Americans (and Others) Are Moving Abroad. Naturally, the Relocation Circus Has Followed.
The migration is real, the numbers are significant and Italy is one of the countries benefiting from it.
Inevitably, however, every genuine trend must also produce instant experts, miraculous properties and someone selling access to the “real Italy” six months after discovering it.
A recent article in The Independent examines the growing number of Americans choosing to live abroad and the apparent change in their demographic profile. The familiar retired couple looking for sunshine and a lower cost of living has not disappeared, but it is increasingly being joined by younger professionals, parents with children and families questioning whether the American version of prosperity is still delivering a particularly prosperous life. They are worried about healthcare costs, childcare, university fees, political polarisation and school safety; many are exhausted by a working culture that continues to offer higher salaries while finding ever more inventive ways to consume them.
For those of us who work every day between Italy and the United States, none of this is especially surprising. We see the enquiries, the exploratory visits, the property searches, the citizenship applications, the questions about schools, healthcare and taxation, and the slightly bewildered discovery that moving to Italy involves rather more than choosing between Tuscany and Puglia. What the international press has recently identified as a trend is something we have watched develop for years: Americans are not merely dreaming about leaving, but increasingly turning that dream into a practical project.
Precisely how many Americans live outside the United States remains difficult to establish, largely because the country does not maintain a comprehensive register of its citizens abroad. The US Federal Voting Assistance Program estimated that 3.3 million American citizens were living overseas in 2024, of whom approximately 2.2 million were of voting age. The Association of Americans Resident Overseas, using a different methodology, puts the figure at 5.5 million. The gap is substantial, but it does not invalidate the phenomenon; it demonstrates how difficult it is to count a population that includes registered residents, dual nationals, temporary workers, students, families, retirees and people who divide their lives between two countries.
The Italian figures are smaller, naturally, but no less revealing. On 1 January 2025, Italy officially recorded 17,650 residents with US citizenship, an increase of 6.7 per cent in a single year. Lazio, Lombardy and Tuscany continue to host the largest American populations, but the fastest growth is not confined to the usual international centres: the number of American residents rose by 26 per cent in Sicily, 18.2 per cent in Abruzzo, 13.9 per cent in Sardinia and 11.5 per cent in Calabria. These statistics count citizenship rather than cultural identity and therefore omit, among others, many Italian-American dual citizens; they should not be mistaken for a complete census of everyone who has recently arrived from the United States. Even so, the direction of travel is difficult to miss.
There are good reasons for it. Italy can offer a different relationship with time, public space, food, family and community, as well as healthcare and university costs that appear almost fictional to many Americans. A family may be able to buy a home in an Italian town for a fraction of what it would cost in Boston, New York or California, while a professional able to work remotely can combine an American income with a European lifestyle. Retirees may find that their savings stretch further, particularly outside the famous cities and heavily marketed areas, and Italy has introduced fiscal regimes capable of making relocation especially attractive to certain new residents.
This does not mean that Italy is cheap everywhere, administratively simple or automatically suitable for everyone. Milan is not rural Abruzzo, Florence is not Calabria and spending three glorious weeks in a medieval village in June is not the same as living there through a damp February when the nearest supermarket is twenty kilometres away and the last bus departed during the Renzi government. Moving to Italy can be a life-changing decision, but life-changing is not necessarily synonymous with easy, inexpensive or sensible.
And it is at this point that the relocation circus enters, carrying a ring light, an affiliate link and a downloadable guide to the ten Italian villages that nobody else knows about.
Every significant migration trend creates an industry around it. Some of that industry is professional, necessary and extremely useful. Moving between the United States and Italy can involve immigration law, two tax systems, property law, inheritance rules, residency requirements, healthcare registration, business structures and financial planning. Serious relocation advisers understand the limits of their own expertise and work with qualified lawyers, accountants, notaries, surveyors, architects and licensed real-estate professionals.
Others appear to acquire all these qualifications through the transformative experience of having moved themselves.
An American relocates to Puglia, negotiates a broadband contract, successfully obtains a codice fiscale and, within a few months, begins advising other Americans on visas, property, tax residence and the strategic organisation of their worldwide assets. A personal blog becomes a newsletter, the newsletter becomes a consultancy and the consultancy soon offers exclusive properties that cannot be found “on the normal market”, usually because the normal market has been unsuccessfully trying to sell them for the previous four years.
Remember the final taxi scene in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal. Viktor Navorski has finally reached New York and asks his cab driver: “When you come to New York?” Goran pauses and sighs with all the weary authority of a man who has spent half his life navigating the city, before replying: “Thursday.” It is a perfect warning for today’s relocation market: before entrusting someone with your visa, taxes, property purchase or future life in Italy, make sure your seasoned local expert did not arrive last Thursday.
Personal experience can be enormously valuable, but it is not the same as professional competence. Explaining how you obtained your residency card is one thing; advising another person on their legal right to remain in Italy is another. Recommending a town you enjoy is perfectly legitimate; taking money to broker property transactions may involve rather more than enthusiasm and an Instagram account. Describing your own tax arrangements does not qualify you to design those of a family with companies, investments, trusts, pensions and continuing obligations in the United States.
The distinction becomes conveniently blurred because the market is large and the audience is eager. Many prospective movers are not merely purchasing information; they are purchasing reassurance. They want someone who speaks their language, understands their anxieties and tells them that the Italian life they have imagined is achievable. This creates an inevitable temptation to simplify the unpleasant parts, exaggerate the opportunities and convert one personal success story into a universally applicable method.
There is also a relentless demand for new content. A relocation newsletter cannot simply say, week after week, that Italy is complicated, individual circumstances vary and readers should obtain independent professional advice. It needs discoveries, secrets, bargains and urgency. It needs the village “nobody is talking about”, the visa “Americans are only now discovering” and the property opportunity that apparently remained hidden from the Italian population until an expat from Connecticut arrived and recognised its true potential.
The one-euro-house phenomenon is the perfect example. The schemes themselves are real, and some have generated useful attention for towns affected by abandonment and depopulation. But the euro is a symbolic purchase price attached to a property requiring work, technical assessments, professional assistance, compliance with deadlines and, frequently, substantial renovation. Calling it a one-euro house is technically correct in approximately the same way that describing a free puppy as a free animal is technically correct: it is the acquisition that costs almost nothing, not the years that follow.
Yet the headline persists because “Municipality Offers Derelict Building Subject to Renovation Obligations and Uncertain Final Costs” does not inspire quite the same number of clicks.
The old warning for foreigners buying in Italy was to beware of the charming local fixer, the proverbial Mario who knew the mayor, the surveyor, the notary and, by an astonishing coincidence, the owner of precisely the house you should buy. Mario has not necessarily disappeared, and he may still be waiting to introduce you to a panoramic property whose roof enjoys a more independent lifestyle than its occupants. But he is no longer the only danger.
Today, the person selling the dubious “hidden gem” may be another American who arrived shortly before you did, purchased a property without entirely understanding it and has now decided that the most efficient exit strategy is to sell both the house and the story to the next arrival. Shared nationality creates familiarity; it does not create structural integrity, legal compliance or an accurate cadastral plan.
Indeed, only a particular form of optimism would encourage someone to purchase a house thousands of miles away after viewing a vertical video, reassured by the fact that the presenter also grew up in New Jersey, and investigate the damp, access rights and unauthorised extension only after the money has been transferred. Yet it happens, because the dream is powerful, the price appears irresistible and the fear of missing out is carefully cultivated.
This should not become an argument against relocation advisers, expat publications or people sharing their experiences. There is room for everyone, particularly in a market whose scale is already significant and still growing. Some newcomers will create excellent services, develop genuine local knowledge and build useful bridges between foreign residents and Italian communities. Blogs and newsletters can help people avoid mistakes, discover less obvious places and understand aspects of daily life that no official government website will ever explain coherently.
Others will enjoy a brief firework of visibility before discovering that recycling the same list of affordable Italian villages is not a long-term business model. That too is part of the market. The problem is not that people monetise their knowledge or their audience; the problem begins when limited knowledge is presented as expertise, advertising is disguised as independent advice, or personal enthusiasm crosses into legal, fiscal and property guidance that the person concerned is neither qualified nor authorised to provide.
The growth in Americans moving abroad is therefore real, not merely another media invention. The figures are substantial, the reasons are serious and the demographic is broader than before. Italy will continue to attract Americans looking for safety, community, beauty, cultural depth and a version of everyday life less dominated by cost, work and permanent anxiety.
But Italy is a country, not a lifestyle package, and relocating here is not an extended holiday with better tomatoes. It requires planning, independent verification and a willingness to distinguish the dream from the transaction used to sell it. It means understanding the visa before buying the house, the tax consequences before moving the money and the actual town before imagining a future in it. It also means checking whether the person giving legal, financial or property advice is legally entitled and professionally qualified to do so.
Americans are moving abroad in impressive numbers, and many will build happier lives because of it. We are not surprised; we encounter them and their ambitions every day. We would merely suggest that they bring their optimism, their documents, an independent surveyor and a healthy suspicion not only of the charming Mario waiting beside the village bar, but also of the friendly American cousin who moved to Italy last Thursday and launched his relocation consultancy on Friday.