American Lauren Scott, 29, had lived in Los Angeles for a decade when she decided she was ready to buy a house.
She started her house search in 2019, with a budget of $400,000 (£309,900) but as the pandemic hit in 2020, she found that she was constantly outbid on houses.
Lauren quickly expanded her search area, starting with Florida but quickly started looking in Mexico, Portugal, and Italy as they all had climates similar to that in California.
Due to soaring contentions between locals and expats in Mexico and Portugal, Lauren decided to focus on finding a property in Italy. With a budget of $50,000 (£38.8k), she started her house hunting online and soon found a two bed, one bath townhouse outside of Florence that she but an offer on.
The price of the house was set at 32,000 euros (£26,700), with the previous owner saying he wanted to sell it at a lower rate since the hot water boiler would need repairing. She also ended up paying an extra 4,200 euros (£3,500) for closing costs.
“I didn’t even fly over and bought it sight unseen, which I don’t recommend,” she told CNBC. “I reached out to a lot of agents and just ended up paying somebody to do it all for me.”
She closed on the house in August 2022 and travelled to see the house for the first time three months later, which left her overwhelmed with emotions.
“It was just a surreal feeling. I couldn’t believe I owned a house in my 20s because I didn’t think this would ever happen. I think I cried too,” Lauren said.
Lauren shares top tips on buying a house abroad
For other people who might be looking into buying a house abroad, such as in Italy, Lauren took to her TikTok account to share four tips to think about before starting a house buying process.
“First, to find cheap homes under $50,000, you need to look on Italian real estate sites, not sites in English. Those are all gonna be overpriced,” Lauren explained in a TikTok video.
She also urged people to hire a a translator, a lawyer and a real estate agent to make the process easier. She also urged people to avoid communicating through emails and instead give people a call, saying she never got replies through emailing.
“And finally, there are no one euro homes,” Lauren said. “The hidden cost of these is that you are required by the government to shell out hundreds of thousands to fix up these within a certain time frame.
“And dealing with Italian contractors is a pain. You’re better off buying a house that’s liveable with less fixes rather than for under $50,000.”
Lauren now visits Italy twice a year and uses the town house as a holiday home, but is hoping to make the house into a permanent home by securing a visa specifically for remote workers. If this doesn’t work, she’s planning on using the house as her retirement plan.
Because of this, Lauren still rents a one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, where she spends most of her time. While she’s still living there, she explained that she has no interest in buying a house in the US.
“I don’t want to completly demolish my savings or go into debt to buy a home here, especially with the state of the country right now,” she told CNBC.