Back in January 2021, we read about Lisa Dohner and her business, House Finders Northern Italy. Lisa is an American who moved to Italy in 2015 and now she helps others to do the same.

People like Stefano. Unlike Lisa who fell in love with the Piedmont region in north-west Italy, Stefano headed way down south, not to Sicily or Calabria which are the usual destinationsfor people searching for cheap Italian homes, but to Puglia, across the country on the Adriatic coast.

It all began in lockdown. Stefano was working remotely. He was alone, he was bored and inevitably he had lots of time to think about his quality of life and what he really wanted.

The answer turned out to be Puglia. His first job was to seek the assistance of a local realtor, the local equivalent of Lisa Dohner, and that person was Davide Mengoli. Davide has his own YouTube channel, Salento with Love (Salentro is the southern-most region of Puglia, the geographic ‘heel’ of the ‘boot’ of Italy).

Like so many YouTube vloggers, Stefano has started a series to tell the story of his journey, emotionally and physically, from how he searched for his dream home right through to its renovation.

In his first video, Stefano explains that he is an experienced traveller to the Mediterranean which means he had one big advantage over folks who are just starting out on their foreign-home adventure, and that is he knew he wanted to buy a house in Puglia.

For Stefano, Puglia had all the right ingredients – the architecture, the local environment, the food, the people, the history –it was the place where he wanted to be.

His other advantage was that he knew what he wanted, that is, he knew what he didn’t want. Stefano was aware that the celebrated (or is that notorious?) €1 homes required more time, effort and money to bring back to life than he was willing to commit. That meant he’d have to find a less ambitious project.

What Stefano did want is an outdoors living space, a minimum floorplan of 60m², a property that needed only cosmetic, DIY repairs, a budget of €30,000, functional, and authentic Puglia-style interior design.

In his next videos, Stefano shows us the properties that made it to his short list to buy, and finally the 65m² townhouse he purchased for a very modest €28,000.

Regardless of how he ultimately settles into Puglia, Stefano is already a Switched ON Living winner. Whether it’s moving to Puglia, anywhere else in Italyor beyond, or doing whatever, the takeaway is that he’s doing it.

Lisa Dohner’sYouTube channel
Best Place to Buy a House in Italy - HouseFindersNorthernItaly.com | HouseFindersNorthernItaly.com