This is a long read and depending on where you are in your search maybe entirely irelevant so its as it says a personal muse which maybe has no place in a property web site but its here now and might help some with gathering their thoughts.

When you start your search you have to make some choices. Without many of the factors that should you be choosing in your home country available to you. We all know via gossip, news programmes, articles we read in magazines that provide us with at least a basic knowledge of where we would choose to have a home.

So I believe that my choice and the reasons behind it are legitimate for many that are looking to decide on an area and a style of life.

Abruzzo became an area that reached the number one status in our minds for a few reasons. The north of Italy was out because of temperatures, I did not want to move to a place with colder winters and as much rainfall if not more than the UK. Being from the south of Italy I was more than aware of  the varied problems regarding the problems of illegality and criminality and would happily have thought of it as a choice re a holiday property but I wanted to live in a place that I would consider safe. Cost was a factor too, quite major, I needed to find a home and live in my mind for at least two years without the prospect of being able to earn a living, and Abruzzo offered the prospect of affordable properties, some almost according to property web sites at incredible value for what was offered.

I knew Abruzzo well from childhood, so property viewing visits were lined up and appointments made. It’s a huge region and within days we had discounted the whole of L’Aquila, so that cut it all down by half. To give my reasons, too isolated, too cold, no coastline and very little prospect of work. Add to that when we started our search there had just been the Molise earthquake which had affected parts of the southern Abruzzo region I looked into the history and realised most of that province was on one of the major north south fault lines that run down Italy to the West of the Apennines.

Pescara is a beautiful city but prices are higher, its also seemingly a continual building site as it expands continually and with expansion comes other problems one of the few areas of Abruzzo where crime and problems of criminality are on the increase. But it does have more work opportunities than any other area.

It really came down to either Chieti or Teramo , in a practical sense Teramo won on access , Rome 75 minutes,  so just closer to everything , at least that is how it felt to me. The city of Teramo just seemed to hit a spot and we had looked at houses in both Chieti and Teramo that appealed. We in fact liked a property in the province of Chieti and almost put our choice of Teramo to the back of our minds as the house seemed to hit all the right spots but the agent started pressuring us to buy before we were ready to make that decision and we were bombarded with emails and phone calls at one stage a story coming out that they had another buyer and that if we wanted it we had to offer more than the asking price. So they lost any chance of a sale.

The property outside Teramo that we had liked but not loved on a second visit to view just seemed to be the right place, it had stunning views of the Gran Sasso a unique feature of Teramo, quaint neighbours, good value and a good school close by. So it happened. Three years later we realised we had made a mistake, but only in so far as that the property was too far away from the city of Teramo, our primary needs involved schooling and work, we had not thought about higher education and commuting, so we sold our first house and bough another closer to the city whilst still remaining in the country.

So that is our story, a lot more complications behind this quick review but we all have to base our choices on something, mine are right for me and Teramo is now my real home. Our original thinking has not let us down in the sense that we enjoy our lives here and that Teramo offers not the lowest prices in the region of Abruzzo but maybe the best value for money. Those properties at give away prices that we first saw on the internet never in fact existed or when they did it was obvious often even before arriving there that there were problems as the car got stuck in a rut on the way or the road had washed down the side of a hill. Even those we did manage to arrive to disappointed in many ways as photos had not shown that the back wall of the house had fallen or the factory down the road smelt of something not quite pleasant, not that we were really surprised . Who in the world these days can believe the words of many” undiscovered paradise” when applied to any of mainland Europe. They are just words signifying areas to avoid as everyone previously has done so in the past in general for valid reasons.  

A final footnote, the owner of the property in Chieti tried contacting me through my parents after we moved here, offering it to us without an agent involved at a much lower price.Maybe its even still for sale.