who like cut the costs of an internet presence started to appreciate the services of companies as Wix.com or the italian based freshcreator.com.
Online booking could be an incredible tool but also expensive. (in italy Bedzzle is one of the cheapest).
Setting the presence online, could be an exhausting activity. Even the smaller B&B should have an internet site, a blog, a facebook page etc. and feed them with fresh content at least every week. You can have a self managed internet site with simple CMS (Content Management System) like Wix.com or Freshcreator.it (in different languages)
A Great alternative to see the mail inbox full of request is register and have a space inside of the thousands International Rental Portals existing online (click to se a good list of them)

(text from www.biggerpockets.com) (in the photo Italian properties under 600k euros on Greatestate.it)

American gourmets and lovers of Italian food products, your days as food smugglers are over.
In the U.S., they’re called cured meats, the French say charcuterie and in Italy, the word for cured-pork products is salumi.
Starting May 28, a four-decades-old ban on the import of many Italian salumi will be lifted.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont, and the provinces of Trento and Bolzano, are free of swine vesicular disease. Imports of pork products from those areas, says the USDA, present a low risk of introducing the disease into the U.S. The disease was first detected in the 1960s and can survive cooking and even long curing.
Starting soon, as long as they receive USDA approval, hundreds of artisanal products will arrive on American tables.
For centuries, Italians have been making some of the highest-quality cured meats in Europe. What’s the secret behind the high quality of Italian salumi?
Many say it’s the quality of the pigs, the climate where they’re raised and what they’re fed.

The Telegraph's Rome expert suggests what to see and do in the city this summer and offers a guide to the best hotels.

Why go? Rome really comes into its own between April and October, when the action spills outside and the centro storico becomes one big piazza. There’s no real off-season in the Eternal City. If you can take the heat, August (when most Romans head for the beach) is a good month to find offers on hotel rooms.

Everyone has her/his own favorite beach: some like sand, others prefer rocky coastlines; some seek wild, natural beaches, others want beaches with well-equipped resorts. The Island of Elba offers you all of these options – you just need to know where to go!

1. Cavoli
2. Sansone
3. Fetovaia
4. Chiessi
5. Sant’Andrea
6. Laconella
7. Pareti
8. Le ghiaie
9. Biodola
10. Barabarca

I know, Tuscany is not California, but this doesn’t mean there are no possibilities to surf in Tuscany! Here you can find a lot of surfers along the coast looking for the perfect wave! Indeed, Versilia is the capital of surfing in Italy, since the high frequency of big waves and the winds of Libeccio and Maestrale practically guarantee constant surfing, perfect for surfers of all levels. Some places where you can surf:

Pontile – Forte dei Marmi

Lido Di Camaiore

Darsena – Viareggio

Il Sale – Livorno

Perelli – Piombino

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You can't cover all of Tuscany on one shore excursion from a cruise, but you have plenty of excellent day trip options.

The Ligurian Sea has one of the highest concentrations of whales and dolphins in the entire Mediterranean. 

Research carried out since 1990 investigates the spatial distribution, ecology, habitat preferences and behaviour of cetaceans living in the Pelagos Sanctuary - a special marine protected area extending about 90,000 km2 between Italy, France and the island of Sardinia. Research focuses on the spectacularly large fin whale as well as on sperm whales, Risso’s dolphins, and on smaller species such as striped dolphins and bottlenose dolphins. Research methods include the use of remote sensing and telemetry data, the combined use of laser range-finding binoculars and GPS to passively track and record the horizontal movements of whales, bio-acoustic research, photo-identification, behavioural sampling, and remote biopsy sampling for genetic and toxicological analyses.

Participants will be directly involved in field activities, helping the researchers to collect cetacean data and enter them in a computer. Read More

Five +1 other intimate Italian classical music festivals to enjoy this year

INCONTRI IN TERRA DI SIENA ITS LA FOCE

A chamber music festival with an eclectic programme featuring internationally-known musicians in the incomparable settings of La Foce and Val d'Orcia. (http://www.itslafoce.org)

1. Trasimeno Music Festival: Umbria, 29 June-5 July

International pianist Angela Hewitt plays and curates a festival of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Messiaen – with talks by Michael Berkeley and Julian Barnes – in Magione, Gubbio and Perugia. Includes a five-star event (http://www.trasimenomusicfestival.com)

2. Sferisterio Opera Festival: Macerata, Le Marche, 19 July-11 August

Verdi's Il Trovatore and Nabucco will be performed in the magnificent Sferisterio (http://www.sferisterio.it)

3. Rossini Opera Festival: Pesaro, Le Marche, 10-23 August
Sun, sea and sand with your music. Rossini was born on the Adriatic at Pesaro, which celebrates its favourite son this year with new productions of William Tell and L'Italiana in Algeri, L'Occasione fa il Ladro, Il Viaggio a Reims and La Donna del Lago (http://www.rossinioperafestival.it)

4. International Chamber Music Festival: Montalcino, Tuscany, 7-12 July
Musicians from the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra play chamber music in the medieval splendour of Montalcino and at Villa di Geggiano, Siena. (http://www.musica-reale.com)

5. Baveno Festival Umberto Giordano: Lake Maggiore, 11-21 July
Dedicated to the Italian composer Umberto Giordano (1867-1948). The programme promises international artists performing on the lake (http://www.festivalgiordano.it)

German, British and Russian buyers are finding holiday home bargains in the depressed Italian housing market. Recession hit Italians can't afford the investment properties.

According to Bloomberg, the demand from German customers has jumped significantly over the last year.

Italy with its mild climate, lots of cultural attractions and developed infrastructure has long been a popular destination for foreigners looking to buy a holiday home. It's not just the Germans, but British and Russian buyers who are looking for a place in the sun, Bloomberg reports.

This is a good time for foreigners to buy, successful haggling can slash 30% off the price during negotiations.

Foreign investment has grown with the contraction of the domestic Italian residential property market. Sales shrank by almost 26% last year on the back of tighter mortgage lending, two years of recession, and uncertainty over a new tax on primary residences.

A study shows second-home sales to foreign buyers increased 14% in 2012 accounting for 2.1 billion euros ($2.8 billion) of non-Italian investment. Most buyers since 2009 turned out to be Germans who accounted for about 40 percent of the deals by foreigners. Deals with Britons amounted to 18% and Russians came out the third most popular buyers accounting for 13% of the transactions.

Treviso the  “Little Venice":
Piazza del Duomo.
Via Calmaggiore
Piazza dei Signori, main road in Roman times.
Palazzo dei Trecento
Buranelli Canal.
Treviso isn’t too touristy, we thought with hindsight. It’s a gem we can keep to ourselves. Che bella città!

You’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to buying real estate in Italy but in the rolling hills of Tuscany, you can be sure to find that perfect home in Europe’s most seductive country.

Visitors and homebuyers are still in love with Tuscany, a fabled region of idyllic countryside and historic cities full of art, where properties are now more affordable than they’ve been for years.

Tuscany embodies all that is Italy. Here you’ll find Florence, Pisa, Siena, Lucca, and the quintessential landscape of cypress trees with a great supply of dreamy castellated hilltops towns and villages waiting to be discovered.

Tuscany has a long history of foreigner homebuyers but in the 1970s and 1980s, the countryside of the central Tuscany become a super-fashionable place to buy up old farmhouses. Most of them were British people, followed by northern Europeans and Americans. This is when the large presence of Britts built the legendary property market phenomenon of the"little England in the land of Italy", known as “Chiantishire” in the Chianti Hills area north of Siena

Although Tuscany has some of the highest-priced country property in the world, there are reports that some prices in the best areas, are now, perhaps, 15% lower than they were in 2008, making the current time a good one in which to buy. A reduced number of buyers, make the impatient vendors willing to offers below their asking price.

The fact that homes are only slightly cheaper here right now, after all these years of international recession, is significant of the exceptional stablility of the property market in this Region, and so Tuscany remains an extremely good investment.   

Annabel Freyberg traces the footsteps of her grandfather, who liberated Venice from the Germans in 1945.

The Kiwis were heading for the Danieli Hotel. Freyberg, whose soldiers had endured a long, tough fight at Monte Cassino followed by a gruelling march up the length of Italy, was determined to secure the very best haven for them

In our Summer Travel issue, which hit newsstands on Sunday, Elaine Sciolino talks to Carla Fendi, who aims to revive the faded glories of the once majestic Spoleto Festival in Italy. Here’s where to stay, eat and sleep in this Umbrian hill town.

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Have you ever booked a last minute trip to a place that was several time zones away, where people don’t speak English, don’t use the same currency – and if you’re truly honest with yourself about the whole thing, you can’t afford it?

Have you ever spent a ridiculous amount of money just to get away from your life and all the things that go with it?

A place where sometimes all it takes is a complete stranger who smiles and says, “Ciao Bella,” –  or a cappuccino?

Nestled in breathtaking countryside with open views on all sides, is located this prestigious farmhouse for sale in Umbria, situated in an extremely panoramic position which dominates the surrounding area, a splendid house which mesures approximately 204 sq mts. The property has two floors and has been perfectly restored. It includes a very attractive good sized covered porch area which extends all around the property and which measures approximately 70 sq mts, which has been constructed in a very stylish way using top quality materials and reclaimed materials wherever possible. The property is located only a few kilometers from the A1 motorway exit at Fabro. It is nestled in wonderful countryside and has fascinating panoramic views of the surrounding area but at the same time is close to all the main services and amenities, shops and communication links.

Top 10 tips to moving or retiring abroad

1. If you’re moving or retiring abroad make sure you tell the relevant government offices that deal with your benefits, pension & tax.Visas can sometimes take a long time to procure
   • Contact your Local Council
   • Find out how to if you retire abroad
   • Inform HM Revenues & Customs (HMRC)
2. Get your foreign currency transferred by experts
3. It can be extremely costly & difficult to import/export your car to most countries 
4. Avoid taking food or beverages when you move, as whilst allowed by some countries, most don’t allow them or will want to inspect them which can cause unnecessary delays.
5. If you don’t need your items delivered on exact date & time, sharing a shipping container (known as “groupage” or a “part load”) could be your cheapest option.
6. If you need storage on arrival in the country you are moving to then think about choosing a longer shipping route.
7. Make sure the removals company moving you is affiliated to FIDI! 
8. Make sure that you have separate transportation or shipping insurance.
9. Get involved with the community you have moved to. There are lots of expat groups on Facebook & Twitter to help you feel at home. 

On our road trip one of the places we stopped in was Termoli where we stayed over night. It is a short drive from Vieste.
Termoli is a seaside resort and is a popular destination. Its resorts are renowned for the quality of its beaches and the purity of its waters.
Once again we were probably the only English speaking visitors as very few non-Italians stay in this area. It is a popular place for the locals to visit and stay.
Termoli is a town and commune on the Adriatic Coast of Italy in the province of Campobasso.

• Price Change 1 Year

The annual (year-on-year) percentage change in house prices or house price index

• Price Change 5 Years

The percentage change in house prices or house price index

• Price Change 10 Years

The percentage change in house prices or house price index 

• Rental Yields

Gross annual rental income, expressed as a percentage of property purchase price. This is what a landlord can expect as return on his investment

Property is a 120-sq. m. apartment located in the premier city centre.

• Square Metre Price, Premier City Centre

Average per square metre (sq. m.) price in US$ of a 120-sq. m. apartment located in the centre of the most important city

• Round-trip Transaction Cost

The total cost incurred in buying and selling a property, expressed as percentage of the property value. Assumptions:

The property is paid in cash

The property is old (i.e. not newly built)

The property is worth US$250,000 (or €250,000, depending on local currency)

• Rental Income Tax

The tax levied on the average annual income on a rental apartment/property in the country. Assumptions:

Income is equivalent to US$1,500 per month; (or €21,500, depending on local currency)

The tax is payable jointly by a foreign-domiciled couple;

The most tax-efficient form of rental is chosen;

The maximum reasonable and safe allowances, deductions, depreciations, and expenses, are deducted.

• Capital Gains Tax

The tax levied on the increase in value between the date of property purchase and the date of sale. Assumptions:

The property is directly and jointly owned by husband and wife;

The husband and wife are both non-residents;

The couple have owned the property for 10 years;

The property has appreciated in value by 100% over the 10 years to sale;

The property was worth US$250,000 or €250,000 at purchase; and

The sale is the only source of capital gains in the country.

Roberto Rossellini's mysterious, gripping and moving Viaggio in Italia (1954) – now restored and rereleased. George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are Alexander and Katherine Joyce, a well-to-do English couple who have come to southern Italy to sell some property and do a little sightseeing, but something in their enforced leisure, the disturbing beauty of the landscape and vertiginous sense of history accelerates a crisis in their troubled marriage.