Norma Williams estimates that her business can earn between € 20,000 and € 50,000 per year
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A random encounter gave Norma Williams the opportunity to buy a spacious Palazzo for just a few thousand pounds in the 1980s in Italy.
It seemed too good to be true. Williams and her husband at the time were unimpressed and paid £ 12,000 to the seller they got to know through a common friend.
They did so with little more than one promise that there would be a house in Umbria, central Italy, a house and waited for them. “We bought it blindly,” she recalls more than 40 years later.
But the couple quickly gave a reason for regret when it finally traveled to see what they had spent on their money. “It was a stack of stones,” says Williams with “No heating, lighting or electricity”, which were “completely abandoned”.
It had been destroyed in an earthquake decades earlier and, according to the former owner, was qualified for a state -financed grant to pay repairs. After bought the property, she learned that the money would never get through.
“I and my first husband lived in the first two or three years like a tent while we kept money to repair holes on the roof,” recalls Williams.
The house, which some may have seen as a millstone, actually triggered a business that paved the way for a comfortable retirement in the sun.
Nowadays, the former philosophy lecturer, 77, spends her winter on the Canary Islands, and her business is up to € 50,000 a year. But it wasn’t always like that.
Williams worked in a number of contributions to educational institutions in Great Britain, but in her late 40s she let her work drop out and first tried to find ways to fill leisure. “I was used to being quite active and very successful, and suddenly I didn’t do anything.”
She terminated her job as a lecturer at a university writings in Hertfordshire at the age of 50. With a pension of only £ 5,500 a year, Williams knew that she would have to bring in additional money for a comfortable lifestyle and retirement in Italy. It is now one of around 500,000 British expatriates that have retired abroad.
Fortunately, when they bought the house, they pushed to an area of the country that would soon put a large tourist boom. By acting as an agent for families of local owners’ families who want to rent their unused houses to foreign guests, he has exploited the tourist trade and built up a small but lucrative sub -rental business.
In the 1980s, she and her ex-husband continued to attend the house in Umbria and slowly repaired it over the years, built a network of contacts that would one day become their customers.
Until 1991 Williams was married again with her current husband Laurie, who has been for 10 years. After dividing her ex-husband and divided in the middle, she was able to buy the other half of the house in Italy.
“I decided to sell,” she says. “[But] I told my new husband about a place in Italy and he said: “There is no need to sell it. We will work together ‘. We have summarized our resources and reconstructed the house, it took about five years.” The couple had moved to Italy at the end of the nineties.
Williams says that the “startpad” for leaving the UK was their London apartment, which they rented to tenants to offer enough income to enable them to live in the newly renovated property in Italy. This, combined with Laurie’s pension capacity after his retirement, wrestled her move and initially financed her life abroad.
In the mid -2000s, she put her house on a cross -vacation website and was asked if she would rent part of her house. “We had never thought about it,” she says. “We had a huge house and said yes.”
“This is quite a idea: rent in our house,” she said at the time. “We only started by chance [and then] began to advertise. “
Williams spied an opportunity and developed a plan to be subject to apartments in their area of the Umbria of locals and accept them while the vacation of the increasing number of tourists.
Spoleto in Umbria exploded with tourists and allowed Williams to benefit from boom – iStockphoto
“We did this with 15 holiday properties and were the main tenants of Spoleto Apartments. We opened it to the rest of the world.
“At the same time, the Italians were very interested in Spoleto – it exploded at the same time when we all sublet all of our properties on the holiday rental market.” It didn’t take long for her to set up her business, Umbria Holiday Rental.
The sudden demand from locals who wanted to use replacement properties as a holiday bed meant that it had to significantly increase its standards.
Williams takes responsibility for the daily corporate process, in which local contractors are found who can help guests organize parties and weddings in the real estate. She also manages the stays of guests and acts as a middle man between her partners and the local property owners. Her husband takes over the finances.
Williams estimates that her business can earn between € 20,000 and € 50,000 a year before taxes. “It’s a small company, but Italian taxes are very high,” she says. “It has only grown and has grown in the past 25 years, sometimes we earn much more, but the more you earn, the less you earn. Italian taxes are unbearable.
“Anyone who starts a company in Italy really has to love what they do because they basically work for free. They will be taxed at every turn and turn of the path.”
Taxpayers in Italy can be caught by three tax levels. These are a national income tax worth 23 percent and then regional and municipal taxes that can vary. Italy also has a flat -rate tax regime for Expat pensioners from 7PC, although this only applies to income and pensions that come outside the country.
Williams says that she will continue to lead in the foreseeable future. “The most important thing is to choose the people with whom they will work with a fine tooth comb,” she says.
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