One of the reasons I got into this dual citizenship thing was because of those 1 € houses which you can see in other blog posts here (they did not turn out to be what I thought - one is a wall and a puddle! I'd still do it.) I started digging into properties in Italy for fun. I found a great house that was for sale for 260,000 € outside of Pescara which I still visit [digitally] every once in a while.
I found this iPhone app Idealista and I was browsing apartments for rent in Italy for fun. I was browsing apartments for rent in Italy for fun. This is apparently something I do now. I don’t need an apartment in Italy, and I’m not moving there tomorrow, but none of that prevents me from spending an hour on Idealista pretending that I am.
A few months ago, I found a place near the beach: 65 square meters, quadrilocale, €950 a month. Wait. €950 a month? My American brain immediately started doing math. €950 × 12 = €11,400 a year. At the exchange rate at the time, that was somewhere around $13,000. I can rent an apartment near the Mediterranean for $13,000 a year?!
Well... not exactly.
Before I discovered the catch, I had another problem: I had no idea what a quadrilocale actually was. I assumed it meant four bedrooms. But 65 square meters is only about 700 square feet. Four bedrooms in 700 square feet? Are these bedrooms closets? Do people sleep vertically?
It turns out Italian real-estate terminology doesn’t work like the American bedroom/bathroom system. The number generally refers to the main rooms in the apartment, excluding things like bathrooms and hallways. A bilocale has two main rooms, typically a living room/kitchen area and one bedroom. A trilocale has three, often a living room and two bedrooms. A quadrilocale has four, perhaps a living room and three bedrooms. The exact layout can vary, but once I understood the system, the listings made a lot more sense.
Then there was another word I kept seeing: matrimoniale. My first instinct was that Italian real estate had suddenly become very concerned about my marital status. Fortunately, a camera matrimoniale is simply a double bedroom — literally a “marital bedroom” — intended for a double bed and generally two people. So an ad might describe an apartment as having due camere, una matrimoniale e una singola: two bedrooms, one double and one single.
Eventually I found a bilocale that looked particularly interesting. The living room and kitchen essentially shared the same space, with the bedroom upstairs in a loft, or soppalco. Once again, the price seemed ridiculously cheap for something that close to the sea.
Then I found two very important words in the listing: AFFITTO STAGIONALE.
Seasonal rental.
Ahhhhh. There’s the catch.
In an Italian beach town, an apartment can apparently have two completely different lives. During the summer tourist season, the owner can rent it to vacationers by the week or month and charge considerably more. Once the tourists disappear, suddenly that same apartment isn’t worth nearly as much per month.
Which brings me to today. Months later, I happened to find the exact same apartment again, and it’s now listed at €850 a month. Summer is over.
That immediately started another round of imaginary Italian real-estate math in my head. Suppose I wanted to live there from July through November. Maybe it would be €1,800 in July, €1,800 in August, €1,800 in September, then €850 in October and €850 in November. That would be €7,100 for five months near the beach in Italy.
Now, I have absolutely no idea whether the owner would actually rent it that way. Maybe €850 is only available if you sign a contract from October through May. Maybe September is already cheaper. Maybe July and August cost WAY more than €1,800. But at least now I understand what I’m looking at.
Along the way I also discovered that Italy has rental contracts called 4+4 and 3+2, which initially looked more like elementary-school math problems than leases. A 4+4 is basically a standard residential lease: an initial four-year term followed by another four-year renewal. A 3+2 is a canone concordato arrangement, with an initial three-year term and a subsequent two-year period under the rules governing that type of contract.
So my Italian real-estate vocabulary now includes bilocale, trilocale, quadrilocale, camera matrimoniale, affitto stagionale, affitto annuale, 4+4, 3+2, and soppalco. This is not exactly the vocabulary they start you with in an Italian course, but apparently I’m preparing to negotiate a lease before I can reliably discuss everything in my refrigerator.
I also learned that you don’t “buy a rental” in Italian. I tried to say something equivalent to comprare l’affitto, which makes perfect sense if you take English thoughts, translate the individual pieces into Italian and then smash them together. Unfortunately, that is not how languages work. You prendi un appartamento in affitto — you take an apartment for rent — or simply affitti un appartamento.
And today I almost correctly produced this sentence: “Se lo affittassi da luglio a novembre, pagherei…” — “If I rented it from July through November, I would pay…”
Affittassi. Pagherei. Imperfect subjunctive followed by the conditional.
That’s one of those little moments where I stop and think: Che cavolo. I might actually be learning Italian.
Not well enough to sign a 4+4 lease without asking someone what the hell I’m agreeing to, but apparently well enough to spend hours looking at apartments I have absolutely no intention of renting.
Yet.