A family who gave up on living in pricey New York City moved to a remote part of Italy after buying a home there for only about $13,000.
Cassandra Tresl, 33, told CNBC that she and her husband decided to rethink their future after welcoming their daughter in 2020, concluding that homeownership in the Big Apple was simply out of reach.
She said at the time, the family was paying $2,000 per month to rent their apartment — a bargain by New York standards. But they fell victim to the affordability crisis in the city, where the average age of homeowners recently reaching a stunning high of 58.8 years old.
“I couldn’t imagine realistically saving up for a down payment to buy a house somewhere in New York,” the young mom lamented.
Instead, the family bought a house in Italy’s Abruzzo region in 2022 for roughly 11,500 euros, or about $13,000 — moving there permanently in 2023, according to Tresl.
“The fact that we were able to buy a house all in cash honestly at that time felt unbelievable,” said Tresl, who called NYC home from 2015 to 2019.
She said the family spent another 15,000 euros, or about $17,000, renovating and decorating the home, with the largest expense being roughly $3,000 to redo plumbing for the entire house.
While many Italians would consider an Abruzzo village the middle of nowhere, the family deliberately avoided the country’s more touristy destinations. They ended up in an unnamed town of about 1,300, Tresl writes on her blog.
“Abruzzo stood out to us,” Tresl said, explaining that her fam shunned “mass tourism” in regions like Tuscany.
She described the area they now call home as an authentic hilltop community. It’s about three hours east of Rome.
The move dramatically reduced many of the family’s recurring expenses.
Tresl said full-time preschool for their daughter costs just $70 a month — a fraction of what friends with kids of similar ages pay in big US cities.
Electricity averages about $170 a month and water is around $80. Wi-Fi costs $15 and each cellphone plan costs around $14, according to Tresl.
The family also owns a second property that Tresl said they purchased for just $20,000 before investing another $17,000 in renovations.
Her husband manages it as a rental property, which she estimated generates about $1,100 per month on average.
Professionally, Tresl said she initially worked remotely for the same tech startup where she was an employee during her time in New York. She later took a marketing job with an Italian travel company.
“I definitely make less now than compared to working for a New York-based company, but my time is much better spent, in my opinion,” she said.
Tresl said the move fundamentally changed her outlook on life.
“I kept thinking what do I want out of my career, and then I kind of realized, maybe I don’t care as much as everyone else might care about their career,” she said.
Living in a small Italian town also forced the family to adapt, including learning the language and embracing a slower pace of life.
“Living in a small town has forced me in the best way possible to slow down and really understand that nothing is that important,” she said.
The family shops mainly at local butcher stores, where Tresl said the quality of meat and cheese is better than what she got in the United States.
They spend about $140 a week on groceries for the household, which includes two cats and two dogs.
While she acknowledged missing family and friends back home, Tresl said she doesn’t envision coming back to the US on a permanent basis.
“At this point in our lives, I could not imagine living back in the US full-time,” she said.
More than anything, she said, owning a home has eliminated the financial anxiety that came with renting in New York — where sky-high housing costs have been blamed in part for ushering in a bevy of far-left, capitalism-hating pols.
“The best feeling that I continuously get from purchasing a house here is a sense of relief,” she said.
“We own the house in cash, it’s paid for in cash, and it’s just done and I don’t have to think about it.”
She added that avoiding monthly rent and mortgage payments has also given her the flexibility to pursue work that she finds more fulfilling, instead of feeling tied to a traditional career.
