u/seagiants

Just got back from the rhode café pop up in Paris and honestly it was so cute. Didn't expect to leave with a little stash of freebies but here we are

So I keep seeing people set a €1M+ budget for Tuscany, so I went looking somewhere else. Found this on Idealista: a two level Aeolian house in Lipari. 4 rooms, big terrace with a sea view, fully furnished, asking €575,000.

For context, restored farmhouses in Chianti and villas on the Versilia coast regularly go past €1 million, and they dont come with a volcano on the horizon!

Some quick Lipari facts I dug up. The comune has only 12,800 residents, and that count includes Vulcano, Panarea, Stromboli, Filicudi and Alicudi. In summer the population can reach around 20,000. Tourism drives most of the economy, and this year the Aeolian Islands saw visitors up 7% in high season compared to 2025.

Would you trade Tuscan hills for island life?

So I was digging into the data again and found this one.

The Italian tax agency just put out its numbers for April to June, and Florence home sales are down 8.3% compared to last year. That is the worst out of Italys eight biggest cities.

Naples went the complete opposite way, up 4.2%. Genoa was up 2.9%, Bologna 1.1%, Turin 0.6% and Rome 0.4%. Milan didnt move at all and Palermo dropped 2.6%.

Funny thing is, across the whole country the market was basically flat. Just over 201000 homes sold, pretty much the same as a year ago

So I was scrolling through the Facebook page of Edil Casali, a local real estate agency in the Viterbo area, and this listing caught my eye. €10,000 for an 80 sqm stone building in Graffignano with a 90 sqm garden. Totally rough inside 😬

The after pic looks great to me, not a real renovation, but I do love that loft idea!

Ofcourse the first thing to check is it registered as a home? If it is a barn, you would probably need a change of use permit, and that is usually where the problems start.

Would you buy this for €10,000?

Photos: Edil Casali (Servizi Immobiliari), Viterbo.

So found this one while poking around listings in Tuscany and had to share it here.

A 300 sqm stone farmhouse up in the hills near Pieve a Presciano in Arezzo, already split into 5 separate apartments, plus a 100 sqm barn that is basically a blank canvas. Swimming pool, air con throughout, and around 800 olive and fruit trees on the land. Asking price is €890,000.

What gets me is how flexible this one is. Its already set up to run as a rental business like Airbnb or Booking, if you want to go that route, but you could just as easily turn it into one big family home and forget the income angle entirely.

Would you buy something like this in Tuscany to run as a business, or turn it back into a single home?

if anyone wants more details, the contact is info@adhouse.it

So this one landed in my DMs through a direct contact, not a listing site. It is a villa on an 800sqm corner plot near Porto Columbu in Sardinia, with a pedestrian gate that opens right onto the sea!!

About 40 minutes from Cagliari and Elmas airport.

Planning permission is already granted to turn it into 7 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms across four floors, most with sea view terraces. Water, electricity, and sewage are already connected, and there is parking for up to 4 cars. No pool permission yet but a few neighbors have gotten theirs recently so it seems doable.

Engel and Volkers valued it at €900k, but the owner is selling direct so no agency commission. The owner also threw out a projected short term rental income number (350k€), but that is their own estimate, not something I have checked myself.

Curious what people here think, does something like this actually work as a business once you factor in the renovation cost?

I saw this pop up in a Facebook group. 1 bedroom house in the historic centre of Noto, available Nov through April, only 550 euro a month or 300 for a 14 night stay. House was renovated in 2025, only 40 square meters but the sea is 10 minutes away by car, shops and restaurants a short walk.

So my first thought was this has to be a scam. That price for a fully inclusive (bills) winter rental in a historic centre town is way under what you would expect to pay.

So i actually checked it out before writing this. Looks like the house exists, its listed on booking.com and has some reviews. The website in the post is a real working site, not some sketchy page. I compared the available booking dates across 3 different booking websites and they all lined up. Also found it up on Google Maps too and the place is there.

Only thing that gives me pause is it only has one review on Google, and the name on booking.com is Casetta while the website calls it Casa. Maybe I am just being paranoid here 😄 Btw socials connected to that website, seems legit.

Price is very good for what is on offer. Anyone actually stayed here or dealt with this owner before?

if anyone is interested, website: https://www.casachezceline.com/. I really hope its the real deal and someone gets a great price out of it.

I was digging again today. Normally I stick to the cheap stuff, somenthing under €100k, but today I wanted to see what the big money actually buys in Italy. Found this one near Saturnia, the famous hot springs town.

9 hectares total, 3 of vineyard, 1 of organic olive trees + working cellar with all equipment included, already making 9 different wines. Right now they only bottle 10000 a year, but the setup could apparently handle 30000 without buying anything new.

It only pulls in about €50k a year because it is sold locally, no exports, no real branding. So someone already did the hard part, vines, cellar, house, and just never scaled it. So there are deffo ways for growing!

This is Tuscany by the way. One of the most famous wine regions on earth. Curious what something like this would cost you in Napa?🇺🇸

Anyone want to invest? I will happily produce the wine for u 😄

Also, found this one on easylivingtuscany.com if anyone wants to look closer

I have to say I found this text, which is truly inspiring and I liked to share with you guys.

I dont know anything about Italy, the snobs will destroy me. I moved here knowing next to nothing too. Doesnt matter what other people know.

Like it warm, like pizza, dont know what manicotti are? Neither do I. Doesnt matter, coming up on a year here now. Even actual Italians admit they only know maybe ten out of a hundred pasta shapes or olive oils.

What else is stopping you?

That its hot? Yeah, stupidly hot. The old record up north was 37 degrees, set 11 years ago. We beat it three times this summer…. Time to install AC and work hard to keep it alive.

So let me stir up a daydream. Italy is one of the best options if this is the life you want. Far, but not too far from England or other EU places, also you can reach it easily from USA these days. Warm, cheap, stupidly beautiful nature, sun, sea.

So what is stopping you?

Money, obviously. Fair, its real. But a roof with working utilities starts around 25k. Rarely, you will even find that right on the coast. Sure, you will hike down a hill thirty minutes to reach that sea, then back up.

Italians see that as a total dealbreaker, which is why prices for places like that in the south are a joke. They have so much coastal property that even a slightly worse option gets massively undervalued. Meanwhile the average person back home wouldnt even dare dream of a place near the sea, because prices for that back home are only for the seriously rich.

What else is stopping you?

I dont speak the language, how do I even talk to anyone? Somehow. Point at tomato, point at yourself, pull out a three, say kilogram while holding up a finger. They will get it. No problem. Wont make friends that way, but the peace of mind makes up for it.

Enjoy 🇮🇹

Havent done one of these in a while, so here is a cheap Italian vacation home find.

I was looking for something under 35,000 euros with a sea view, no wall views this time and found this 💎 in Calabria.

The photo above is one of them, a view from the balcony of a 29,000 euro, 36 square meter flat.

Getting down to the actual water wont be easy. At first it looks like there is no way in at all, but on a google maps you can find a decent path down, and there is a beach at the bottom that will make you lose your mind.

Basically your own private turquoise blue bay. You can swim, lay on the shore, take photos for your Instagram, let your friends think you're loaded. Just know you wont get here without a car, no buses, no trains, no shop nearby.

Still, I count 6 Airbnbs within a 10 km radius of this spot, so it is clearly popular. Wild cliffs, underwater caves, nature.

Good luck house hunting, or at least good luck dreaming about it.

Went down to Sicily last week, half vacation half scouting trip with my other half. Found a place between Catania and Taormina, one floor house, four streets from the sea, insane Etna views from the terrace. So asking price was 35k, was hoping to talk it down to 20-25k.

We walked by first, looked great from outside so I called the agent to set up a viewing for the next day. Agent didnt speak english, which is completely fair, because I am the one showing up in her country. She said WhatsApp me instead so i did, translated the whole thing into italian, explained we wanted to see it in person.

Her reply: there are pictures and a video in the listing, just watch those 😄

I tried again, said nothing beats seeing it in person. She sent the video and said there is no real difference.

So that was that. Didnt push it, moved on to other options. First real lesson from being on the ground here: some agents just arent set up for foreign buyers who want an in person viewing, and language plus logistics can kill a deal fast.

anyone else run into agents who wont do viewings without a serious commitment first?

Been digging through some Sicily data and found something interesting. Trapani Birgi airport in western Sicily just got ranked no1 in Europe for growth among airports doing over a million passengers a year with a 16.4% growth rate from 2019 to 2025👌🏻

This year traffic is running about 30% above 2025, and August set an all time record with over 186,000 passengers

Why I care about this for property? So Western Sicily towns like Marsala, Erice, Mazara del Vallo and Castellammare del Golfo have stayed cheaper than the east coast partly because getting there without a car has always been annoying. An airport growing this fast for real structural reasons is usually one of the earlier signs that an area accessibility is shifting, and that tends to matter for who eventually will buy there.

Anyone here own or rent around Trapani?

I was digging through listings and market reports for Puglia. Something interesting is happening in right now. According to Immobiliare.it latest regional market report, rental prices jumped about 7.3% in the first quarter of 2026, while sale prices for houses stayed pretty flat across the region. Bari is leading the pack as the most expensive spot to both buy and rent, and Foggia province is still the cheapest place to pick up a property.

It usually means more people want to live somewhere short term, think tourism, seasonal workers, digital nomads, but locals and investors are not necessarily rushing to buy yet. That gap can go either way, prices could catch up to demand, or the rental boom could be tied mostly to tourist season and cool off later.

For anyone thinking about Puglia as a buy and rent situation, this could work in your favor for now. You are buying at a price that has not moved much, while what you can charge keeps climbing.

So I have seen some posts about Okupas in Spain and decided to find out how Italy been cracking down on occupazione abusiva (squatting). Since 2024 it is an actual criminal offense now, not just a civil headache, up to 7 years if someone forces their way into your place and squats and apparently as of this year they added faster eviction rules too, even for second homes, which used to be the biggest risk zone since owners often dont visit for months.

I always heard the horror stories about buying an empty property in italy and coming back to find someone living in it. Curious if that’s changed the desicion of buying a property for anyone here?

anyone here actually deal with this, or know someone who has?

Sooo I was digging into the italian market again decided to find info about Portofino. New construction has been banned since the whole promontory became a protected natural park back in 1935, which is a big part of why prices stay absurd, the supply is frozen and can’t respond to demand

Right now on idealista there are under 30 active listings for the entire comune, starting around 590k and climbing into the eight figure range for the sea view villas.

Worth noting most of the residents on paper are actually seasonal, the town empties out at night even in high season since most owners are milanese weekenders or international buyers who show up a few weeks a year.

So yesterday i went to a winery called Favazza on Etna, only open about a year. Run by two brothers from Catania who actually made their money in petrol stations, and bought land on Etna plus another spot near Trapani.

What stood out was the pace. Nothing rushed. 38 euros gets you four wines and they let you actually sit with each one. We had an Etna Bianco and Rosso, then two from their Trapani vineyard to compare styles.

Wine was genuinely good, but the whole setup is the real draw right now. Brand new facility, great views, easy parking. Their Etna plot is small so they’re sticking to the classic grapes rather than overreaching. They also run Land Rover defender tours further up the mountain, and serve cured meats and cheese, with peppers and tomatoes grown in their own greenhouses.

I know some people think real Etna wine only comes from the old families with generations of history. Fair enough. But after visiting maybe a dozen wineries on Etna, this was one of my favorite experiences. Good to see new Sicilian money actually building something on the mountain instead of just cashing in on the name.

Sooo, interesting fact from my research. For decades German buyers basically built the Chianti property market, they have been the steady presence in that region forever, but 2025 data is showing something different, German inquiries dropped off noticeably, and USA buyers are now filling that gap and ranking among the strongest foreign buyer groups in the area.

Kind of a quiet shift but a real one, maybe dollar strength probably plays a role, remote work definitely does too😄

checked out naro’s (agrigento) €1 home site today since it’s the newest one getting attention. only 5 properties listed, one photo each, barely any description, no floor plans or condition notes

compare that to sambuca or mussomeli’s programs which had way more detail from day one

not calling it a scam, just feels thin for now. If you are interested I would wait for more listings or contact the comune directly

anyone actually checked naro’s program?

been digging into some data and found something that trips up a lot of foreign buyers here. So national average asking price is sitting around €2,200/m2 right now (immobiliare.it data), but closed sales are typically landing 7 to 9% below that first asking price. That is a real negotiation built into how the market works in Italy.

so if you are eyeing a listing, ask your agent how long its been up. That number tells you more about your negotiating room than the price tag does!!

One of our members, Daniel, put together a really honest writeup on the €1 house schemes that keep going viral.

Worth a read if you have been tempted by the headlines. link below.

https://ilconto.substack.com/p/what-does-a-1-house-in-italy-really?r=2sjks7&utm_medium=ios