What to check before you buy a period apartment in Turin

Most of what goes wrong with a period purchase in this city is knowable in advance. It is knowable from three documents and one afternoon in the building, and it is almost always cheaper to find out before the preliminary contract than after it.

Start with the condominium minutes for the last five years. They will tell you what has been voted, what has been deferred, and — most usefully — what the building argues about. A facade restoration that has been discussed and postponed three times is a bill with a date on it that has not been set yet. Under Italian law the obligation attaches to whoever owns the flat when the work is resolved, not when it was first raised.

Then the energy performance certificate, and specifically the heating system it describes. A centralised system with individual metering is the good outcome. A centralised system without metering means you pay by thousandths regardless of use, which on a top-floor flat in a building full of retired ground-floor owners is not in your favour.

Third, the cadastral plan against what is actually there. Discrepancies between the registered layout and the built layout are extremely common in Turin's historic stock, and they have to be regularised before a sale can complete. This is routine work, but it takes weeks and somebody has to pay for it. Establish who before you agree a price.

Then walk the building. Look at the roof from the courtyard, look at the stair windows, look at whether the lift reaches the top floor and, if it does not, whether the shaft could take an extension. Look at the cellar for damp. Look at the courtyard for the state of the drains.

Finally, ceiling height. Four metres is the reason to buy a piano nobile, and it is also a room that costs roughly a third more to heat than the same floor area at 2.7 metres. Ask for two winters of actual bills. Any honest seller has them.