Cassandra Tresl and Alex Ninman paid thirteen thousand dollars for a house in Abruzzo, Italy. That's less than a mid-tier wedding photographer costs in Brooklyn. They moved in with her grandfather in the Czech Republic first, saved money by not paying New York rent, then bought property in a country where the average age is deceased.
The house cost what a decent used car costs. Which means it probably needs the same amount of work as a decent used car. Except you can't drive a house to a mechanic. You have to become the mechanic. In Italy. Where you don't speak the language. Where the hardware store closes for three hours at lunch and all day on Sundays and also randomly on Tuesdays because the owner's cousin is getting married.
They found a different way of life. That's the quote. A different way of life. You know what else is a different way of life? Living in a yurt. Joining a cult. Moving to Tulsa for ten grand through that program nobody talks about anymore. Different doesn't mean better. Different just means your problems now involve permitting documents you can't read and a septic system built during the Medici era.
The real story is they left New York, crashed with family in Eastern Europe, then bought the cheapest house in Western Europe. That's not finding a different way of life. That's daisy-chaining couches across continents until you land somewhere with structural walls. It's geographic arbitrage for people who read Eat Pray Love and thought the lesson was real estate.
Every American who can't afford Brooklyn thinks they'll move to Italy and fix up a ruin for the price of a Subaru. They imagine themselves drinking wine on a terrace at sunset. They don't imagine themselves arguing with a contractor named Giuseppe about why the toilet drains into the garden.
Thirteen thousand dollars bought them a house and a lifetime of explaining to relatives why they don't just move back.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment