Ask most people who a property agent works for, and they assume the answer is obvious: the person paying the fee. In the majority of transactions, that isn’t the buyer. It’s the seller.
That imbalance is the reason Ultissimo has partnered with Cazar, the buyer-only consultancy known as a Maison de Chasse, founded by Chibo Agu and Célia Menand. Together, the two businesses represent a growing shift in how serious buyers approach markets like Lake Como: not by working with whoever has the listing, but by working with someone whose only obligation is to them.
“We often ask a simple question,” says Chibo. “In one of the biggest investments of your life, who is representing you?”
For most buyers, this is the first time they’ve stopped to consider that the agent showing them round, negotiating on their behalf and advising on price is, in most cases, working for the seller. It isn’t a conspiracy. It’s simply how the industry has been built. Every professional at the table represents the person selling, while the buyer, despite carrying the greater risk, has no one exclusively on their side.
Cazar was built to close that gap. As a Maison de Chasse, the business doesn’t start with a portfolio of homes to sell. It starts with a conversation: understanding a client’s lifestyle, priorities and long-term plans, then searching the entire market, including opportunities that never reach public listing, to find what genuinely fits.
Ultissimo operates on the same principle in Lake Como. Two businesses, one philosophy: buyers deserve representation too.
Lake Como is, by Cazar’s own description, an opaque market. Off-market opportunities exist, but they move through trusted local networks rather than public channels. Many of the most remarkable villas have stayed within the same families for generations. You cannot create new lakefront land, and that scarcity shapes everything about how the market behaves.
“The biggest risk isn’t missing a property,” Chibo explains. “It’s making a decision with only part of the picture.” Buyers searching independently often see only a fraction of what’s genuinely available, and without local perspective, it’s difficult to know which opportunities are worth pursuing at all.
This is precisely where the partnership does its work. Cazar brings the buyer-first methodology and a structured process, built around its internal Cazar Portal, which centralises every stage of a client’s search. Ultissimo brings exceptional knowledge of Lake Como itself: which part of the lake suits a particular lifestyle, which families are quietly open to a conversation, and how to navigate a market that runs on relationships rather than listings.
When a Cazar client expresses interest in Lake Como, the process begins with a conversation between the client and one of Cazar’s founders, understanding the project, the objectives, and whether the fit is right. If it is, the relationship is formalised through a search mandate, and the project is entrusted to Ultissimo, who leads the search on the ground: identifying opportunities, organising viewings and guiding the client through the local acquisition process from start to finish.
It’s worth noting how the partnership itself began. Ruby discovered Cazar on Instagram and made contact. A handful of conversations later, it was clear the two businesses shared the same conviction: that representing buyers with independence, discretion and genuine local expertise isn’t a nice idea, it’s the only model that makes sense.
Chibo is candid about what tends to surprise people, and what’s still underappreciated even among those who already know the area well. “People often focus on how beautiful Lake Como is. We think that’s only part of the story. What remains underappreciated is just how finite this market really is.”
His advice to anyone weighing up whether Lake Como is right for them is refreshingly unsalesy: don’t start with the property. Start by asking whether this is genuinely where you see yourself spending time, building memories or creating a legacy. If the answer is yes, then it’s worth exploring with the right local expertise beside you. If it’s no, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer too.
For clients who buy on Lake Como through Ultissimo and later consider a second property elsewhere, whether in the mountains, on the coast or in another city, the relationship doesn’t end at completion. Through the wider Cazar network, clients gain access to local Search Experts across Europe’s leading markets, each following the same methodology and the same commitment to representing buyers exclusively. Many clients receive market insight and relevant opportunities long before they’ve begun actively searching again.
Strip away the process and the partnership comes down to one idea, repeated in almost every answer Chibo gives: buying a property should never mean navigating the process alone, and it should never mean working with someone whose success is measured by selling you something. It should mean informed decisions, made with people whose only job is to get it right for you.
That’s the model Ultissimo and Cazar have built together. Not a portfolio to sell. A partnership built entirely around the buyer.
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