Renting a house in Italy - Italian useful vocabulary

Are you interested in visiting Italy and you would like to rent an apartment for a longer stay? Well why not right? If you don’t want the hotel experience than renting a summer house is a perfect way to mingle with the locals and immerse yourself in a real Italian holiday experience. 

In this video I will teach you useful vocabulary words and sentences that you can use when you are renting an apartment or simply if you are expanding your Italian vocabulary on houses in general!

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Renting an apartment in Italy might not always be the easiest thing to do especially if you are visiting super popular tourist destinations or if you are coming in the Italian holiday season… for example august…where ALL Italians are on holiday. So definitely book in advance!

Where to look? Well usually I go on booking or if you live in Italy already you can go directly to a real estate agency or in the most touristic places if you wonder around the town you will find houses with signs with the writing AFFITTASI or SI AFFITTA which means…. THIS HOUSE IS FOR RENT. 

For example from where I live I can drive for a couple of hours and reach a beach side location for a weekend and find the perfect apartment for my longer holiday stay. Or if you know an Italian most likely they have a friend or family member that has a second house that they can rent! 

So here is a list of important things to look out for:

You can look for a house or for an apartment.

• Affittasi casa - House for rent
• Affittasi appartamento - Apartment for rent

One of the most important aspects of renting is the location… so these words could be useful to know:

Vicino / a due passi 

• vicino alla spiaggia - near a beach
• vicino al centro - near the downtown area
• a due passi dalla spiaggia - walking distance to the beach
• a due passi dal centro - walking distance from downtown

It can have a different number of rooms: so it can be:

• monolocale: one room + kitchen
• bilocale: one room + a living room + kitchen 
• trilocale: two rooms + living room + kitchen
• quadrilocale: two 3 rooms + living + kitchen 

And you can check where the apartment or house is located… so what floor:

• piano terreno (ground floor) 
• primo/secondo/terzo/etc piano (first, second, third, etc floor)

Inside of the house you can have different types of rooms 

• cucina – kitchen. 
• cucina abitabile – kitchen with a big table and living area 
• cucina aperta / open space / americana – kitchen + living a room together
• bagno con vasca – bathroom with a bath tub. 
• bagno con doccia – bathroom with a shower 
• camera da letto – bedroom 
• camera matrimoniale – master bedroom
• studio – office 
• soggiorno – living room 

On the outside you can have

• giardino : garden
• posto auto: private parking space 
• parcheggio custodito: secure parking
• parcheggio non custodito: unguarded parking
• garage / box auto : garage
• balcone: balcony
• terrazzo: terrace

If we are talking about renting a house for the summer the apartment will be furnished and usually you will read in the announcement post “arredato” .

The amenities that are usually included or that you should like to check are:

• aria condizionata : air conditioning 
• riscaldamento : heating 
• lavatrice: washing machine
• asciugatrice: drier (usually we never have these in Italy!)
• lavastoviglie: dishwasher
• asciugamani : towels
• lenzuola: bed sheets
• asciugacapelli : hair dryer

Very often they also make you pay for cleaning. So you will read something like:

Tariffa per pulizie: cleaning charge. 

Sometimes you can also read something like:

• l’appartamento è stato recentemente rinnovato (the apartment has been recently renovated)

As an exercise write what type of house you would like to rent in Italy… and tell me where! I will go first.

Mi piacerebbe affittare un piccolo appartamento arredato vicino alla spiaggia in Sardegna!

(I would like to rent a small furnished apartment near the beach in Sardinia!)