This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Kelly Beigle, 38, and Boris Krstevski, 39, a couple based in Washington, DC, who bought an apartment in the Lombardy region of Italy. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Kelly Beigle: I actually started looking to buy in DC back in 2014, and I thought the pricing was crazy. It’s only gone up exponentially since then.
I just could never wrap my head around owning a million-dollar one-bedroom or two-bedroom condo. Why would you want to do that? It just means you’re going to have to continue working forever until it’s paid off.
Boris Krstevski: We wanted to buy a property somewhere in Europe. First there was Spain, Southern France, and Portugal.
Beigle: In Portugal, you can get a mortgage as a foreigner. There, we were looking at something in a completely different bracket; we were looking at a half-million-dollar apartment in Lisbon, and we actually were in the final stages. We were on the closing date, but we lost the sale. We were pretty much all in on Lisbon, and we still love that city, but the housing market got crazy there in 2022 and 2023.
We got discouraged, and we did a road trip. We spent almost six months traveling around Europe in 2024. We drove from Serbia to Portugal and back in a period of three or four months.
We explored a lot of different areas, and basically our main one became Italy after realizing that we had enough cash to buy in at 78,000 euros versus having to get a mortgage.
Krstevski: We spent some days in northern Italy in the Lombardy area — Milan, Bergamo, where you have beautiful nature. One important reason we thought Italy is that I’m originally from Belgrade, Serbia, the capital. And the drive from that area to where we bought our apartment is just an eight- or nine-hour drive.
Beigle: We closed in December 2024 for 78,000 euros.
It’s 126 square meters, or 1,356 square feet. It’s an apartment, but it’s in a really small condo building — there are only three other units.
In Italy, they count rooms instead of bedrooms. Technically, it’s considered a five-room, but it’s essentially two bedrooms and one bath. But it has a full dining room, full kitchen, and full living room.
The sale and renovation were complicated by the distance
Beigle: We worked with Italian Real Estate Lawyers, and they helped a lot, but there were still a lot of surprises when buying our property.
The big one for me was the closing period. Even though we were a cash-only sale — no mortgage or anything like that — it still took months and months and months.
I toured the property in September 2024 and showed immediate interest that same day, and we didn’t even close until the middle of December.
There’s also the time difference. By the time I wake up in the morning, it’s already 3 o’clock in Italy, so things just took forever. They have so many holidays and they’re shut down all the time.
We’ve been trying to get as much done remotely as we can, but unless you’re physically there, it’s so hard to get anybody to come out.
Krstevski: You need to register the electricity, gas, and water, and it’s not so easy online like in the US. Yes, Italy is in the European Union, but it’s a different mentality. Their authorities are not working 9 to 5; their authorities are working two days a week from 9 to 12. You need to make an appointment.
Beigle: We’ve been balancing how much time we can spend there and how much we can get done. Even though we’re six months in since we bought it, we’re still working on it.
When you’re in person, everybody’s been super helpful. It’s a small town an hour from Milan, and everybody’s been really nice. We’re still learning Italian, and my language skills are terrible so far, but everybody has been willing to help.
I think it had been years since somebody lived there, so things needed to be modernized. We did a full electrical upgrade, so that was something that was a little bit on the pricier side.
We still don’t have hot water. It’s taken a really long time to get everything up and running, and we still have to add a kitchen because most apartments in Italy don’t come with the kitchen as well, which is shocking.
The kitchen was literally empty. There was a sink there, but that was it. So instead of using something basic like Ikea, we actually ended up having to use a custom cabinetry maker, which is on the pricier side.
But other than that, it was just a coat of paint and some cosmetic stuff.
Overall, we’ll be spending around 25,000 euros in renovation costs. But the lion’s share of that is the kitchen, for sure.
We’re hoping to live in Europe part-time and make money off short-term rentals
Krstevski: Eventually, we think that Europe can be our second home.
We want to spend our time in Italy. I don’t know exactly how many months per year or how many weeks per year that will be, but we would like to rent that apartment either to Airbnb or some kind of short-term lease options.
Beigle: The fact that we don’t have a mortgage payment, it’s kind of just cash flowing at that point.
I think the cash flowing from this, if we got to that point, would definitely help to facilitate the purchase of another one.
Whether we would do it in Italy or other parts of Europe, I don’t know. At this stage, I would probably not consider reinvesting in the United States. It would definitely be a second European asset.
Beigle: I love the relief of having a fully paid-off apartment. I love the idea that you can buy something for basically what an American down payment would be.
If you have $100,000 that you’re going to put into an American down payment and then you’re strapped to a 30-year mortgage, why not consider buying something in Italy?
Read the full article here
