Before rushing out to buy your property it is best to carefully consider the location. The most common complaint amongst foreign homeowners is that they chose the wrong location. Before committing yourself consider your needs both in the short and long term.

Accessibility
Where are the local airports and train stations? If you are going to buy a Casale (farmhouse) in the middle of the countryside you might find some roads inaccessible without a 4 x 4. Is the area still accessible if it snows or if it is icy? Is the area prone to flooding or other natural disasters?

Facilities
How far are you form the nearest supermarkets, towns, schools and playgrounds, hospitals, doctors, dentists, hairdressers, sports facilities, bars, restaurants, hotels (needed if you can’t put all your visitors up?) beaches, mountains, and so on. If you have children it’s not much good if you have to travel over an hour each way to the nearest school.

Resale value
Is your house resalable? At some point you may wish to resell your property. Is the area fashionable? Does the area have all the facilities to attract new buyers? Consider what might be important to other buyers. You may not have children living with you but prospective buyers such as Italian families invariably continue to house their children until they leave to marry and as such may have different requirements than you.

These are just some of the questions often over looked by foreign buyers of Italian property. Ideally it would be best to spend some time in the area to answer these and any other questions you may have at first hand before committing your property search to any one location.

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Buying a property in your own country is probably one of the the biggest decisions you will ever make and a lot of thought, effort, viewings etc go into making that decision.
For some reason, a lot of people when buying a foreign property leave that commonsense behind and look at things through rose coloured glasses.
Always visit the area you intend to buy in, DO NOT buy through an exhibition or hard sell salesperson in your home country.
Do proper research and employ a lawyer.
DO NOT part with any money, no matter what the pressure - such as this is the last one, prices go u tomorrow etc - without being 100% satisfied that the property is what you want and your lawyer has gone over all the paperwork.
Remember that most resort areas have a high season,  which is probably when you have visited, in the winter or off season the resort will be deserted with many shops, restaurants etc closed which is ok if you just want a holiday home but if you are planning to move permanently would you want to live in a “ghost” town for 4-6 months of the year.
Take all guarantees such as rental income with a big pinch of salt and certainly do not borrow money on the strength of these “guarantees”.
Take a look at the travel costs to and from and remember, especially where a region is covered by only one low cost airline that if they pull out you will have problems not only getting to your property but also the value of your investment will probably fall.
This happened in 2006 in France when a low cost airline pulled out of flying to a small regional airport.
The above is not meant to put you off, just to get you to think and use some commonsense to enable you have a problem free purchase and a happy purchase.

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