A pale nineteenth-century villa on the Blevio waterfront

Property

Bought quietly,sold quietly.

Some of the lake's most interesting properties change hands privately. We connect qualified buyers with owners, advisers and selected agents before properties reach the wider market.

Currently 14 houses on the private list

Below, each village on the lake has its own property page: what is scarce there, what the houses are actually like, and how buying differs from the village next door.

Addresses, photography and vendor details are released to members only, and only once a purchase is credible.

01A selection

Addresses, photography and vendor details are released to members only, and only once a purchase is credible.

Bellagio

Waterfront villa with boathouse

Nineteenth-century, usually with a garden running to the water and a darsena beneath. The scarcest category on the lake.

Cernobbio

Waterfront villa with gates to the lake

Nineteenth-century, walled, usually with a landing stage and a lodge. The closed set; expect to be introduced rather than to see a listing.

Menaggio

Villa on the Loveno terrace

Early twentieth-century, set in its own garden, facing the crossing. The signature Menaggio house and the reason to look above the town.

Tremezzina

Nineteenth-century garden villa

The signature building of this shore: terraced grounds, mature planting, often a landing stage. Frequently listed, and slow-moving when it moves at all.

Varenna

Waterfront villa with garden

Rare, mostly nineteenth-century, on the southern stretch towards the garden villas. Frontage, a landing stage, and no vehicular access to the door.

Como

Apartment in the walled centre

A floor of an older palazzo or a nineteenth-century block on the Roman grid. High ceilings, often no lift, and parking as a separate and expensive question.

A villa on a small promontory reached only from the water

Laglio

Waterfront villa with darsena

Frontage, terraced garden, and a boathouse cut into the shoreline. The category is effectively closed, since the structures cannot be replicated under current rules.

Moltrasio

Waterfront villa with landing stage

The narrow band below the road: garden to the water, a boathouse or jetty, and the only category here where frontage is genuinely part of the asset.

Torno

Waterfront house with a landing stage

Directly on the water, reached from the lake or by steps, with no road in front. The category the village is bought for.

Blevio

Nineteenth-century villa with garden to the water

The category the shore is known for: terraced grounds, a landing stage, and rooms scaled for entertaining. Rarely offered publicly.

Nesso

House at the water, by the harbour

The scarce and sought category: at the bottom of the descent, with the fall and the bridge alongside and boat access at the door.

The lake opening northwards towards the mountains

Lezzeno

House on the water with a slipway

The reason to buy here. Frontage, somewhere to put a boat, and an aspect that works from spring to autumn.

02How it works

Four steps,and no registerof interest.

We do not publish a database and we do not sell leads. A purchase on this lake is a small number of conversations between people who already know each other, and our work is to put you inside that circle.

A conversation

What you are looking for, what you would pay, and how quickly you can move.

A short list

Usually between three and eight houses, most of which are not publicly listed.

Viewings

Arranged directly with owners or their advisers, over one or two days.

The purchase

Notary, survey, structuring and translation, with people we work with regularly.

Read: what it really costs to own a villa here

Buying or selling

Tell us what youare looking for.

If you are selling, we will tell you honestly whether the house is better placed privately or publicly, and introduce the right two or three people either way.

Request Something Membership

Questions

What does off-market property on Lake Como actually mean?

A house that is genuinely for sale but is not advertised: no portal listing, no board, and often no agent instructed.

On this lake it is usually a matter of succession or discretion rather than tactics: a family deciding to sell before they have decided how, or an owner who does not want the house photographed. We hear about them because we work with the notaries, surveyors and managers around those houses, not because we advertise for sellers.

Can foreigners buy property on Lake Como?

Yes. There is no restriction on foreign nationals owning Italian property, though the process, the paperwork and the tax position differ from what buyers are used to at home.

The practical requirements are an Italian tax code, usually an Italian bank account, and a notary, who acts for the transaction rather than for either side. Our guide to buying as a foreign resident sets out the sequence in full.

Where is the best place to buy a villa on Lake Como?

It depends on light, access and how much of the year you intend to be here, rather than on any single village being better than the rest.

The western shore takes the afternoon and evening sun and holds most of the historic villa stock. The eastern shore is quieter, better served by rail at Varenna, and loses the light earlier. Our village pages set out the trade-offs one at a time.

Do you charge buyers a fee?

We tell you how we are paid on any given house before you view it, and we do not take a fee from both sides of the same transaction.

Arrangements vary depending on whether we are acting for a seller, introducing an agent, or searching on your behalf. What does not vary is that you will know which of those it is before you spend a day looking at anything.

Property by village

Property in BellagioThe village on the promontory where Lake Como divides. The most visited address on the lake, and still one of the hardest to buy into.

Property in CernobbioThe first town north of Como on the western shore, close enough to the city to live in properly and far enough out to be on the lake.

Property in MenaggioThe town at the western end of the mid-lake crossing, with a working piazza, a golf course above it and a road out to Switzerland behind it.

Property in TremezzinaNot a village but a shoreline: four former comuni strung along the western bank, holding the greatest concentration of gardens and grand villas on the lake.

Property in VarennaThe eastern-shore village at the mouth of the Lecco branch, small, steeply built, and the only address of its kind on the lake with a railway station of its own.

Property in ComoThe city at the foot of the western branch. Roman in plan, silk in trade, and the one address on the lake that works as a place to live rather than a place to summer.

Property in LaglioA narrow shelf of houses on the western shore between Moltrasio and Brienno, where the mountain comes down almost to the water and everything is reached by steps or by boat.

Property in MoltrasioThe village the lake was partly built from, a quarry town on the western shore between Cernobbio and Laglio, stacked in tiers above a small harbour.

Property in TornoA compact medieval village on the eastern shore that steps down to two harbours and turns its back on the road, the last piece of the lake still organised around the water.

Property in BlevioA villa shore rather than a village: a string of hamlets on the steep eastern bank immediately beyond Como, close enough to the city to be useful and separate enough to forget it.

Property in NessoBuilt around a gorge and a waterfall on the eastern side of the Como branch, and arranged as a single long descent from the road to a harbour at the bottom.

Property in LezzenoThe longest shoreline on this side of the branch, made of many small hamlets rather than one village, with the western shore in the sun opposite and the mountain behind taking the winter light.

Read first

Where to Buy on Lake ComoNot a ranking of villages, but the seven things that actually decide where on this lake you should be looking.

Buying on Lake Como: Foreign BuyersHow an Italian purchase actually proceeds, from the first written offer to the deed signed in front of the notary, and what a buyer from outside Italy needs in place before any of it can begin.

The Cost of Owning a VillaThe standing annual cost of a lake house is decided less by its size than by its garden, its water frontage and whether anybody is living in it. Almost nobody budgets for the last of those.

Lake Como Property TaxesThree different authorities tax an Italian house, at three different moments, on a value that is not the price you paid. Understanding which is which explains most of what confuses foreign owners.

Renovating a Historic VillaTwo separate constraints sit over almost every old house on this shore, materials arrive by barge or by hand, and the working season is the one nobody wants to be here for. That is why programmes slip and budgets move.