American Couple Left NYC, Bought Italian Home for $13,000
A New York couple relocated to Europe, eventually purchasing a house in Abruzzo, Italy for just $13,000 after a stint in the Czech Republic.
For many Americans, the dream of homeownership has become increasingly elusive in cities like New York, where median home prices and rental costs have soared well beyond the reach of middle-class earners. For Cassandra Tresl and Alex Ninman, the solution was not to wait out the market — it was to leave it entirely.
The couple's path out of New York began in 2020, when they moved in with Tresl's grandfather in the Czech Republic. That transitional period abroad appears to have reinforced what many remote-work-era migrants have discovered: that the cost and quality-of-life calculus looks dramatically different once you step outside the United States housing market.
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By 2022, Tresl and Ninman had closed on a house in the Abruzzo region of southern-central Italy for just $13,000 — a price point that would not cover a single month's rent in much of Manhattan. Abruzzo has become something of a quiet magnet for budget-conscious foreign buyers, offering mountainous landscapes, proximity to Rome, and a pace of life that stands in sharp contrast to the relentless churn of urban America. Italy's so-called "one-euro house" programs in depopulating villages have drawn international attention, but even market-rate properties in the region can be acquired at prices that seem almost implausible to American buyers.
The couple described their move as discovering "a different way of life" — a phrase that captures something broader than a real estate transaction. Their story reflects a slow but measurable trend of Americans reconsidering where, and how, they want to live, particularly as remote work has loosened geographic tethers that once kept people anchored to expensive metropolitan hubs. Whether this represents a lasting lifestyle shift or a niche choice for the adventurous few remains an open question, but cases like theirs continue to surface with growing frequency.
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