‘Renovating with Google Translate’: what it’s really like buying a home in Europe

By the sea or in the bush, it’s a rare Australian who didn’t grow up dreaming of one day owning a holiday home. The dream is still there, of course, but as homes in some of Australia’s favourite holiday destinations shoot past the million-dollar mark, many of us have begun looking at inexpensive alternatives across Italy, France, Portugal and Croatia.

It’s a rare Australian who didn’t grow up dreaming of one day owning a holiday home. Credit: BONNINSTUDIO / Stocksy United

While many are priced well below $40,000, it’s entirely possible to buy a home in regional and rural destinations overseas for as little as €1, possible thanks to local schemes designed around reversing depopulation and restoring old homes. The caveat? Buy a “renovators’ delight” in Sicily’s Municipality of Mussomeli through Case 1 Euro, for example, and you must completely renovate the property within three years of purchase.

Whether you buy the house for $50,000 or little more than a pack of gum, what does it mean to buy, renovate and own a home in France, Italy or Greece? Three women share their journeys.

“We’re renovating with the help of Google Translate”

Jaclyn Lofts, tour leader, 46

It took us a year to find the perfect property.

“Italy has long been my ‘happy place’ so it was no great surprise that I celebrated Australia opening back up post-COVID with a three-week solo hike along St Francis’ Way, a pilgrimage route through Central Italy. Like it did many Australians, the pandemic had hit me hard, but suddenly I was on the other side thinking, ‘Well, why not do all the things you’ve always wanted to do?’

As I walked through these woodlands and wild fields, the feeling to spend more time in these parts grew strong enough that I came home and announced to my partner, Josh, that I wanted to buy a home in Umbria. True to his adventurous spirit, Josh was all-in from the get-go.

It took us a year of Googling properties and doing online walk-throughs to find the perfect property. We only looked at those we could buy outright with our savings. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to find beautiful homes in this region for between €30,000 and €50,000, and although I had initially listed things like ‘must be a farmhouse overlooking olive groves’, I soon learnt the practical items (‘must be wired for electricity and have septic’) were far more important. We also learnt it was crucial to have a local real-estate lawyer make all the enquiries for you in Italian.

We ended up purchasing a large apartment in the historic centre of Amelia, which is almost surrounded by ancient cyclopean walls. While our home is gorgeous, looking out beyond the rooftops into the rolling hills beyond, it’s a ‘fixer-upper’ necessitating extensive renovation work, which is quite the adventure when you don’t speak Italian and the local tradies don’t speak English. Although we’re trying to do as much as we can ourselves, when we engage tradespeople we rely mostly on Google Translate or we draw pictures and point at things.

Our Italian is getting better, though – I may not know the name of a particular vegetable, but I’m at a point where I can go to a local hardware store and ask for a type of nail. Plus, the locals have really embraced us and what we’re trying to build here.

People ask me what our plan is with the apartment and I don’t know that there is one. All we want to do is come and stay when the mood takes us, enjoy its network of spectacular trails and live la dolce vita for weeks at a time, while improving our Italian.

“I have a bolthole in the land my parents left behind”

Artemis Theodoris, teacher, 45

I was 22 when I felt the call to move to Greece.

“I can still recall the exact moment I decided an Athens apartment was non-negotiable in my future. On one of our regular family holidays back to the homeland, my older brother and I were walking down this street by the Acropolis when I suddenly stopped and let the vibrancy of the streets – the diners at the cafes, the horns of passing cars – wash over me. ‘I’m going to buy a home here as soon as I can,’ I said out loud, and even though I was only 13 years old at the time, I meant it. As a child of Greek migrants who moved to Australia in the 1960s, retaining my culture has always been important to me, so now too was having a bolthole in the land my parents left behind.

I was 22 when I felt the call to move to Greece, but it took me six to eight months of searching to find the perfect apartment to buy. Since I’m a dual citizen, I fortunately didn’t have too many hoops to jump through, but I did need to take out a mortgage to buy the apartment I eventually settled on – a run-down, top-floor flat within a hop, skip and a jump of the Acropolis. It had been closed up for a number of years but it had a balcony on both sides and plenty of natural light, so I could see its potential as a forever home right away.

I lived happily in the apartment for 14 years, during which time the place underwent many renovations. When the time came to move back to Australia in 2012, there was never any question of selling it. I simply rented it out on short- and long-term leases and took every opportunity to fly back and stay any time it was empty. Now that I’m married with a young son, we go back and stay as a family, using the opportunity to not only immerse ourselves in local life, but immerse our son in his parents’ culture and customs. Then we rent it out again and come back to embrace all the wonderful things that come with life in Australia. I guess you could say having a home in each country gives us an opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds.

When I think about the future, I dream of being able to enjoy six months of the year in my Athens apartment and six months here in Sydney, so it’s summer year-round. While that obviously can’t happen for quite some time – certainly not when you’re a school teacher – there’s a joy and freedom in knowing that’s an option I can eventually look at.

To be able to one day give the apartment to my child to solidify his roots? I consider that to be the ultimate bonus.”

“Living here allows me to sink into the culture”

Susan Gough Henly, freelance journalist, 60s

“I’ve wanted to live in France since I was 11 years old. I just knew that from the moment I started learning the language at school, a spark was lit within me and so I read and watched everything relevant to French culture that I could get my hands on until I was old enough to get over there independently.

My studies in French continued briefly at university before I realised there was a far better way to learn the language. I dropped out, moved to France for the next year and took on a role as an au pair for a lovely family in the southwest region. We’re still in touch today.

Bordeaux got under my skin while I was living in the United States. At the time I was working as a press attaché for the Bordeaux Wine Trade Council, commuting between New York, Paris and Bordeaux for the job and writing travel pieces in order to pay for my trips back to Australia.

While I’d made no secret of my desire to buy a home in France, it was only in 2015 when our children had all left home that my husband finally agreed to look for a place in Bordeaux. Like me, he’d fallen in love with the region, which is two hours by train to Paris yet not too far to the Pyrenees. We also wanted to be immersed in local life rather than live an expat life surrounded by other English speakers, which you often find in and around Provence.

It was a local real estate agent who found us the perfect house - a former derelict barn that was completely renovated and full of charm and history (one of the features is a 13th century wall from an ancient château).

Buying a home in France involves a significant amount of paperwork and red tape, but once we engaged a local mortgage broker to assist with loans and insurance, it helped streamline the process.

Although we couldn’t visit as regularly in the beginning while my husband was still working, we now live five months of the year in France, five months in our home back in Sydney and spend two months with two of our children in the States. We’re not keen on renting out either property, but caretakers at each home help alleviate any concerns we may have about not being there.

It’s almost a decade since we bought the house and life here in France continues to feel like a dream. Even though we’re living in the middle of a working wine region, we look out on fields of sunflowers, wheat and corn dotted with all sorts of creatures ranging from deer and pheasants to the occasional wild boar. The views are great but the greatest highlight is how living here allows me to sink even deeper into the culture I’ve loved for so long.”

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