Category — Italy

Like the water traffic (you are fined £100 if caught speeding), time passes slowly in Venice - and that includes property transactions, says Sebastiano Doria, from Views on Venice, Savills’ associate in the city: “Venice is a sort of Sleeping Beauty. Spend one week here and you become very relaxed. You lose contact with the reality of the rest of the western world.”

The property market is “inefficient, with many estate agents but mainly one-man bands who don’t speak English”, he adds. “Short-let apartments, with websites to advertise them and management services, are hardly a new concept elsewhere, but no one was doing it in Venice before us.” One client, the CEO of a British bank, is trying to complete on a property eight months on because the vendor is demanding he pay 50 per cent in cash.

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