{"id":53655,"date":"2026-08-22T08:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T06:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magictowns.it\/?post_type=podcast&p=53655"},"modified":"2026-08-22T01:26:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T23:26:56","slug":"the-renovation-that-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/magictowns.it\/da\/podcast\/the-renovation-that-never-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"The Renovation That Never Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jan:<\/strong> [00:00:00] So the next day, I woke up, and there was an email that said, “Here’s your video of your house,” and I clicked it on, and there was a video through my house, and my house was exactly the same as it was when we left in late October. And we saw nothing had been done. Nothing had been done. And I was devastated, and I was crying hysterically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaker:<\/strong> \\It’s Saturday morning in Italy, and you’re listening to the Magic Towns Italy podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Hi, Jan. Thanks for being here. So before we get into your experience buying and renovating your house in Puglia, I wanted to know what actually pulled you there, why Italy, and why Ostuni<\/a> specifically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Well, we live in California at home, and I love being near the water, you know, some sort of nice body of water, whether it be lakes or sea or [00:01:00] ocean. And, in California, you know, you can’t even get near the ocean for under, you know, five blocks from the ocean for $5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> So I was really attracted to the Adriatic and the Puglian coast. So I looked at, the area up around Pescara<\/a> and of course, the other side is, you know, ridiculous, it’s very expensive on the other side of Puglia. And also, too, the attraction of the Ionian, being so close to both the Ionian and the Adriatic, and it’s fun. We’ll go, we’ll dip our toes in both sides in one day, you know? It’s an hour from one side to the other, and-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Sunrise and sunset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yeah, it is. It’s really, the Ionian Sea over there is really beautiful, and I do, one of my favorite places in the world is Matera<\/a>. I go there whenever we can. I would not go there in the summertime in no way, shape, or form. But oh my gosh, it’s just beautiful\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, this is just a very interesting area, we’re right here in the Val [00:02:00] d’Itria, the Land of the Trulli, and I love to get in my car and just drive the countryside, just by myself and get kind of lost and, you know. It’s really magical in that sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Southern Italy also, too, is kind of a lot what people say. I know there’s a big trash problem in the north as well, but there’s nothing like it is here in the south<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the people are really kind though. They’re, they’re really nice and I love talking to them. I I appreciate how much they, are willing to speak to you even if they don’t speak any English. You know, you pull out Google Translate and they’re willing, you know-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> They’ll try and pronounce<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> it. Yeah. They, they’re like so willing to go along with it and I love that. And I have friends here who can totally understand Italians, but they can’t speak a word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Usually it’s the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yeah, I cannot, I don’t know. Maybe it’s my s- that’s my 68-year-old brain on it, but I have a better memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> [00:03:00] Okay. So you told us you fell in love with Puglia, and then we know you bought a house there planning to renovate it, but you run into a contractor who turned out to be a scammer. So tell us a bit about how it all started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> This contractor that we hired was part of the team of the consultant that we hired, that specializes in this area in Puglia. And he was working with a lot of people in this area, and they were all expats. Because he was an American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> He came highly recommended as part of the team of this consultant who we had hired to help us buy a house here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Um, so he was an American, and that was the attraction, that he spoke English, and that he understood Americans, but he also understood the Italian system, so-called understood the system. So he would guide us [00:04:00] through it without having to worry about having to understand everything on our own, which is a huge mistake, and which is exactly what I say now not to do. You need to learn the system. You need to understand what you’re walking into first to protect yourself. It’s like instead of counting on all these professionals that you hire to protect you, you need to learn how to protect yourself, how to look for the red flags, how to understand and learn the process. So you, don’t do what we did ’cause, you know, we lost a ton of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this guy was a contractor, but he wasn’t the actual one who was working on it. He hired Italian contractors to work on all of his expats who<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> He was subcontracting all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yes. Yes, exactly. And I’m sure you’ve never been in the clutches of a con man, and I’ve taken a lot of criticism for people putting myself out there publicly saying, “You know, we gave this guy all this money.” People are like, “How could you do that? You only need to put 10% down. Why would you give him this much? Why would you do that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Well, [00:05:00] it’s easy to say if you’re not in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> If you’ve not been in the clutches of a con man, especially somebody who had positioned themselves as like, um, the\u2026 I mean, it was like a stroke of luck to find this-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yeah, completely trustworthy. Yes. Thank, thank the Lord for having me<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yes. So this consultant that we had hired offered like a six-week class, and each week she taught a module and that each module was about the purchase process with the lawyer, and then she had the renovation process and with the contractor, and then she had the visas, citizenship, currency, trading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she had different professionals each week, and he taught the one that was all about the renovation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> So on the face of it, it seemed like someone who was completely qualified for the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> They had a certain reputation. But can I ask you a question?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Um, going back to the actual dynamics of how your [00:06:00] deal went south, so to say, how did the scam actually take place? Was it like taking deposit for work that was not being done or, uh-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yes. So he convinced us that, the initial deposit we gave him, which our renovation was supposed to be about $150,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Um- A- and you’re<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> still in the US at this point, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> We’re, and we’re back in the US, yeah, yeah. And this is during COVID, so we could travel by the time the renovation had just started, And I came and I spent three months here, you know, as long as I could stay without a visa, for the first three months of it during the demolition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I gave him \u20ac40,000 down and he started the demolition, and we came, and I came and visited. So it was during September, October, part of November, he even hired people to come out and, it was a show, because we never saw anything, but to come out and start harvesting our olives, ’cause we have 100 olive trees on our property. [00:07:00] He even, before we left, there, we had a crew out here harvesting our olives on, it was, like, our last day here. Well, apparently they harvested, like, two trees and probably threw the olives away and, you know-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> You saw a lot of the action<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> just to show us. Yeah. Everything was a show. Everything was a show. Yeah. When they put in the new imhof, and they sent us tons of videos. When they would do something, they would, we would get a lot of information. And then the meetings would slow down. And I realized the pictures we were getting sent were very strategic. So by the end of November, he contacted us and said, “Oh, we need another check.” You know? So we gave him another 40,000, and that was a red flag. That was a red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Was this against the contract, though? Like you guys had a contract and, like, did you have the work scoped out? Did you feel like you had the paperwork to cover you in all this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> We had gotten everything in written form, [00:08:00] but we didn’t have an actual signed contract with everybody on it, if you can believe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, yeah. I, I can- I mean, he could- I can believe it. I can believe it \u2026 he convinced us that this is how things are done in Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Of course. That’s the, like, that’s the blanket answer to everything, “But in Italy, it’s done like this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yes, yes. Everything- It actually isn’t \u2026 in Italy, it’s done like this. In Italy, you have to give more money down up front, and everything had a good reason behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, I mean, he just snowed us in so many ways. The promises were amazing, and he played completely on your dream of Italy. That’s why he was so successful, because people come over here with this blind, romantic dream of Italy, and he fostered that as far as you could possibly go. And there’s so many of us out here, and many people are so humiliated [00:09:00] about it. They won’t talk publicly to me. I talk about my situation. It’s kind of in my nature<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> It’s actually a great thing you do because 90% of what we see, and I, I can tell you I’ve been through and I have seen, having done quite a few renovations, all sorts of scams, what people feel like talking publicly always seems to be, you know what people say, “Victory has many fathers, but defeat has none.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the Instagram world is “Ooh, I bought this,” you know, it’s always the same 20 people. But, you know, these happy projects, “Everything went great. I got off the plane and then in a jiffy I found this cheap waterfront property and everything went fine.” Whereas it’s a bloodbath for most people. It is. It’s not a surprise. It’s a career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> And nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants- Exactly \u2026 to admit it. I see people, you know, a lot of the expats [00:10:00] I think online, because I get into the expat groups, and there’s so much negativity that goes in there, and I think many of them that are the most negative, who get upset at people for saying anything bad about their experience, are the ones who are the most unhappy and having the worst experiences, ’cause they don’t, you know, they don’t wanna talk, they, you know, they don’t wanna admit that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everybody wants to think that they came here and they’re having a really successful experience. And they wanna say everything about their life here is la dolce vita, you know? And I think it’s such a huge disservice to foster that to people. You know, these, there are many consultants out there who just talk about how life here is so perfect. You know, the one that we hired is the epitome of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Of positiveness. But then again, that’s what they are selling, right? I mean, they are selling.. if you told people the truth, then [00:11:00] maybe some would say, “Actually, that’s not for me.” But you don’t make any money from them. Yes. That’s the sad part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> I don’t wanna stomp on anybody’s dream. I just say, you know, have that, enjoy that, but walk into it with your eyes wide open<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> – mm-hmm .. So how did it, how did it end up with your property? We got to the point- Oh, yeah \u2026 where you got, where you got scammed of, uh- Yeah \u2026 upwards of 40K, and then, then what happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Yeah, so it was 2021 when they were\u2026 2021 into early 2022, the renovation was supposed to be done by May of 2022, and I had a trip planned and actually had guests planned, that we were gonna be moving into our house by then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it was promised to us, and as we went along they kept saying, “Oh, yes, yes, it’s being done.” And they would send us very strategic pictures. And we did order radiant, underfloor radiant heat here in this house. And, you know, I would notice that they would, thinking back, [00:12:00] they would send so many pictures from that process, and that would kind of go over the time of about a month. So they wouldn’t like, you know\u2026 They<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> were spreading it out over different things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> They were really spread it out, yeah. So you kept getting pictures that just weren’t the new things. Whatever they were doing, they just really spread out the pictures, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demolition, they continued on that. They sort of built up some of the exterior stuff where they took all of the debris from the demolition and started building the underfloor for the terraces. That type of stuff. They would just really dig that out, and they kept telling us how all the finish work would be done very fast, right at the end, because there was so much infrastructure that needs to be done within the stone walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they did take down, they put up, you know, like, the poles that you put up where you hold up the roof when they, when they move walls. Yeah. And they, one part that they [00:13:00] did do was we had our garage, we had a change of use where we had the garage turned into actually a master bedroom suite. That, they worked on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they put up walls, and then they took the walls down, and then they put the walls up, and then they took the walls down again, and they kept telling us reason, “Yeah, we have to\u2026” They would come up with these really weird reasons. “This is how they do it in Italy. You have to do this wall again for this inspection and then you have to take that down again and then they, it was just, they just gave us a line of BS all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was just, it was just talk And<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> how long did it take you to cop on to the fact that the renovation was<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> not actually<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> happening? So then there was a point<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> where by about, it was in February I started getting mad. I was like, “Okay.” They started canceling our Thursday meetings, and that’s when I started sending really pointed questions like, “Okay, I’m really nervous. I’ve not seen. Are we gonna be done by May? Are we gonna be done? I’ve got people coming.” “Yes, yes, [00:14:00] yes. Yes, yes, yes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the meetings started getting canceled, and I started sending little bit angrier messages. Little bit a- But you never wanna get too mad. I mean, these are the people that you’re 100% depending on. So you’re afraid of getting too angry, you know? So you always kind of hold back. And in your mind there’s a part of you there\u2026 I can’t even tell you if I don’t think I ever sus- I don’t think I ever in my right mind would have suspected that what was going on was going on. I just thought that they were taking too long, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so by mid-March a gal who’s become a good friend of mine, came over and I said, “Oh, will you please go see my property? Can you go see, take pictures?” And she said, “Oh, yes, yes, I will, I will do that. I will do that.” So the next day, I woke up, and there was a video through my house, and my house was exactly the same as it was when we left in late October. And we saw nothing had been done. Nothing had been [00:15:00] done. And I was devastated, and I was crying hysterically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after I saw it, I sent an immediate email to the contractor and said, “You have been lying to us for months. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where is our house? Call us now. I wanna know what’s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so that next day, the contractor sent us an email, and he said, “Okay, yes, something has happened, and I’ve been trying to shield you from it, and let’s have a Zoom meeting, and I will tell you exactly what’s going on.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the next day, I had a, we had a Zoom meeting, my husband and I, with, with the contractor, and we were very upset. And he fed me another lie. And he said the comune had shut down our project, [00:16:00] that all of the neighbors were complaining, and that we were doing illegal work on the house. And so our house was in some type of a big legal- Limbo and he says, “I’ve been trying to get it straightened out, and I wanted to save you from it.” And he says, ” just give me some time and I’ll have this done by June.” And I’m like, ” You’re a liar. You’re lying to us. You’re just lying to us. I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t know what’s really going on, but you’re lying to us.” And we just, I took my computer and just slammed it down, you know, like we were on a Zoom call. I didn’t, never spoke to him again and, um Then we’re like, “Where’s, where’s our money?” You know? “Where’s the money?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> So- Because the work had not been done, so he might not<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> give you back the money. Yeah, the work hadn’t been done, so where did the money go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how much money he took for himself, I don’t know, but he was running his company like a Ponzi scheme. So when he got our [00:17:00] money, he took our money to finish somebody else’s property. Every time we sent money, like he did as, enough to like put on a big show here, and then took the rest and sent it to other projects. That’s a classic. So apparently later on in the end when I started, we started talking to everybody and what had happened to them was that, well, number one, everybody’s projects soared in cost- So what he under- and he severely under budgeted our house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for 150,000 euro, we were supposed to get our renovation, an additional third bedroom, third bath suite, en suite. We were supposed to get the pool. We were supposed to get you know, a little bit of landscaping, a new gate, and things like that. And what we got was, in the end, was for the\u2026 I mean, it cost us another $100,000 to finish the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with that, we have a two bedroom, two bath house, and no landscaping or anything on [00:18:00] the exterior whatsoever, you know. No pool, no nothing. But in the end, that cash was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> And- Where are these people now? Are they still around?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> Are they still- Yeah, the Italians are all still around. Oh, and the guy, the contractor, he’s still around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> So they’re all still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> They’re all still here, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, when things happen to you, they happen, and we chose to just accept it. There was nothing we were gonna do. We weren’t gonna get our money back. It happened to us, but you just find a way to move on, you know. It was COVID for us, and, you know, things had happened, and we’re self-employed people. So we kind of got hit financially, so coming up with the cash that we had to do now to finish our house was very hard on us. We had to go into a lot of debt in order to finish our house. But we were committed. We had made this decision. We owned this house, and we loved [00:19:00] it, and we loved Puglia, and everything else about it was a, was positive, but finding our way through the experience. We never yelled at each other once over the whole thing. We never got in a fight over it. It was my dream and it was my doing and it was my convincing him. He never got mad at me once. He never said, “I told you so.” And, uh, none of that ever happened. We just moved forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for me, suddenly all the people that I counted on were gone, and now I’m in the process all by myself having to find my way out. And if, it actually was two people who really saved us. Was a young architect, who actually worked for a very short time for this con man. He, ’cause he had hired all these Italians who unfortunately, they all lost everything as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But anyway, this young architect, he had helped design the house, the renovation that we were doing. And another gal who worked for [00:20:00] him too, they actually became a boyfriend and girlfriend. They’re still together to this day. He’s actually now a very successful architect. He wasn’t the architect of record on the house. At the time he was still hadn’t taken all of his licensing. But once this happened to us and I came back to Puglia, as soon as we discovered all of our money was gone, no renovation had taken place I came back here and he committed himself to helping me for no money at all, to find us a contractor to get the house renovated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He lived in Monopoli<\/a>, which is about a good solid hour’s drive away. After finding me a contractor, he drove here every day and made sure the work was being done. I mean, it was really amazing. I’m, and he didn’t ask for any money. He was so upset by everything and that, and I think he was so concerned about his personal reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we had also developed a strong bond [00:21:00] with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will say this, it’s probably the worst and the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Because, you know, I was in retirement. I was very, very bored. I was actually looking at this, you know, doing\u2026 buying this house here and doing this is actually somewhat as a saving grace, as some, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here’s another little tidbit about me. Um, I’m kind of a lifelong sufferer of a panic disorder, which started when I was very young. So making this decision to do this crazy thing, I actually made this conscious decision to get on a plane and fly here by myself and just, like, face it, like, crash head-on, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, it’s been an amazing experience and, like, personal growth at, in the 60s, you know? I mean, you still grow. For young people, you are still growing when you’re in your 60s, even when you’re in your 70s, you know? [00:22:00] It was, like, huge ’cause I got on planes and I flew here, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I did it, and getting off and it was like, it was, like, crazy. Like, for my first two weeks I was here, I think, and I was in a little apartment in Ostuni, I was almost afraid to go out of my house. I, like, literally binged watched Breaking Bad for, like, you know, like, five or six days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> All seven seasons of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan:<\/strong> It was like, it was crazy. So, you know, like, it was\u2026 Yeah, I sort of, so I get, like, head\u2026 So I sort of got over my fear of flying as well. And now I, like, I travel the world all by myself, and so, so when I say it’s been, like, the worst thing and, like, the best thing, yeah, I, it really has. It’s been, like, a definitely a two-sided sword, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yeah. But I’m glad that it’s gonna give you the courage to do so many new things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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