BUYING A HOUSE IN ITALY

The dream is easy. The paperwork is not.

Owning a home in Italy - a stone farmhouse, a village apartment, a place with olive trees and a long view - is one of the great American daydreams. Actually buying one, from 4,500 miles away, in a language you don't speak, inside a bureaucracy that runs on its own rhythm, is another matter entirely.

This is the book that gets you from daydream to dream house without the expensive surprises.

Written by an author who moved to Italy in 2008 and has lived the whole process from the inside - buying, renovating, wrestling with the codice fiscale, the notaio, and the comune - Buying a House in Italy is a sober, practical, step-by-step handbook. No rose-colored glasses, no Tuscany clichés: just what actually happens, what it really costs, and how to sidestep the pitfalls that catch unprepared buyers.

And crucially, it's written for Americans - built around the questions only US buyers face:

• The dollar-euro rate as a real budget line, and how to wire the purchase price across an ocean
• FATCA, FBAR, and what the IRS wants to know about your Italian house
• The PFIC trap that quietly wrecks American investors who move abroad
• The 7% flat-tax regime - and its American fine print
• How your Social Security, 401(k), and pensions are taxed under the US-Italy treaty
• Visas and residency: the 90/180-day rule, the Elective Residence Visa, the Digital Nomad Visa
• Italian citizenship by descent after Law 74/2025
• Remote closings, powers of attorney, and signing a deed you can actually understand
• From Medicare to the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale - closing the healthcare gap

Inside you'll find:

• A complete walk-through of the purchase, from the first viewing to the rogito (final deed)
• The legal and technical checks that separate a sound house from a money pit - visura catastale, conformità urbanistica, agibilità, and more
• Straight talk on renovation permits, energy bonuses, and building new from the ground up
• The real rules for renting out your place - short-term compliance, B&B, casa vacanza, agriturismo, and the tax math behind each
• Checklists at every stage, worked cost and tax examples, model contracts in translation, region-by-region profiles, maps, and a full glossary of every Italian term in the book

Whether you want a summer place you visit twice a year or you're emigrating for good, this guide turns an intimidating, opaque process into a series of manageable steps - with your eyes open and your money protected.

The adventure won't be trouble-free. In Italy, that's an illusion. But it will be a great deal more manageable. And that is exactly the point.

Your Italian front door is closer than you think. Start here.