Teachers Buy $25,000 House in Italy, Ditch Plans to Move to Pricier US

As teachers, Knighten and Cordier get summers off. In 2018, they spent it driving a rundown car that cost £250, or about $315, on a road trip through Europe.

Eventually, the couple ended up in Italy.

After a brief stay in San Remo, a coastal city they found too touristy, they found a travel blog with a photo of Monte Isola, an island in the middle of a lake close to the Alps.

Knighten and Cordier booked a small bed-and-breakfast on Monte Isola, a roughly five-square-mile island dotted with small villages in the middle of Lake Iseo, a glacier lake surrounded by lush green mountains.

They were awestruck — and shocked an island this beautiful wasn’t better known.

“We’ve traveled all over the world together, through South America, the Middle East, and Asia,” Knighten said. “And this place blows our minds.”

At a small bar on the island, Cordier, whom Knighten describes as “gregarious,” approached a few locals to ask what there was to do.

“They were like: ‘We’re actually going to a party tonight on a boat. Do you want to come?'” Knighten said.

The couple went and ended up making lasting friendships.

Knighten said she and Cordier had nearly saved $40,000 to put toward a down payment on a house in Chicago, even though that sum could only buy them a property “not in a great neighborhood.”

But stunned by the lake’s beauty, Knighten and Cordier were curious about the cost of buying a home there. Quickly, they realized they could afford a fixer-upper in Lake Iseo with the cash they already had in their bank accounts.

On that first trip, Knighten and Cordier toured two properties for sale.

One was an old pig shed listed for 34,000 euros, or about $36,000. They seriously considered converting it into a tiny home but decided against it because it was too remote and would have cost too much money to fix up.

Knighten and Cordier returned to Monte Isola on a house-hunting mission in the summer of 2019.

They eventually found a house listed for 25,000 euros, or about $27,000.

“It didn’t have any photos of the interior. It was one of those with one photo of the outside of the house,” she said. “You’re like, ‘Is this a bait property?'”

Thankfully, it wasn’t, but they were told other buyers had beaten them to the punch.

But when those buyers fell through, the couple went to see it.

The previous owner, who died a few years before Knighten and Cordier came to Lake Iseo, primarily used the home for vacations.

Walking in for the first time, it seemed that the owner’s death was unexpected, Knighten said.

“There were nightgowns hung in the wardrobe, a toothbrush in the bathroom, salt and oil and stuff in the kitchen,” she said. “You almost felt like you were trespassing.”

Even though it was a little “eerie,” Knighten and Cordier fell in love with the house, which had a kitchen and a multipurpose room on the ground floor and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor.

Unlike the pig shed, it was closer to the lake and public transportation.

Knighten and Cordier offered 23,000 euros, or about $25,000, and signed an agreement to buy the house in July 2019. They put down a 500-euro good-faith deposit.

Knighten said that at the time, they were thinking of using it as a summer house, as they didn’t think they could afford to move to Italy full time given her $730-a-month student-loan payment and how much less they thought teachers made in Italy.

The plan was to continue living in the UAE and visit Italy in the summers, when Cordier, who worked in construction before going into teaching, could gradually renovate the house.

But, yet again, the plan changed.

Knighten said she and Cordier got engaged before their first trip to Italy in 2018 but had never given much thought to when or where they’d actually tie the knot. That changed when they saw Lake Iseo.

“That’s the first time we kind of got excited about ‘Oh yeah, let’s get married, let’s have a wedding,'” she said.

After a delay because of COVID-19, they finally hosted their wedding in Italy in 2022, with loved ones and friends who they’d made on their first visit to the lake in 2018 in attendance.

No one was surprised they’d bought the lakeside house.

“We both have always wanted an unconventional life and made choices to live an unconventional life. So it didn’t surprise anyone in our family,” Knighten said. “When they came to the wedding, everyone was like, ‘This place is magic.'”

Before their wedding in 2022, Knighten and Cordier had the idea of starting an online subscription-based exam-preparation business for the UAE’s equivalent of the SATs.

The growth of their business eventually gave them the confidence to quit their teaching jobs in the UAE and move to Italy full time during the summer of 2023.

Although their test-prep business, which they finally launched in the fall of 2023, has yet to turn a profit, Knighten said the teaching jobs they ended up finding in Italy paid better than they’d anticipated.

“We’re really happy,” she said.

The house required a lot of TLC, which isn’t cheap. Knighten said she and her husband estimated the project would cost roughly $100,000.

But she added that the budget was expensive because they were making significant changes. For example, they’re adding ensuite bathrooms to both bedrooms and structural upgrades like a new roof and skylights.

While they’re renovating their house, they’re living in a rental apartment nearby.

They’ve hired professionals to help with major changes, but Cordier also lends a hand whenever he’s available. Knighten said it had still taken longer than they expected to move in.

Knighten said they’d hoped to be living in the house by June, but it was looking closer to December as most people in Italy wouldn’t work full time in August.

Knighten said a real-estate agent told them the house was probably built in the 18th century.

But during the renovation process, the couple found a stone window hidden behind plaster that their architect said indicated the property was potentially medieval.

The discovery was all the more exciting because Knighten and Cordier love old artifacts.

“We’re both really into history, and particularly history you can touch and feel,” she said.

When the couple was sold the home, the real-estate agent offered to get rid of all of the previous owner’s furniture for them, which didn’t sit right with Knighten or Cordier.

“There were loads of really cool vintage pieces,” she said. “We went through everything in the house, and we’ve kept a lot.”

Doing so has helped them cut down on costs and get creative with the renovation process.

For example, the couple can’t afford new kitchen cabinets, so they’ve decided to use old wooden dressers that were already in the house for kitchen storage instead.

Knighten has no regrets about choosing their slice of Italian paradise over a chance to move back to the US.

“The quality of life here is beyond. It’s incredible,” she said. Benefits they’re enjoying include better grocery produce, how walkable everything is, and, of course, free healthcare, which the couple can enroll in because they are residents.

It’s a game changer for Knighten, who recalled experiencing an ovarian-cyst rupture when she was living in the US without health insurance. Despite having two jobs at the time, she hesitated to go to the hospital because of how much it would cost.

“Looking back at it, I’m like, how is America considered the developed world?” Knighten said.

Given the great deal they have as teachers in Italy and how poorly many teachers are paid in the US, Knighten and Cordier have no plans to move stateside.

But Knighten wouldn’t rule anything out.

“Five years ago, I didn’t expect to be doing this, and 10 years ago, I did not expect to be in the UAE or Vietnam,” she said. “I’d 100% live in Chicago again. But I just don’t see that happening for me, especially in my profession.”