The X-Ray House

Anyone viewing a house sees perfectly well what is in front of them: they just don't always know what it means. A stain stays a stain until you ask where it comes from. A crack stays a crack until you look at its shape, its position and its context.

This book is written for the person who is buying a house in Italy - as a foreign buyer, an expat, or an Italian coming back - and who has to walk through the most expensive viewing of their life without knowing what to look at.

It sets out the method: where to look, in what order, what to ask the person selling, and when to stop and call in a technician, knowing why you are calling and what to ask for. Italian paperwork, Italian offices and Italian words are kept in Italian and explained as they come up, so you can use them with the notaio, the geometra and the agency.

Inside:

- The tools that fit in a bag, and the tests that take ten seconds
- Electrics, plumbing, heating: what can be saved and what can't
- Cracks, damp, asbestos: what is serious and what only looks it
- Paperwork, the catasto and the stato legittimo: the document that stops a purchase
- Site-visit sheets to fill in on the spot, chapter by chapter
- A 62-entry Italian-English glossary of the words you will actually hear

Written by an electrical technician who spent decades on building sites and in property deals. It does not replace a surveyor: it puts you in a position to talk to one as an equal.