Whether In Umbria Or Berkeley, $300K Won’t Get You Much

If I had thought I would spot some luscious real-estate bargains on my travels in Italy, I was sadly mistaken.

Like many people, when I venture to wondrous places I fantasize about snapping up a little pied-a-terre there. A rambling Umbrian farmhouse or decadent Venetian palazzo, why not? I make a point of glancing in real-estate agents’ windows and second-guessing the prices of homes for sale.

In Orvieto we had a real-life property experience when the shopkeeper of a bijou handmade paper shop asked us if we were interested in seeing a home for sale on an isolated 8,000 square meters in the local countryside. The owner of the house, she said, was asking 170,000 Euros ($270,000) but the price was “very, very negotiable”.

We were not, of course, in the market, but since when has that ever stopped us?

So off we went a couple of days later with images in our minds of a glorious old stone house, an olive grove and vineyard perhaps and, if we were really lucky, a sweeping view of the extraordinary city of Orvieto (above).

(The equivalent sum in Berkeley, by the way, would buy you this 1/1, 800 sq ft former parsonage on Woolsey Street.)

Our dreams were shattered after a 6-mile drive along twisting country lanes. This is what we found: a one-level, four-room house built in the 1970s (pictured below) in dire condition on a unappetizing lot overlooked by several other unappealing houses with little to recommend it other than the patent enthusiasm of the seller. We dampened her spirits with our honesty — she probably didn’t want to hear that a foreigner would rather purchase a pile of 17th-century rubble than her house.

My conclusion: you can no sooner find a bargain in Umbria, Italy than in over-priced Berkeley, California.

[Pic credit of Orvieto: www.ou.edu/ccac]