In 2018, I moved to Ravenna and struggled to find someone willing to rent me a home in the city centre.
Eight years later, I’m taking bookings for the third apartment we’ve bought and renovated here.
Between those two moments came the growth of my marketing business, a family, and quite an education on building sites.
But the starting point was much simpler: I remembered what it felt like to need a place to live.
Before I became a landlord, I was the person looking
My partner and I wanted somewhere central, convenient for work and everyday life. She would later become my wife, and Ravenna, in northeastern Italy, would become the city where our children were born.
Before we even moved, I was already searching Facebook groups.
Listings. Messages. Phone calls.
Finding a suitable home proved considerably harder than I had expected.
It wasn’t an entirely new experience. As a university student in Rome, I had lived in expensive, barely decent apartments in inconvenient locations. I had also encountered landlords who didn’t want to provide a rental contract.
Later, in Taiwan and the Middle East, I experienced better-organised accommodation: somewhere to study, useful services, and a person to contact when something went wrong.
Those experiences stayed with me.
When you arrive in a new city, you already have enough to figure out. A university course. A new job. Perhaps a language you don’t speak confidently yet.
Housing uncertainty gets tangled up with everything else.
And if you’re moving from abroad, even a straightforward problem becomes harder when you don’t know the local system or have anyone nearby to ask.
The apartments were already there
In 2023, I began studying Ravenna’s property market seriously.
I spoke with dozens of estate agents, visited dozens of apartments, and worked through the numbers.
During those visits, I kept finding properties from the 1950s and 1960s in central locations. Some had been empty for years and were in poor condition. Making them comfortable again would require substantial work.
Their location was what interested me first.
For a young student or worker, being able to reach classes, services and the places where everyday life happens can make a real difference.
A well-furnished room loses some of its appeal if living there makes your day unnecessarily complicated.
So I decided to start with existing apartments in the historic centre, bringing them back into use and adapting them for shared living.
The model drew on things I had experienced abroad: a private bedroom, shared facilities, clear arrangements and professional management.
That became Stanz@Ravenna, the coliving project I founded for young students and workers in Ravenna.
From digital work to very physical problems
The growth of Reparto Marketing Persuasivo, my marketing business, gave me the financial base to begin.
I reinvested part of those results in property, alongside financing.
Our first tenant moved into the apartment in Via Diaz in January 2024. Piazza Mameli followed in 2025.
Now, in November 2026, we’re receiving advance bookings for our third apartment, in Piazza Baracca: furnished rooms for students and young workers. We completed the purchase in September and the renovation in around two months.
Since 2023, we have invested more than €915,000 in buying, renovating and furnishing the three properties, excluding interest on financing.
That figure represents the total investment in the project, supported by both our own funds and financing.
It also represents a lot of decisions that are less impressive than a large number in a headline.
What needs replacing? What can be kept? How should a room work for someone who needs to sleep, study and spend part of their day there? Who follows up when something isn’t finished properly?
I had built a business around words and digital services. Property gave me a different kind of education.
The results are now tangible: 19 private bedrooms, some with their own bathrooms, in three existing buildings.
We created those rooms by renovating what was already there, without building on additional land.
The responsibility continues after the keys change hands
It’s satisfying to compare photographs of an old apartment with the finished rooms.
But the renovation is only part of what we’re offering.
Someone has to live there afterwards.
They need clear terms, maintenance, assistance, and a home where they can study, work and rest. Sharing an apartment also means sharing responsibility for how it is used.
Together with Francesca and the team, we have built a management service with support in Italian and English.
That matters especially when a tenant is new to Italy and doesn’t yet have a network of people to call.
It also means the work continues after we hand over the keys.
A freshly painted room makes a good photograph. What happens when there’s a problem tells you more about the service.
According to our internal records, 80% of tenants renewed for another twelve months over the past year. Some were staying for a third consecutive year.
I find that encouraging. They have experienced the apartments and the management, then chosen to stay.
A business rooted in something I remember
This is a business, and I want it to work financially.
I wanted to diversify beyond digital income, build assets and put my experience to use in another field.
At the same time, the particular problem I chose to work on was familiar. I knew what it felt like to arrive somewhere and struggle to find suitable accommodation.
Three apartments are a small contribution to a city’s housing needs. They are also real places where young people can begin a course, take a job and build a routine.
For me, there’s a quiet sense of coming full circle in that.
I look at the photographs from before the renovations, then walk through the rooms as they are now. I think about the work involved, the money committed and the people who helped make it happen.
And I remember searching those Facebook groups.
In 2018, I was looking for somewhere to begin my life in Ravenna.
Now, I hope these rooms can help other young people begin theirs.
You can see the before-and-after photographs and read the story of the three apartment transformations in Ravenna on the Stanz@Ravenna blog (in Italian).
Andrea Lisi, writing here as Andrew Lisi, is the founder of Stanz@Ravenna and Reparto Marketing Persuasivo. Project figures refer to November 2026; investment and renewal figures come from our internal records.
