After six years of renting a two-bedroom flat in London, Deepak S, 38, and his wife, Daniela, decided to up sticks and move to Italy.

“We were renting a two-bed flat with terrace near Fulham Broadway”, he says, and their monthly rent came to £1,600 – with bills, their outgoings were £2,100.
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After the couple got married in August 2023, they looked into buying a property for themselves in or around Fulham.

“Prices ranged from £600,000 to £650,000 for smaller flats and £800,000 to £900,000 for like-for-like flats. Our ideal property was £1.2m.”

The couple worked out that they could have secured a mortgage with a 5 per cent deposit, but the monthly payments would be £3,000 to £3,500.

“It didn’t seem worth it given the quality and size [of the property] we would have been getting. We wanted to progress with our lives and move from a rental to a purchase, but the cost was exorbitant.

“Costs have increased significantly in London since Covid. Even for us, to get the same place and not improve upon what we had as a rental. Locals are being pushed out and investors are coming in with a lot more capital.”

nstead, in October 2023, the pair decided to move to Lake Viverone in the Piedmont region of Italy. They are now renting a four-floor villa for £1,700 a month; with bills, their monthly outgoings are £1,850, nearly £400 less than what they were paying in London.

“Each floor is like a two-bedroom apartment. We have four bathrooms, a huge garden, lake view and rural tranquillity. It’s like renting three apartments in London.”
 

Deepak says the equivalent London property would be at least three times what they pay. The extra space means Daniela can run her Pilates/osteopathy business from home and Deepak, who is the chief executive of SEO company, Pearl Lemon, also works from home.

In terms of the cost-of-living, Italy is significantly cheaper than the UK.

“A cappuccino is £1.50, while a supermarket shop for Waitrose-style food costs Tesco-style prices. It’s better than Waitrose as it’s more farm-to-table and less importing. Things tend to come from mainland Europe or from within Italy itself.”

However, inevitably, there have been a few downsides too. “There are still the financial realities of moving to Italy that people aren’t aware. I can’t get a mortgage in Italy because I don’t have any financial history. When you take money from the UK to Italy, it [also] incurs massive taxes so it’s still challenging.”
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Even though Deepak’s wife is Italian and he is self-employed, paying himself a salary of between £65,000 to £70,000 annually, the process of getting residency has been drawn-out and bureaucratic.

“It’s taken me a year and a half to get residency. I wanted to get an appointment, I got directed to a website but I needed a paid email to get access and log in. Then, once I’d got paid access and logged in, it just shows appointments, you can’t book one.

“You have to send an email and then they say to call them back to book an appointment. When you get the appointment and turn up, it’s ticketed system but the ticketing system wasn’t working, so it’s first-come, first-served and people pushed in.”

On top of the bureaucracy, Deepak misses Deliveroo and Uber Eats, but he has no regrets that he opted to rent a villa in Piedmont over buying a shoebox in London.

“I’m pleased I made this move for the quality of life, and just to see my wife’s smile everyday now we have space and higher quality food, and she’s near her family.”

It’s also made him re-evaluate the advantages of being a tenant over an owner-occupier.

“People assume renting is a downgrade; it’s not. I’ve got more control, more space, and fewer financial headaches. I don’t need to worry about roof repairs or cladding issues or boiler inspections. If we want to move, we just give notice.”