Generally speaking, Italian homes aren’t the most spacious.
According to data from real estate portal Immobiliare.it, the average Italian home has 81 square metres of floor space.
For context, that’s 56 square metres less than in Denmark, which comes first in Europe for average floor space with 137 sqm. The figure is also significantly lower than in France (112 sqm), Germany (109) and Spain (97).
All of that is to say that, while living in Italy, you may not have a lot of space to store all of your personal belongings at home.
Granted, many houses and apartment blocks come with storage rooms – these may be located underground (known as cantine or scantinati in Italian) or in the attic (soffitta) – which you can use to pile up all the belongings you’re not using at a particular moment in time.
But if you’re permanently leaving your home and need a place for some, if not all, of your kitchen appliances, furniture and other personal belongings, you may no longer have access to a storage room. And if you don’t have another place to ship your stuff to, this can be pretty challenging.
Luckily, there are plenty of storage options available in Italy.
Rent a storage room from a private owner
If you visit Idealista, Immobiliare.it or any other of Italy’s main property websites, you’ll find listings from private owners looking to rent out a storage room.
Generally speaking, you’ll need to head to the affitto (‘rent’) section of the website, select the magazzino or deposito (‘storage room’) option from a drop-down menu, and then type in the relevant area, as shown by the screengrab below.
Depending on size and location of the storage room, you can expect to pay anything from €50 to €300-400 a month.
When renting from a private owner, you’ll need to sign a rental contract for storage purposes (contratto di locazione di immobile ad uso cantina, soffitta, magazzino).
This will in most cases require you to pay a security deposit, but will offer you legal protection and security under Italian law.
The owner will be responsible for registering the contract with Italy’s tax office (Agenzia delle Entrate).
Remember: it’s strongly advisable to ask the owner all of the pertinent questions regarding security, mould, insect infestations and any other condition that could damage your belongings before agreeing to renting the space.
Rent a storage space from a company
Companies specialising in storage space are often called ditte di magazzinaggio or deposito, or, in recent years, ditte di self-storage, using the English name.
The benefits of using a professional company over renting from a private owner is that they offer a wide range of storage sizes tailored to your needs, and they’re likely to have facilities which are properly protected from the elements and break-ins.
READ ALSO: What are the rules on moving household goods to Italy?
Casaforte and Easybox are the leaders of the self-storage market in Italy but are not available in smaller cities and towns around the peninsula.
Luckily, in recent years, a growing number of companies specialised in self-storage have started operating in smaller urban centres.
This means that a simple Google search with ditta di self storage paired with the name of your town (or the relevant postal code) will in most cases produce several useful results.
When looking for the best option, don’t forget to shop around for good prices and offers, and read as many customer reviews as possible.
Once again, storage prices can vary greatly depending on the area of the country, as well as the size of your storage room.
Generally speaking, prices start at €1-1.5 per day for the smaller sizes (around 5 sqm) but can climb to €5 or more per day for large spaces (15-20 sqm).
Use a moving company to store your belongings
If you only need to store your things while you’re between houses, you can hire a moving company (ditta or società di traslochi) which will provide door-to-door delivery service and keep your things secure between move-out and move-in dates.
Gosselin, AGS Mover, Bolliger and Crown Relocations are some of the most well-known international moving companies operating in Italy that also offer storage space.
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