Mistakes & Myths

The Mistakes Foreigners Make: A Compiled List

We've watched people buy the wrong property, underestimate costs, skip due diligence, ignore residency requirements, and assume everything would just work out. Most of these mistakes are avoidable,but only if you know they exist. This is the list we wish someone had given us, compiled from real experiences, not hypotheticals.

Buying Mistakes

Property purchase is where the most expensive mistakes happen, because the consequences are large, slow to appear, and difficult to reverse. These are not hypothetical risks. They are patterns that repeat with depressing regularity among foreign buyers in Abruzzo and across rural Italy.

1. Buying on Holiday

You visit for two weeks in June. The weather is perfect, the light is golden, the village looks like a painting, and the price is less than a garage back home. You make an offer before flying out. You have not seen this place in January, when the temperature is below zero, the roads are icy, the wind comes straight off the mountains, and the village is empty because the summer residents have gone home. You have not tested the drive to the nearest supermarket in the dark. You have not discovered that the roof leaks, because it has not rained during your visit. You have not spoken to anyone who lives there year-round, because in June the village is full of people who do not. Three years later, you are trying to sell a property that nobody local wants, at a loss you cannot afford.

2. Skipping Independent Surveys

Italy does not require a structural survey for property sales. The notary verifies legal ownership and collects taxes, but they do not inspect the building. The estate agent works for the seller, or at best for the transaction, not for you. When the agent says the property is in good condition, they are giving you a sales opinion, not a technical assessment. An independent geometra or structural engineer, chosen and paid by you, would spend a few hours and charge a few hundred euros to identify problems that could cost tens of thousands to fix: structural cracks requiring seismic reinforcement, a roof that needs replacing, rising damp, subsidence, asbestos in old roofing materials. Skipping this step to save EUR500 is one of the most reliably expensive decisions a buyer can make.

3. Ignoring the Location

"It's only 40 minutes from the coast." In summer. In daylight. On a dry road with no traffic. In winter, that same road might be covered in ice, closed for snow clearance, or simply terrifying in the dark on hairpin bends. The nearest doctor is an hour away. The village has no bar, no shop, and no public transport. You will need to drive everywhere for everything, every day, for as long as you live there. Location problems are permanent. You can renovate a house. You cannot relocate a village closer to a hospital or a supermarket. The people who regret their purchase most are not those who bought a bad house in a good location. They are those who bought a house in a location that makes daily life unsustainable.

4. Not Understanding Cadastral Records

Italy maintains two parallel property registries: the Catasto (land and tax records) and the Conservatoria (legal ownership records). In older rural properties, what is physically built often does not match what is registered. Someone added a bathroom in 1985 without permits. An extension was built over the terrace. A wall was moved. None of it was recorded. This is called abuso edilizio, and it affects an estimated 20% of Italian properties. As the new owner, the liability for unauthorised construction transfers to you. Regularisation (sanatoria) can cost EUR5,000 to EUR30,000 or more, takes months or years, and some modifications simply cannot be legalised. A conformita urbanistica e catastale check before purchase, conducted by your own geometra, catches these problems while you can still walk away.

See: The Due Diligence Checklist →

Planning Mistakes

These mistakes happen before you arrive or in the early weeks. They are less immediately dramatic than buying mistakes but create problems that compound over months and years.

5. No Visa Strategy

"We'll figure out the visa situation once we're there." This is one of the most common and most damaging planning failures for non-EU buyers. There is no general "I want to live in Italy" visa. Tourist visas and visa-free entries (90 days in 180 for many nationalities) do not convert to residency. You cannot simply arrive, buy a property, and stay. You need a valid visa category before you travel: elective residency, self-employment, remote work (where available), or another qualifying route. Each has specific financial, insurance, and documentation requirements. If you are an EU citizen, you have the right to live in Italy, but you still need to register your residency within a specific timeframe and meet certain conditions. This is not something to figure out later. It is the first thing to resolve.

6. Underestimating Bureaucracy

Getting a codice fiscale takes a day if you go to the Agenzia delle Entrate in person, or longer if you apply from abroad. Getting your residency registered at the comune takes weeks and involves a visit from the vigile urbano to verify you actually live at the address. Getting utilities connected can take months, especially for gas. Getting a renovation permit involves the comune's technical office, potentially the Soprintendenza if the building is in a historic centre, and timescales that bear no relationship to what you were told. Everything in Italy requires more paperwork, more waiting, and more visits to offices that are open only on specific mornings than you will believe until you experience it. Plan for it. Budget time for it. Do not schedule anything important for the same day as a bureaucratic appointment, because bureaucratic appointments expand to fill whatever time is available.

7. No Language Plan

"Everyone speaks English in Europe now." Not in rural Abruzzo. Not at the comune. Not at the hospital. Not with the electrician, the plumber, or the person at the post office. You will survive without Italian, but you will not thrive. Without the language, every interaction that should be simple becomes complicated, every problem becomes harder to solve, and every relationship remains shallow. You will also pay more for everything, because you cannot negotiate, cannot understand what you are agreeing to, and cannot tell when you are being overcharged. Start learning before you move. Continue learning after you arrive. Accept that it will take years to become truly comfortable, and that the effort is not optional.

8. Burning Bridges Back Home

Selling everything, quitting your job, telling everyone this is forever, leaving with no fallback position. Some people make this work. Many discover after a year or two that Italy is not what they expected, but they have nothing to return to: no home, no job, no savings that were not sunk into the Italian property, and the social embarrassment of admitting the dream did not work out. Keep options open for at least the first two years. Rent out your home rather than selling it. Take a leave of absence rather than resigning. Maintain your professional network. Give yourself permission to reverse the decision without it meaning you have failed.

Expectations Mistakes

These are harder to see in yourself, because they feel like enthusiasm rather than error. But the gap between what people expect and what they find is where most of the disappointment lives.

9. The Film Version of Italy

Under the Tuscan Sun is fiction. Real renovation takes years, not a montage. Real Italian villages contain elderly residents who may view you with polite curiosity rather than open-armed warmth. Real Italian life includes bureaucracy that defies comprehension, tradespeople who do not answer their phones, and long stretches where nothing romantic happens at all. The people who succeed in Italy are not the ones who arrived expecting the film. They are the ones who arrived expecting difficulty and found that the genuine pleasures of Italian life, which are real and substantial, emerged alongside the frustrations rather than instead of them.

10. Expecting Instant Community

Integration into an Italian village takes years. You will be "the foreigner" for a long time, possibly permanently. Friendships in small communities develop slowly, through repeated contact, shared experiences, and demonstrated commitment. Showing up, buying a house, and expecting to be welcomed into the social fabric within months is unrealistic. It helps enormously to speak Italian, to be visibly present in village life (the bar, the piazza, the festa), and to show that you are there because you want to be part of the community, not because you want the community to be a backdrop for your lifestyle. Even then, deep acceptance takes time. If you need social connection quickly, you will need to work hard for it.

11. The "Simpler Life" Fantasy

Rural Italian life is not simpler than the life you left. It is differently complex. The problems are not emails and deadlines and commutes. They are heating a stone house through a mountain winter, finding a plumber who will come to your village, getting a parcel delivered when the courier cannot find your address, dealing with paperwork in a language you are still learning, and managing the isolation of being far from everything you used to take for granted. People who move to escape complexity find new complexity. People who move because they prefer this particular kind of complexity tend to do well.

12. Thinking Cheap Means Easy

Cheap property usually means expensive problems. Cheap areas usually mean declining services. Cheap living usually means limited options. The things that are cheap are cheap for reasons that have already been identified by every Italian who looked at the same property and decided not to buy it. When a house in a village costs EUR25,000 and a similar house 30 minutes away costs EUR80,000, the difference is not that nobody discovered the cheap one. The difference is location, services, community viability, or condition. Understanding those reasons before celebrating the price is the difference between a bargain and a trap.

See: Why the First Year Lies to You →

Relationship Mistakes

International relocation puts pressure on relationships that most couples do not anticipate. The stress is not dramatic. It is cumulative: small frustrations, asymmetric adaptation, and the loss of the separate social lives that gave each partner space.

13. One Partner's Dream

One partner has been dreaming about Italy for years. They have read the books, watched the programmes, followed the Instagram accounts. The other partner agrees to go because they love their partner, or because they cannot think of a strong enough reason to refuse, or because the enthusiasm is overwhelming and resistance feels like negativity. After a year of isolation, language struggles, and missing home, the reluctant partner wants out. This is not a failure of the reluctant partner. It is a failure of the decision-making process. A move like this needs to be a genuinely shared decision, tested by honest conversation about worst-case scenarios, not one person's passion pulling the other along.

14. Not Discussing Exit Plans

What if it does not work? What does "not working" look like? How long do you give it before you reassess? What would trigger a decision to leave? Having this conversation before you go is not pessimistic. It is responsible. Couples who agree in advance that they will reassess honestly after two years, and who define what "not working" means in specific terms rather than vague feelings, handle the difficult moments much better than those who treat any doubt as disloyalty to the dream. An exit plan is not a prediction. It is insurance.

15. Adapting at Different Speeds

One partner learns Italian, makes friends at the bar, joins in village life, and starts to feel at home. The other stays in the house, connects online to friends and family back home, and feels increasingly isolated and resentful. This asymmetry is common and corrosive. The adapting partner feels held back. The struggling partner feels left behind. Moving abroad can strengthen a relationship when both partners engage with the challenge together, even at different paces. It can destroy one when they adapt apart.

Financial Mistakes

Financial mistakes in Italy are particularly painful because they are difficult to reverse, often involve obligations that continue regardless of whether you stay, and tend to surface at the worst possible moments.

16. Underbudgeting Renovation

Renovation in Abruzzo currently costs between EUR1,000 and EUR2,500 per square metre, depending on scope and materials, with full restorations at the upper end. A reliable approach: take whatever estimate you have been given and add 30 to 50% for the problems that only appear once work begins. Old buildings contain old surprises. The wall that looked solid is not. The beam that seemed fine is rotten inside. The electrical system that "works" is dangerous. Italian building bureaucracy adds delays, and delays cost money: extended rental elsewhere, repeated site visits, professionals billing for additional work. The people who manage renovations successfully are the ones who budgeted for the reality, not the quote.

17. Not Planning for Healthcare

If you are not yet enrolled in the SSN (Italy's national health service), you need private health insurance. Enrolment in the SSN depends on your residency and visa status and is not automatic for all categories of foreign residents. During the gap between arrival and SSN enrolment, a serious illness, an accident, or an emergency hospital visit without coverage can cost thousands. Even after enrolment, specialist care in rural Abruzzo often involves long waiting lists and travel to Pescara, Chieti, or L'Aquila. Understand your healthcare status before you arrive. Budget for private insurance during the transition. Do not assume it will sort itself out.

18. Ignoring Tax Obligations

Becoming Italian tax resident (by spending 183 or more days per year in Italy, or by registering your residency at the anagrafe) has consequences that many people do not consider until it is too late. Italy taxes residents on worldwide income. That means pensions, rental income from property back home, investment returns, and any other income from any source, anywhere. Your home country may also still have claims on some of that income, depending on double taxation treaties. Property ownership creates annual tax obligations (IMU, TARI) regardless of whether you live there. Get professional tax advice from a commercialista before you move, not after the first tax bill arrives. Prevention costs hundreds of euros. Correction costs thousands.

19. No Emergency Fund

The boiler dies in January, and the replacement takes three weeks to arrive and costs EUR3,000. The car needs major repairs, and you cannot function without it because there is no public transport. A family emergency requires last-minute flights home from Pescara or Rome. The renovation discovers structural problems that add EUR15,000 to the budget. Life happens, and it happens more expensively when you are far from home, in a system you do not fully understand, without the fallback options you had before. A minimum emergency fund of EUR10,000 to EUR20,000, separate from your renovation budget and separate from your living costs, is not cautious. It is necessary.

See: Understanding Italian Tax Residency →

How to Avoid Them

Every mistake on this list has been made by intelligent, capable people. The pattern is not stupidity. It is urgency, optimism, and insufficient research. People fall in love with the idea of Italy and rush toward it before they have tested whether the reality matches the idea. The ones who avoid these mistakes share a common approach: they slow down, they ask uncomfortable questions, and they prepare for the difficult version of the experience rather than the ideal one.

The Prevention Formula

1.Slow down. There is no rush. Good properties will still exist next year. The urgency you feel is emotional, not practical. A decision made in three months of careful research is almost always better than one made in three weeks of excitement.

2.Visit off-season. See the place in its worst conditions, not its best. If you can only visit once before buying, go in January or February. Anyone can love Abruzzo in June.

3.Get independent advice. Pay for professionals who work for you, not for the seller or the transaction. Your own geometra, your own lawyer, your own commercialista. The cost of independent advice is trivial compared to the cost of the problems it prevents.

4.Learn Italian. Even basic competence changes everything about your experience. Start before you move. Continue after you arrive. Accept that fluency takes years and that the effort is not optional.

5.Keep options open. Do not burn bridges for at least two years. Rent out your home rather than selling. Maintain professional contacts. Give yourself permission to change your mind.

6.Budget for reality. Double your renovation estimates. Build in a contingency for surprises. Set aside an emergency fund. Front-load the financial planning so that the inevitable unexpected costs do not derail you.

7.Talk to people who left. Survivorship bias in expatriate communities is real. The people still in Italy are the ones it worked for. The ones it did not work for went home and stopped talking about it. Find them. Their experience is at least as informative as the success stories.

The Bottom Line

None of these mistakes are inevitable. They are predictable patterns, visible in advance, that you can avoid by doing what most people skip: slowing down, getting proper independent advice, and preparing for reality rather than fantasy. Moving to Italy can be wonderful, but it requires respect for the complexity of the undertaking. The people who succeed are the ones who treated it as a serious life project with real risks, not as a romantic escape from the life they had.

Want to avoid these mistakes with proper guidance?

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