I trained as an architect and practised for nine years, most of it on conservation work, before I moved to the sale side. It is the reason vendors instruct me and the reason buyers occasionally dislike me: I can tell them what a restoration will actually cost.
The number people arrive with is usually a European average per square metre, doubled for optimism. It is rarely close, and it is almost always too low — particularly on a protected villa, where the Soprintendenza has a view on what may be touched and how.
The reason is not materials. It is access, and permission. Many of these houses sit on terraces reachable only by a single-track road or by water, and every tonne of anything arrives accordingly. Where a property is under heritage protection, a specification has to be agreed before it can be priced at all, and that process is measured in seasons rather than weeks.
The services are where budgets actually fail. Retrofitting climate control, insulation and modern glazing into a structure whose surfaces you are not permitted to disturb is the hard part of the job. It is also invisible when finished, which is why it is the first thing an optimistic budget underestimates.
None of this argues against buying a villa that needs work. Casa della Luce came through a four-year restoration and is a materially better house for it. It argues for pricing the work before you price the house — and for asking the person selling it to you whether they can tell the difference.
