Italy is a beautiful country, rich _ among many other things _ of marvellous ancient buildings, often poorly maintained. The same goes for houses and condos in our cities and towns. I don’t know why, but the maintenance concept seems hard to convey, considering that Italian average   housing stock is very old, unattractive and therefore devalued. And this thing disturbs the sleep od my owners, but still doesn’t tech the value and the importance of taking care of your own assets before they become old and in need of a massive restoration. 

If these properties would have been kept in good conditions, just as a model does with her body, many houses now would not be in such bad conditions to be gutted and rebuilt from zero to be able to generate an income again.

For example, yesterday I was attending an inspection for the malfunctioning of irrigation system in a garden and, once solved the main problem due to an electrical bug, the technician found a second bug related to the main pump, with no foreclosure effects for now, probably due to an accumulation of dirt down the well, after almost 30 years of usage without any cleaning operation. It means that, in a while, the pump will become clogged and, in the meantime, will not work properly. 

But despite the technician warning, the owner said that at the moment there was no need to intervene, considering that the system was still working.

And this is the challenge: let them people understand that a regular maintenance, protects from having to pay high costs for important repair in the future. It means that it would be better to safe than sorry, even in real estate sector. 

In five star hotels reality, maintenance is a permanent imperative. For example, it’s means touching up or repainting at any departure the walls marked my the passage of the guests suitcases.

Far from pushing landlords to face a weekly maintenance, it’s certain that owners should start to consider their properties  like their most valuable assets and should yearly re_invest a 10 per cent of their income for works of maintenance and technological innovation.

This is the key to remain competitive on the market, to stand out in the crowd of old properties and to make the income lasting over the time and to secure support to family for more than one generation.