Property

Almost every serious mistake made buying on Lake Como is made before a single house has been seen, because the decisions that matter are not about houses. They are about position: which shore, above the road or below it, on the water or above it, and how many months of the year you will actually be here. Those choices constrain everything afterwards, and they are very difficult to reverse.

The writing filed here works on those decisions rather than on listings. Some of these pieces touch the mechanics of a purchase: the process, the professionals, what due diligence means when a house has been in one family for two centuries. Where they do, they say so and point at the guide that covers it properly.

What none of it does is quote prices. The market here is small, private and lumpy, a great deal of it never appears publicly, and a published average would be a number invented to look authoritative. If you want a view on what something is worth, that is a conversation rather than a page.