Things i learnt from 2 months of helping expats buy and rent homes in Italy

You can show them your million dollar savings, but if they’re from another country, they’ll still reject your application.

For a €400 rental.

But bring along one italian who’s willing to vouch for you, and suddenly you’re a real person again.

9 weeks ago, I started helping expats buy and rent homes in Italy.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1/ You’d expect renting will be easier than buying. it’s the opposite.

I’ve gotten clients a mortgage and a villa faster than I’ve gotten them a signed rental agreement.

The reasons are always the same:

• Too many landlords swap to student rentals for tax benefits, shrinking rental offer in half for all the non-studenty “normal tenants”

• People with pets are trying to rent, but landlords think they’re more a geophysical hazard than a future tenant

• Small families are getting blocked from modest apartments because of ridiculous square-footage rules

Italians looking for a place struggle with these as well, though.

But here’s one exclusively expat nightmare -

A paranoid landlord.

They ask you for six months of rent upfront, plus a full year’s deposit.

And they don’t care if you have

• seven figures in your bank account,

• 2 companies to your name,

• or a house you’re renting out in Germany.

If your money isn’t in Italy, it doesn’t exist.

As far as they’re concerned, you might as well be broke, homeless, or a criminal.

But wait.

Before making ugly conclusions, let me play devil’s advocate for a sec:

The problem might be the landlord. But it’s probably the italian legal system.

Because once you get the keys, the story turns around:

You could technically stop paying rent and just live there for years, totally free.

But the landlord would need to keep paying taxes on the rent you didn’t pay, plus some chunky legal fees to evict you out of HIS OWN place - a process that takes years to finalize.

And here’s the caveat: If your money comes from outside Italy, the court can't touch your salary to pay the landlord back. If you stop paying, well, guess the landlord is out of luck.

It’s not xenophobia.

It’s just risk management.

And here’s where your friend-making skills come in handy.

You need to get a garante.

It’s the single fastest way to get an italian landlords actually treat you like a human being.

But if you don’t have any italian friends (or you’re unwilling to make any), your next best option is fideiussione bancaria. You basically get the bank to vouch for you.

(Banks will do anything for money.)

Or, if you have the cash and want to save yourself the headache, just buy a place.

Raise from the peasants!

No, seriously - keep it for five years, and then re-sell without paying capital gains tax.

But whatever you do, never wire more than three months’ rent as a deposit. Agencies will ask for it, but t’s not very legal, and if the landlord gambles your cash away, gets bumped off in a shootout, or just pulls a disappearing act when you already moved out - good luck getting that money back.

2/ People think they know what they want and they think it’s reasonable. (It’s not.)

As a kid, whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always say:

A big-city actress living on a horse farm.

This is called an incompatible dream, and we all start with one.

As kids. As adults. As people taking the plunge and moving to Italy.

We can be endearingly delusional when it comes to planning our future and making life changing moves.

But from my experience:

• You can’t find a house with a private garden in Rome that allows 3 dogs for under €1800 a month

• You can’t find a move-in ready two-bedroom for €60k in a nice beach town. Even the most ‘underrated’ Italian coastlines aren’t that hidden.

• You can’t find a rural villa with a massive olive grove for €50,000 that isn’t hiding a legal mess in the registry office.

And there’s always going to be things outside your control. Because out of nowhere..

• Your ex might not want your kids to move out of the country after all

• You can’t sell the house you thought you could, or not for the price you wanted to

• You can’t get the kind of house you wanted, in the kind of neighborhood you wanted, for the money you can afford

I can feel the frustration and anxiety creeping up. But don’t panic.

Not a single client I’ve helped relocate ever ended up with what they originally asked for on day one.

And that’s fine. You need to start with a fantasy. Otherwise, you’d never get excited enough to take the leap.

And then you begin with the real work, slowly grinding that fantasy down into something reality can actually deliver.

3/ You think “cheap” means there’s a catch. Sometimes there isn’t.

Right now, there are 44 move-in ready homes listed on Idealista for just €10k.

All over Italy.

I just checked.

And there’s no catch - they’re just far.

Far from the airports, trains, and bus stops. In the most depopulating towns and villages. No expats, no english, no events.

No new babies coming in and growing up and taking on the jobs left by old people who retired years ago.

No new ideas turning into projects.

Just towns with closed down bars and places, far from everyone and and everything, going more and more quiet.

That’s the catch.

But some people look at that and see paradise.

These €10K flats are often sold in the most iconic spots, like old historic towns or on the top of a hill with fairytale views.

Actually, if anything’s a scam, it’s the famous €1 houses.

They’re pretty much the same as the €10K move-in ready homes.

But they’re totally not move-in ready.

And they’re just €10K cheaper. For a house, that’s not that much of a discount.

Plus they come with baggage: you have to put down a €5,000 deposit with the town hall to prove you’ll actually renovate the place within three years.

And you really wanna keep that promise, or you can wave that money goodbye.

That’s a new kind of stress you didn’t know you needed.

But that’s not all -

Now that you’re dealing with municipalities, you need to submit professional architectural plans and stuff - You can’t DIY that. You’ll need to pay some pros, and people like surveyors and architects are something like dentists - they cost money.

And then - after spending way past the €10k you thought you saved - you can actually start renovating.

I watched a video of a woman who did it all with 500,000€. You can probably do less. But even if you do things like floors and tiles and kitchen yourself… damn, even if you do everything yourself because your dad taught you electricity and your uncle taught you plumbing (you should open a company), the material is expensive!

So, if anything’s a scam, it’s the 1€ house scheme.

4/ You think buying needs a lawyer and is complicated. It isn’t.

You’ll only need a lawyer if it’s a complex case or if you’re doing a huge deal.

You’ll only need a surveyor or an architect if the house is breaking apart.

In most cases, all you need is a good notary.

Maybe a translator.

The notary will get you your codice fiscale and then most of the stuff you’d pay your lawyer to do - they verify who officially owns the house, check for things like mortgages and foreclosures, and ensure the land registry floor plan matches the official tax profile.

If you don’t speak the language, paying to translate a Power of Attorney costs way less than translating a full 27-page property deed - so get yourself an Italian friend (or pay one, you freak!) who can sign the final deed on your behalf.

If you’re not in Italy and think buying would be difficult because you’d need to be coming and going to do the viewings, the paperwork, the offer, the deed…

You won’t.

you can do 99% of it from your couch.

Italy isn’t hard to move to.

It can be annoying, and long, and full of u-turns, but if you have your wild cards gathered:

• an italian garante

• a good notary

• a translator

• and a knowing that you will get delusional about what you think you can get

Ce la fai con la sigaretta in bocca.

It’s a walk in the park, as they say.