Why we bought where we did

Okay so here’s the lowdown: we’ve just climbed onto the property ladder. We are both first time buyers. As a very poorly paid journalist in the UK and just out of university, there was no way I could afford a mortgage with all the student debt I was in and mum and dad weren’t in any position to give me any. And in Italy, once I was no longer a staff reporter, no bank was going to give me a mortgage on a lavoro a progetto because I was one of the ‘precarious’ workers, plus Mario had just gone self-employed so couldn’t prove his earnings either. And tfor a couple of year that pushed us out of the property market which was spiralling upwards.

What made it worse is where we were looking. The Gulfo di Arzachena is such a sought-after area that it’s like all that bitching and shoving in the New Year sales. You see a place, and you go and view it and you fall in love with it and you want to buy it. But before you do, someone else barges in and snatches it away from you just when you thought it was within your grasp. Only here, forget literal shoving. They come in waving Eur150,000 in cash. In cash!!!!! Like how are we, first time buyers without large desposits from mummy and daddy (me) or mamma e babbo (mario) going to get that money from unless we rob one of the banks on the Costa Smeralda?

And after that goes on for a long, long time you start to get pretty desperate. This isn’t a holiday home and it isn’t a buy-to-let. It’s our home where we’ll be living on a day-to-day basis. That means that we can’t choose cheaper areas down the road because we need to be where we are for work purposes and we can’t live where we live now in Cannigione by the sea because a) the flats are smaller than postage stamps and b) there isn’t internet.

We did see a beautiful place out in the hills in the middle of nowhere. There were olive groves and a glimpse of the sea, too. It was such a beautiful plot of land but I work from home all day. If I lived out in the hills, I’d turn into a hermitess, my hair would grow down to the ground and I would never talk to anyone. Urgh, not a pretty sight. I want to be pulling on my glad rags, slapping on the make up and dining and wining in the best restaurants, oh and going for my lethal-but-necessary caffeine shots in the local bar. And for that, town is the only option.