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Can you really get a €30,000 grant to move to Tuscany?

Italy’s latest repopulation scheme offers funds for those moving to the desirable region of Tuscany - so what’s the catch?

Can you really get a €30,000 grant to move to Tuscany?
The Apuane mountains. Tuscany is better known for its rolling hills, but those moving to its more rugged mountain areas can take advantage of a generous offer from the regional government. (Photo by FABIO MUZZI / AFP)

From one-euro (or three-euro) abandoned houses for sale to tax breaks for foreign retirees, Italy has become famous for offering various financial incentives aimed at attracting new residents, usually to the rural south.

These schemes often target foreigners specifically, with the aim of slowing population decline, attracting investment, and breathing new life into areas where few Italians want to live.

READ MORE: Can you still buy Italy’s one-euro homes in 2024?

But a new offer from the much-loved tourist destination of Tuscany, in the centre-north of the country, is a little bit different.

Tuscany’s regional authority on Friday announced it will award grants of up to €30,000 to people relocating to the region – or parts of it.

The offer has unsurprisingly attracted the attention of many regular visitors worldwide who’d love to snap up a holiday home in the popular region, where property prices can be high.

But, beyond the major tourist destinations around Florence, Siena and Lucca, the vast, wild region of Tuscany also has large areas where homes can prove hard to sell – and populations are dwindling, as elsewhere in the country.

READ ALSO: Why Italians sell off old homes so cheaply to foreign buyers

As its name suggests, Tuscany’s ‘Residency in the mountains 2024’ scheme is aimed at people moving to a mountain town with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

Tuscany has 119 such towns, offering easy access to the region’s rugged, quiet mountain and forest trails as well as immersion in the local culture.

The region is offering grants of between 10,000 and 30,000 euros covering up to 50 percent of the cost of the purchase and renovation of a property in these areas.

Unlike the one-euro home offers however, this scheme is aimed at people who are already registered as resident in Italy.

You’ll need to move your residency to one of the eligible Tuscan towns, and you cannot already be living in a mountain town elsewhere in the country, according to the small print.

Non-Italians can apply, but they must be citizens of another European Union member state, or non-EU nationals holding a long-term residency permit.

If you meet the criteria and like the sound of life in the Tuscan mountains, you can find out more on the regional government’s website (available in Italian only).

But you’ll need to act quickly, as applications are only open until July 27th, 2024.

See more in The Local’s Italian property section.

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PROPERTY

What’s the state of Italy’s property market in summer 2024?

High mortgage rates and an unwillingness on the part of lenders to finance home loans is leading to a contraction in Italy's housing market, even as prices rise.

What's the state of Italy's property market in summer 2024?

Italy’s housing prices have steadily risen since 2020, in large part thanks to the rising values of new builds in the country.

But while property values continue to rise in Italy’s major cities in particular, the total number of sales dropped in 2023 – a trend that appears to be continuing into 2024, as predicted by experts at the start of the year.

Housing sales declined by around 10 percent in Italy in 2023, according to the market intelligence firm Nomisma’s March 2024 Real Estate Market Observatory, with around 710,000 homes sold over the course of the year.

At the same time, the country’s rental market increased by three percentage points, meaning around 48,000 more households turned to renting.

That’s a direct result of soaring inflation and high mortgage interest rates, the firm says.

Italy’s gap between wage growth and inflation currently stands at around seven percent, making banks reluctant to lend at affordable rates (though average rates did decrease slightly for the first time in two years at the start of 2024).

READ ALSO: Is now a good time to buy a home in Italy?

The total amount of capital made available by lenders for mortgage financing in Italy dropped by around 26 percent between 2022 and 2023, while mortgage-less property purchases increased by 4.8 percent.

Nomisma forecasts a further decline in housing sales over the next few years, predicting residential sales of 695,000 in 2024, 689,000 in 2025 and 682,000 in 2026.

Meanwhile, a recent analysis by Corriere della Sera newspaper of data from real estate portal Immobiliare.it shows that property values in eight major Italian cities rose slightly between 2023 and 2024.

The average price of a house in Milan, where housing costs were highest, increased by 3.1 percent to €432,000.

Prices in Florence (€340,000) saw a yearly increase of 2.8 percent; in Rome (€269,000), 1.3 percent; and in Bologna (€277,000), 3.4 percent.

READ ALSO: Can I get a mortgage in Italy as a foreigner?

In Naples, where prices average €229,000, there was a 4.2 percent annual increase between 2023 and 2024; in Turin (€160,000), 3.9 percent; and in Genoa (€135,000), 3 percent.

Palermo saw the highest rate of increase at 5.9 percent, though the average house price remained the lowest of all eight cities, at €116,000.

Although Italian property values are continuing to marginally increase in nominal terms – at an average rate of 1.5 percent last year – Nomisma notes that when accounting for inflation, prices in fact saw a real terms drop of 3.9 percent in 2023.

At the same time, Corriere says, Italy’s available housing stock is increasing, in part because of the EU’s ‘Green Homes’ directive, which requires property owners to make their homes more energy efficient starting in 2030 – driving many homeowners to sell rather than fork out for expensive renovations.

This could mean that Italy’s property prices could soon start to drop off; though unless this is accompanied by a willingness by banks to start lending to would-be buyers at affordable rates, it’s unlikely to result in a sudden boom in house sales.

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