Inside Stephanie Barry-Woods' beautiful Italian home which she bought for under €100k

It’s often said that you get more bang for your buck when you buy a home abroad. That was certainly true for travel influencer Stephanie Barry-Woods and her husband Tim, who bought a house in the Italian countryside back in 2021 for under €100,000.

Stephanie is a well-known travel influencer who shares her adventures on her Instagram page and blog, Steph My Life. She says she started looking for houses to buy in Europe at the start of lockdown.

“We were in Malaysia during the first Covid lockdown. We started looking for properties on a website called gate-away.com,” she says.

“Private owners and estate agents list properties on here, and you can filter your search by price range, the number of bedrooms you want, whether they have aircon, and so on.”

The couple considered Spain, Portugal and France before finally settling on the Abruzzo region of Italy.

She and Tim arranged to meet with an estate agent from the UK who showed them various properties. “We stayed for four days. He showed us four properties we had viewed online, and at the very end of the trip, he asked us to view one more we hadn’t chosen.

“Our hopes were very low as none of the other properties worked out, they were really disappointing. Either they were too remote, or the town was completely dead.”

Stephanie says as soon as they drove towards this final house, they knew it was the one. “In the town, we saw kids playing, teenagers hanging out, as well as couples our age out dining.”

The house was surrounded by beautiful countryside and vineyards. “The neighbours own a winery. You can also see the mountains and sea from our home.”

The sea is just a 15 minute drive away. The house itself didn’t require much work, with Stephanie adding that they painted inside and rearranged some rooms. “We had to fix some damp issues and some leaks, but structurally it was ready to go. We worked on it while we lived there."

Scroll down to the gallery below see the photos of this gorgeous Italian home.

To read the full interview and see all the pictures, pick up a copy of RSVP's Home magazine, on shelves now.