Your mortgage in Piacenza,
explained in the language you think in

It puts people looking for finance in touch with the lenders able to provide it. In practice: we collect your documents once, present your position to the partner banks that make sense for your profile, compare the offers that come back and explain where the real differences lie. Then we follow the application through to completion, dealing with bank, surveyor, estate agent and notary. We do not grant the mortgage ourselves — that remains the bank’s decision — but we decide together who to ask and how to present it.

Because your bank can only offer you its own products, and it has no reason to tell you that the lender next door, on the same salary, is half a point cheaper this month. We put the same application in front of the twenty-five banks we are accredited with and we know in advance what criteria each one applies: who looks kindly on an agency contract, who reads self-employed income properly, who is currently approving in three weeks and who in eight. We do not touch your relationship with your branch: if your bank’s counter-offer is the best one, we tell you so and you stay where you are.

The initial assessment is free and commits you to nothing. If we decide to go ahead, the broker fee is confirmed in writing before we start and appears in the pre-contractual documents together with all the bank’s charges. For mortgages it is due only if you reach completion. It is a rule of ours that no charges appear afterwards.

Often yes, but not with every bank. Piacenza is one of the largest logistics hubs in northern Italy and thousands of people here have fixed-term, agency or yearly-renewed contracts: many lenders have no procedure to assess them and say no out of caution. Others read the continuity of income over the last two or three years, look at the tax certificates and the history of renewals, and approve routinely. Putting the application in front of the right ones, with the documents laid out the way they expect, is exactly the difference between a no and a mortgage.

Yes, in several cases, thanks to the First-Home Guarantee Fund run by Consap: the State guarantees part of the capital, which allows a number of lenders to go to 95%, in some situations to 100%. It applies to a non-luxury main residence — cadastral categories A/1, A/8 and A/9 are excluded — for buyers who do not own another home. In Piacenza the Fund works better than elsewhere for an arithmetical reason: its ceiling on the amount financed covers almost every house on the market here, whereas in a large city it would exclude half of it. The final decision stays with the bank: we check the requirements and submit the application to whoever is actually lending at that moment.

This needs care, because a lot of out-of-date information is still circulating. The extraordinary exemption from registration, mortgage and cadastral tax for under-36s within the income limits ended on 31 December 2024 and has not been renewed: if you buy today, you pay those taxes, at the ordinary reduced first-home rate. What remains is priority access to the Consap guarantee fund, which is a different thing altogether — not a tax saving but a public guarantee that lets you borrow a higher percentage. We say this up front because on an average purchase in town the difference is several thousand euros to budget for.

There is no answer that fits everyone, but in Piacenza the comparison is closer than elsewhere: with rates back around three per cent and prices per square metre among the lowest in northern Italy, on smaller properties a mortgage payment and a rent look quite similar. Everything else differs, though: a mortgage needs cash up front for taxes, the notary and the part not financed, ties you to one property and exposes you to extraordinary building works. We do the sums with you, using your numbers, and if the answer is “not for now” we say that too.

Yes. Two of our four advisers, Ramnit Singh Pabla and Manjit Pabla, speak Punjabi and Hindi; the office also works in English. This is not a courtesy: a mortgage is signed in front of a notary and lasts twenty years, and understanding every line of what you are signing is your right, not a favour. You can write to us on WhatsApp in your language and one of them will reply directly. About two and a half thousand people of Indian origin live in the province of Piacenza: we are the agency that has been looking after them for years.

Not for the bank, and in your favour. A Lombard salary counts like any other and is often above the local average, while the property securing the loan costs what it costs here: it is the profile banks assess most calmly of all. What you should watch is something else, and it is practical: an application means appointments, signatures and steps during office hours. We work by appointment including late afternoon and Saturday morning, and most steps can be handled remotely.

Roughly four to eight weeks from submission, depending on the lender and on how complete your documents are. The valuation also weighs: on a flat in a 1960s building in town the surveyor has plenty of comparable sales and it is quick, while on a house in the hills or a farmhouse in the countryside comparables are scarce and it pays to prepare it well. When the completion date is tight we tell the bank at the outset and choose the structurally faster lenders accordingly.

The city of Piacenza and all its districts, from Farnesiana to Besurica, from Roncaglia to Borghetto; the inner ring — Gossolengo, Podenzano, Pontenure, Gragnano, San Nicolò and Rottofreno, Calendasco, Caorso; the Tidone and Arda valleys with Castel San Giovanni, Borgonovo, Sarmato, Fiorenzuola, Carpaneto, Castell’Arquato and Monticelli; and the Trebbia and Nure valleys up to Rivergaro, Travo, Vigolzone and Bettola. We receive by appointment at Via Luciano Scarabelli 1/B, Piacenza.