If you're interested in the region of Piedmont, Italy and especially if you're thinking of buying a home here, you've found the right channel. Don't go away. Hello, my name is Richard Edwards and I'm a real estate consultant here in Piedmont, Italy. I moved to Italy in 2002 and for the last 16 years I've been helping people from all over the world by a home here in Piedmont. Now the purpose of this channel is to share that first-hand information, that knowledge with you. So in the coming weeks what we're going to do is look at all different subjects including the house buying process and also about life here as well. So let me tell you a little bit about myself first. I'm originally from London England and I moved here almost 19 years ago with my wife and son and the reason for our move to Italy was that we were tired of our life in England. We were sick of the weather and many other things were getting us down and we came to the point in our lives where we felt we really wanted to make a big change and our son Alex was six years old at the time and so we felt back then well it's now or never. And so the first place we lived in was the city of Turin and it was a huge change for us. We had packed up a big van in England and left locked the door behind us and rented this small apartment, this tiny apartment in the city of Turin on the full floor without an elevator and this noisy dusty place. So we enjoyed that experience but then after a couple of years we were ready to move outside of the city and that's where we are now in the house we're in now we've been here for more than 16 years and we love our life here we love living in this place it's an area called Roero and it's 40 minutes from Turin and about 20 minutes from the city of Alba and it's a beautiful wine area with wonderful landscapes we love walking here and exploring this place and visiting wineries and restaurants it's a wonderful life that we have here and we'd never go back to there's more reasons these days to say that but even before all of this crisis we had no plans to ever return. I often get asked if I worked in property before coming to Italy and the answer is no it was the experience of buying my own home here that made me realize that it's very difficult to buy a home if you don't have the right help. We had the help of local friends and they were wonderful they did an excellent job but they were limited in what they can do we didn't want to put too much on to them and they were limited about their knowledge of the buying process as well and so we bought a house through a local agency and it was far from easy it could have been made a lot easier we realized that some things were done that we still don't understand to this day and so the first thing I did was write an article for a magazine in England called Italy and this article was about homes buying homes in Piedmont and the explosion of interest that I got from writing that article was incredible the number of phone calls and emails and it's never really stopped in 2009 2010 we had the economic crisis and that affected the market somewhat but even today even under this crisis that we're in now with COVID-19 it's safe to say that the market has never been stronger the interest in the area has never been better houses are selling very quickly and we even have people buying homes without even seeing them because they can't get into the country at the moment so that really tells you the condition of the property market at this time so I have a vast experience in life here as a foreigner and also in the property market and I'm going to share that knowledge and those experiences with you we're going to look at every aspect of the buying process you'll be an expert at the end of it you'll know what to look for you know where to look you'll know the pitfalls and the dangers because you don't want to be going making mistakes but we're also going to look at life here we're going to delve into living in this what's it like we're going to meet some of the people that make this area so special now if these things interest you I'd really like you to do something for me if that's okay and that's if you can click like for this video if you like this video it's just an introduction I'm sure you that's going to get much much more interesting and also if you can if you can click subscribe because that really helped me to see that you are interested in here with these things and something even more important than that if you could put a comment below that will be so helpful because maybe you have a question you have something that you want to know about the region something about the house buying process in Italy so by all means write your comments and even though I've written a big list of things that I'm going to cover over the coming weeks maybe there's something I've missed or maybe there's a question that many of you have and so I'll fast track a video on that subject so we can cover it as quickly as possible so thank you for watching and I'm really look forward to hearing from you and seeing you next time now for the next video I had to think long and hard about well what's the most important subject if you're coming here as a tourist or as a house buyer what do you need to know first and what I came up with is Pietmon explained because already you would have heard lots of names like Alba, Asticunio, Lange, Alta Langa, Montferrato and many other names and these can cause confusion if you don't understand the area if you don't know the area well that's reasonable so this video is going to be an explanation of all of these things what makes these areas different what makes them special and so with the use of maps and graphics I'm going to explain these things to the point that you'll be an expert in South Pietmon so whether you're buying a home or if you're coming here as a tourist I think you'll find this information really useful so thank you for joining me on this video I look forward to seeing you on the next bye for now