29-year-old couldn’t afford a house in the U.S., so she bought in Italy

Ohio native Lauren Scott, 29, had lived in Los Angeles for 10 years working as a freelancer in the film industry, when she decided she was ready to buy a house. At the time, Scott lived in a studio apartment and paid $1,175 in rent.

Scott started her search in 2019 and wanted to stay under $400,000. But then the covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, and she found herself outbid every time she put in an offer on homes in the city.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to buy in California, much less Los Angeles, which is somewhere I’ve kind of called home for such a long time and that really sucked,” Scott tells CNBC Make It.

Scott realized buying in California was close to impossible, so she started looking in other states like Florida, where her family lives. She quickly realized she wouldn’t be able to find a job that would match her current lifestyle.

Scott was also disappointed in the quality of life in the United States and set her sights on Mexico, Portugal and Italy because they all had weather similar to California.

The contention between locals and expats over rising housing costs, made Scott dismiss Mexico and Portugal pretty quickly. So she focused on properties in Italy. She set a budget of $50,000 and did her house hunting online.

“I didn’t fly over and bought sight unseen, which I don’t recommend,” Scott says. “I reached out to a lot of agents and just ended up paying somebody to do it all for me.”

After several weeks of searching, Scott found a two-bedroom, one-bath townhouse one hour outside of Florence. She could walk and use public transportation, which was a big priority for her.

“I didn’t want to deal with a car since I’m not there full time and just being in the mountains and having that view made me feel super at peace,” Scott says.

The townhouse had been on the market for 32,000 euros or $34,905 USD. The previous owner told her the price was set low because the hot water boiler would need repairs.

“She left it completely furnished and just wanted to get out and move to a different part of Italy but was having problems selling the home,” Scott says. “I really lucked out because there’s nothing wrong with it except for needing to replace that one part of the home.”

Scott paid the full asking price of $34,905 and an additional 4,200 euros, or $4,581 USD, in closing costs.

Not wanting to deplete her savings, Scott secured a $20,000 personal loan from a local bank to help purchase the house, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Scott closed on the townhouse in August 2022 and flew to see it in person for the first time that November and says when she first arrived, she was overcome with emotion.

“It was just a surreal feeling. I couldn’t believe I owned a home in my 20s because I didn’t think this would ever happen. I think I cried too,” Scott says.

Scott’s original plan for the house was to rent it out, but she realized she didn’t want to deal with the issues that could arise with tenants or short-term renters.

“The cost of just having it empty would probably outweigh the cost of renting it out and having somebody break something,” she says. “I’m kind of protective over my house.”

Scott visits Italy twice a year now and uses the townhouse as a vacation home, but she is currently trying to secure a digital nomad visa to stay in the country for a while. In 2024, Italy launched its “Visa for Remote Workers,” allowing a one-year residency with the option to renew for highly skilled professionals to work remotely as employees or as self-employed freelancers.

“I’m hoping at some point within the next year I can officially move but if I end up staying in the States, I plan to use it as more of a retirement plan because I know I’m not going to be able to retire in the U.S.,” she says.

“I’m thinking of it more as a long-term investment to get out of the U.S. As a freelancer, it’s actually concerning because I don’t always have health care, I don’t have a 401K and I can’t afford to invest, so I think just being able to know that I have something secure and a place to call my own for when I am older is really comforting.”

Scott says though she was excited to be able to buy a house, the feeling was bittersweet because she was only able to do so outside of the U.S. — the country where she was born and raised.

“It makes me sad because what’s keeping me here is my parents. I don’t want to move all across the world and then not be able to see my family a lot,” she says. “It’s sad to know that my parents could buy a home and my grandparents could, too, but with inflation, it’s not as accessible for my generation anymore. I don’t think that’s fair to our generation and the ones coming after us.”

Scott still lives in Los Angeles, now in a one-bedroom apartment where she pays $1,695 a month in rent, including a parking space. She is also still freelancing but has shifted to content creation and social media work.

And though she’s trying to figure out just how much time she will spend in her Italy house, the one thing Scott knows for sure is that she has no plans on buying a home in America.

“It’s a hard no because I think having one property is a blessing, but anything can happen,” she says. “I don’t want to completely demolish my savings or go into debt to buy a home here, especially with the state of the country right now.”

Conversions to USD were done on March 20, 2025, using OANDA conversion rates of 1 euro to 1.09 USD. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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