Turnkey is a word, not a guarantee
In the United States and the United Kingdom, turnkey usually means one company sells you a property it already owns, refurbished, tenanted and managed by itself. In Italy that model barely exists, and where it is advertised it usually hides the fact that the seller and the manager are the same party. Our version is deliberately different, and the difference is worth reading before you go any further.
| Month | Occupancy |
|---|---|
| April | around 64% |
| May | around 68% |
| June | around 74% |
| July | around 86% |
| August | around 92% |
| September | season still running |
| October | season still running |
It is calculated the way the industry calculates it, on nights actually offered for sale: periods when the owner keeps the home for themselves are excluded, and in summer those are the largest share. September and October are still selling and we will update them as the season closes. These are figures observed on our own homes, updated in August 2026, not a forecast for the property you are looking at.
One case, not a rule. A house we managed in Villasimius was valued at 190,000 euro before it came under management; it sold in 2025 for 240,000. That 26% is not our doing alone: it is what a property is worth when it reaches the market with a booking and review history behind it, that is, with evidence of what it has earned. It is a single case and we tell it as such, not as what will happen to the property you are considering.
We do the two ends of the job: the estimate before you buy and the management afterwards. Everything in the middle, finding the property, the mortgage, the deed, the building work, the furniture, is done by professionals we introduce you to, whom you contract directly. We never act as the estate agent: brokering in Italy is a regulated profession and it is always a licensed agent who does it, never Propertize.
Return on capital and revenue growth are not the same thing
Net yield compares what remains each year with the total capital invested. Revenue growth compares two management periods for the same property and, on its own, says nothing about what the owner keeps. Combining the two percentages makes unlike figures look comparable.
A sound purchase decision therefore needs both steps: first a complete profit-and-loss calculation, from purchase price to annual net income; then a comparison of management scenarios built on the same basis. Any difference is won or lost in three places.
- Weeks actually sold, not weeks on the calendar
- A calculation done on the back of an envelope multiplies an August rate by the length of the season. In practice June and September sell at half that rate, changeovers eat nights, and some weeks do not sell at all.
- The average rate collected, not the rate advertised
- Between the price on the listing and the money in the bank sit long-stay discounts, the last-minute deals that fill the gaps, platform commission, and the cheap shoulder-season nights.
- The costs nobody puts in the envelope
- Cleaning between guests, linen, utilities in high summer, routine maintenance, tourist tax to collect and pay on, bank charges, replacements. One by one they look small; added up they often flip the sign of the result.
That is why you will not find a yield percentage on this page. Anyone publishing one is estimating your property without having seen it, and that is a number we decline to give.
How a rental income is estimated before the purchase
The method matters more than the figure, because the figure changes with every property. Ours is the same one we use on the homes we already manage.
- Real comparables, in the same micro-location
- Not the city average and not even the municipal one: the two streets around that building. A flat two hundred metres from the water and one a kilometre inland are not the same asset, and neither are two blocks on the same street if one has parking.
- The season that particular place actually sells
- In Gallura the season that pays is short and dense; in Cagliari it stretches into spring and autumn; in Milan there is no season at all, there are trade fairs and working weeks. The number of sellable weeks moves the final figure far more than the nightly rate does.
- A sustainable price, not a hopeful one
- A high rate that leaves the house empty is worth less than an honest rate that keeps it full. Calendars fill on price, not on optimism, and that is truer in the first year than in any other.
- Costs all the way down to the net
- You start from gross and work down: platforms, cleaning, linen, utilities, maintenance, management, tax. What is left at the bottom is the only number worth deciding on. On the tax side our guide to the cedolare secca flat tax sets out the detail, and the guide to what a holiday home earns in Sardinia explains what moves the revenue.
- We do not give a figure on a property we have not seen
- It is the same promise we make to owners who hand us a house they already own, and it holds here: an estimate built on a floor plan and two photographs is not an estimate, it is a reassuring number.
The seven steps, and who does each one
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1
Analysis and business plan
We go through the properties you are considering and give you a business plan for each: revenue estimated on real comparables, costs down to the net figure. We do this part ourselves, it is free, and it commits you to nothing.
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2
Finding the property
If what you have found does not stand up, we introduce you to the partner best suited to you among the agencies we work with in that area. The brokering is always done by a licensed Italian estate agent, never by Propertize: you sign with the agent, on the agent's terms.
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3
Mortgage
If you need finance, we put you in touch with a credit broker who handles non-resident applications regularly. The negotiation with the bank stays yours; we stay available for the part that concerns the numbers of the property itself.
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4
Purchase
Offer, preliminary contract, deed. You choose the notary and it is the notary who answers for the legal side. We tell you what to ask before you sign, from planning compliance to landscape constraints, because in Sardinia those are the things that sink a purchase when they surface late.
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5
Renovation
If the house needs work, we introduce you to builders and surveyors whose completed projects we know in that area. You sign the contract with them. We review the plans from the perspective of the future rental operation: where a second bathroom adds value, which windows withstand salt air and what an outdoor dining area contributes.
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6
Interior design and furnishing
Furnishing a rental is not furnishing your own home: it has to photograph well, survive twenty stays a year and not cost like a show flat. We work with interior designers and local suppliers, and the final call stays yours because the house stays yours.
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7
Management
From here the house is ours to run: listings and pricing, guests, cleaning, maintenance and compliance, from the CIN code to the tourist tax. No monthly fee, a percentage of revenue. The owners page sets out how that works in full.
The search mandate, and why it has an expiry date
The agencies we work with do not use the generic “I will send you what I find”: they use a tailored search mandate. It has three features worth knowing before you sign, because they are not standard in the Italian market.
- It runs for ninety days and does not renew itself
- When it expires you are free: no tacit renewal, no cancellation notice to send. Ninety days is also the time in which, with the work done properly, the right property is usually found.
- It is exclusive with one agent, not with a single agency
- You have one point of contact who answers for what they put in front of you, while you remain free to view properties with other agencies as well. The exclusivity is about who guides you, not about who shows you houses.
- The commission is due only if the sale completes
- It is 5% plus VAT on the purchase price, payable only if the deal closes through that mediation. The technical, legal and tax advice needed along the way is included, at no extra cost.
The real work, though, is the filtering. The properties you send and the ones they find go through a documentation check before the viewing: it saves time on houses that do not stand up, and it avoids awkward situations discovered once a deposit has been paid. It is also what gives weight in the negotiation, because someone who knows the paperwork negotiates from a different position.
This circuit is also where off-market properties come from, the ones that are never advertised and can only be seen this way. You sign the mandate with the agency and on its terms, not with us: we do not act as intermediaries.
Step 4 is where purchases in Sardinia actually fall apart, so it has a page of its own: what a foreign buyer has to check before signing in Sardinia, from the 300 metre coastal belt to the civic use rights that make a sale void.
Sardinia or Milan: two different decisions
Almost everyone asks, and the honest answer is that these are not two versions of the same investment. They are two different operating models.
| Sardinia | Milan | |
|---|---|---|
| The season | Short and concentrated: the revenue is made in a handful of weeks, at rates that would be unthinkable for the rest of the year. A season that starts badly is not recovered in November. | Spread across twelve months. The machine never stops, but a poor month weighs less because there are eleven others. |
| Who books | Holidays: families, couples, groups. | Work trips, trade fairs, conferences, students, families between homes, hospital stays. |
| Rates | Very high in peak season, close to flat outside it. | Less spectacular, but steady all year. |
| The entry price | Varies widely from area to area. In a coastal town a property carries buyer demand that does not rest on rental income alone. | Per square metre, another planet. |
| Using it yourself | Yes, out of season. | Rarely: the property is working most of the time. |
We do not publish our own numbers on these two markets, for a simple reason: we are still putting them in order properly, and until they are, we would rather publish nothing. In the meantime, for the wider picture, there is our guide to the short-let market in Sardinia and the page on how we work in Milan.
The business plan is free, and it is not a PDF
It is not a generic guide and it is not a thirty-minute call: it is a plan for the specific property you are looking at, and it contains four things.
Revenue estimated on real comparables
Homes that genuinely resemble that one and sit where that one sits, not area averages.
Costs down to the net figure
All of them, including the ones nobody usually counts.
Seasonality and expected occupancy
For that micro-location, month by month: knowing when the money arrives matters as much as knowing how much it is.
A comparison across several properties
If you are weighing up two or three, that is often the part that decides the matter.
It is free, and we do it for properties in Sardinia and in Milan, the two markets we actually know. If the arithmetic says that property is not worth it, we say so: that is when we are most useful to you.
Why us
We manage more than 90 homes across Sardinia, Milan and Sicily, with teams on the ground all year who do not arrive from somewhere else when something breaks. For the owners who have entrusted us with a house we have generated over a million euro in revenue.
The difference that matters to somebody who has not bought yet is a different one: after the deed, we stay. Whoever sells you the house finishes the job on the day you sign; we start that day. It is also why the estimate we give you beforehand is a cautious one: we are the ones who will have to let that house, and a promise made in March is paid for in August.
If you want to see who we are, there is the about us page, and one owner's story tells a real case with the numbers of that house rather than of an average one.
Written by the Propertize team, who manage homes in Sardinia, Milan and Sicily. Page last updated in August 2026.
