The whole time we were in Montagano we couldn't help thinking about real estate. Hey, we're Californians...it's in our blood. Actually, Laura and Michael (from Connecticut and New York, respectively) were just as interested. Anyone would be. There were "Vendisi" (For sale) signs everywhere, and we'd heard that you could buy a house for as little as $5,000. It was like being a Russian plutocrat or a Chinese billionaire in New York City.
On Saturday morning, June 24, before most of gli americani took off for home or their next port of call, a young couple named Silvia and Nicola offered to take us around and show us a few of the properties for sale. We all wanted to go. Peter missed a bet when he didn't offer a "real estate experience" alongside all the food adventures.
The first place we saw, and by far the most appealing, was Silvia's grandmother's house. Nonna is now in her late 90s and living with Silvia's mom, and from the looks of things the house has been sitting vacant for the past 15 years or so. The house had a big, two-room cantina, twice the size of Lorenzo's, with a big tub for foot-stomping grapes. I think there was even some wine still sitting there in giant jugs. Steven was practically salivating at the thought of what he could do in that cantina in the way of winemaking, ham curing, and entertaining.
Upstairs--and there were plenty of terrifyingly steep stairs--were lots of rooms, including a bedroom with several big black plastic garbage bags filled with wool from Nonna's sheep that she'd never gotten around to making into mattresses. The whole place hadn't been updated since the 1940s. from the looks of things, if not a lot earlier. It was sensationally old and decrepit and attractive. And the price was somewhere in the $10,000-$15,000 range.
The one thing I was moved to take a photo of was the house's sole bathroom, located midway between the cantina on the basement floor and the kitchen on the first floor, well above street level. This is looking down from the kitchen. The stairs are even steeper than they look here. You could scramble up from the cantina to rinse your feet after a winemaking session, or totter down there from an upstairs in the middle of the night to answer a call of nature. Split-level convenience, in other words.
When Silvia's grandmother moved out of this house and into her daughter's, she was in her mid-80s. I kept imagining my own mother crawling up and down those stairs every time she wanted to use the bathroom. And then I pictured myself.
Now obviously this bathroom, and a lot of other things about this house, can be upgraded and updated. From talking to people around town, my guess is that the place could be made livable for about $50,000, and downright glamorous for twice that. But that would mean investing not only the money, but also plenty of time and agita.
We saw a few other houses, all of them in better states of repair and all of them under $80,000, but they all had lots and lots of stairs, and a shortage of railings, and they all needed work. Much as I love the idea of buying a sweet house reeking of history for small change by California standards, it was borne in on me that I am at least twenty years too old to be entertaining these kinds of daydreams.
However, I detected a "we could do this!" gleam in the eyes of some of the younger members of the party. And they are probably right. This is an aspect of youth that I don't envy, though. If and when I come back to Montagano, it will be to someplace that someone else has already done all the work on.
1 comment:
This post, like all your posts, gives so many deeply satisfying details. And really, that one photo of the bathroom at the bottom of the terrifying stairs is all you need. Thank god you're not taking on an Italian fixer upper.
Post a Comment