About Us

Many years ago we stayed in a friend’s holiday cottage in a village near Bagni di Lucca. We enjoyed staying there so much that we returned several times and eventually decided to buy our own house. A tour of the local estate agents produced a wide range of houses but many of these were either ruined beyond economic repair, over-restored, or had interesting legal problems attached to them.

We soon discovered that many British-based companies seemed to specialise in selling properties at around twice the local rate! After viewing many unsuitable houses we were almost ready to give up when we met the agents that had sold our friends their house and through them bought a small ruined farmhouse. They guided us through a mass of Italian bureaucracy that would otherwise have terrified us and supervised the restoration of our house so we never had any problems. We ended up with a wonderful family home, having paid local prices for local work. We later started working in partnership with these wonderful people and Toscana Verde was born.

What We Do

Toscana Verde is a company that provides support, advice and technical services to assist our clients to safely and affordably locate, purchase, renovate (if required) and manage property in Northern Tuscany. We work with trusted licensed Italian partners who sell property and arrange maintenance and building services on behalf of our clients.

We only offer our services in a small area of northern Tuscany as we prefer to offer an excellent service in a small area rather than an inferior one over a wider one. However, we can provide a range of technical services, including assistance with the purchase of property found through other agents, throughout northern Italy.

Although UK-based we have worked with a wide range of clients from many countries. These have ranged from people looking for very inexpensive rural property, needing complete reconstruction, to luxurious and expensive ready-to-use property. We are happy to assist our clients find either a holiday home or a property suitable for permanent relocation. Here are some comments from previous clients.

Each property listed on our website has been personally inspected by us. We are happy to give a personal, although possibly biased, opinion on any property - and sometimes offer property we personally hate if we consider it offers value for money or is of a type we know to be in great demand. We make no attempt to "hard sell" any property and understand in some cases we simply cannot offer the sort of property for which a particular client is searching. When this is the case we are happy to use our local contacts to find a suitable property or to suggest other ways to find what clients require.

If we arrange property viewings for you these will be conducted by a licensed and English-speaking Italian agent who will be able to provide further details about the property and answer any questions as you view. We book a firm appointment for each client and allow sufficient time for you to examine each property in detail.

If we are successful in finding you a property to purchase we charge a simple fee for our services, payable when the sale completes. The fee includes the provision of any services required in Italy to allow the sale to take place. As the agents we work with in Italy do not to charge the usual purchaser's fee of 2% (or more) to our clients, and as we work solely on the side of the purchaser (so can assist with price negotiation) buying property through us is usually less expensive than dealing directly with an agent.

Here are some answers to commonly asked questions about how we work, and about buying a property in Italy.