Lockdown had an effect on all of us. While frontline workers were saving lives and keeping countries running, those working from home adapted to endless meetings on Zoom and home schooling their kids. For us, our spare time was spent searching for Italian houses on the Internet. We must have looked at hundreds, from total ruins to palatial villas that were well out of our budget. Every listing was carefully scrutinised for that one perfect house, the right location, the right view, and the right amount of land, at the right price. However, unlike before we were now really having to take the search seriously. We’d heard stories of some people taking years to find the right house, but with this being our only home we had to find something much quicker.

On the cheaper end of our price range, properties were often presented very badly online, usually with a handful of blurry pictures with watermark logos that obscured any detail. If a house was modernised, you were lucky if it was done in the 1970s. One of our favourite interior shot photos showed an empty room with only an ironing board and a bag of shopping on it - you really had to use your imagination!

You often had no clue about the house layout or location until you were willing to view it, which meant speaking to the estate agent. Our spoken Italian wasn’t great at this stage, so we relied heavily on texts and email. We’ve now learned that Italians don’t really do email. So making the most out of the situation Nick developed the skills of a secret service agent, using Google maps to help identify the house's location from its identifying features, outbuildings and shadows.

Some of the sites we used to narrow our search included:

• Idealista

• Immobiliare.it

• Gate-Away

• Rightmove Overseas

Each house can be on multiple sites, with multiple agents, and sometimes just private sellers. We’d often find a house and if we liked it we’d go view it on the estate agent’s website and sometimes you’d find more or alternative pictures to help give you a wider idea of it.

In terms of what we were looking for, we knew our dream was a farmhouse with some land, but not too remote. We wanted to achieve a better work/life balance and downsize from our hectic lifestyle, with one of us working remotely and one of us focused on the land and starting a small business of our own. With Nick more than happy to continue his career in data science, and me eager to turn my marketing career to a horticulture-based one, our roles were naturally assigned.

In terms of location, this was also difficult to decide. Italy has so many beautiful regions, each one with its own unique character, scenery and traditions. We’d visited many of them over the years, but our hearts drew us to the central regions of Umbria and Tuscany, so this is where we concentrated our search.

The pandemic also gave rise to remote virtual viewings. We’ve heard stories that some people even bought houses this way. We had our own experience of this, which led us to our first house heartbreak, but more on that in the next blog.