I bought an Italian home for £220k – new border rules made me sell it at a loss

A British widower felt compelled to sell his holiday home in Italy’s central Marche region at a knocked-down price due to the EU’s new border rules, which came into force last month.

Ian Johnson, a 78-year-old retired garden designer from Manchester, sold his cottage near the town of Macerata in mid-October, over what he said was the “certainty” that the new “super-binding” Entry/Exit System (EES) would shatter his bucolic idyll.

The EES, which requires fingerprint and facial scans at border crossings, has led to reports of huge delays at some European airports, including Lisbon, Geneva and Prague.

“I could barely handle the 90 out of 180 days Brexit rule, but these new regulations, with the biometric scans and long queues at airports for non-EU passengers, is just too much for an old man like myself,” Mr Johnson told The i Paper.

“I decided to give up on the house but, in a hurry to sell it to avoid tackling the new travel burdens each time I visited Marche, I had to settle for a lower price than the one at market value,” he added.

The cottage, which came with a patch of land, as well as olive and fruit trees, was bought for €250,000 in 2021. Three weeks ago, Johnson sold the farmhouse to a local family for €200,000.

Given he had invested around €30,000 in redoing the roof, one bathroom and the kitchen, had he waited for a higher offer Mr Johnson believes he could have sold it for €300,000. But he wasn’t willing to wait, given the disruptive bureaucracy he felt he would soon face.

When Mr Johnson’s wife died four years ago, he decided to buy a holiday place in a lesser-known region of Italy, to enjoy with his three sons and four grandchildren.

Friends suggested he look at Marche, where there are lovely beaches and pristine hills. After a one-week property search with a local agent, Mr Johnson chose a four-bedroom, three-floor rural farmhouse. He called it a “peaceful spot” but said it was a short-lived idyll.

Even though Brexit travel limitations had already come into force by 2021, the widower said he managed to navigate the rules without too many problems, using the house for regular short-term stays.

He talked fondly of picnics and barbecues in the wide garden with his sons and grandsons.

But Mr Johnson said the new EES rules would make it hard for his family to travel with the grandchildren, all under 15, and that he didn’t want to end up being always alone in the farmhouse.

Mr Johnson said he read alarming reports and watched videos showing the mayhem at Milan and Rome airports, both of which he travelled through to get to the property, after the new rules came into effect.

The real nightmare came when he flew over late last month to sign the sales deed, he added, and experienced first-hand at Milan’s airport the “chaos” the new rules had created.

“I was welcomed by a long, disordered queue of non-EU passengers who were going out of their minds. I waited two hours to get through the biometric checks. It was hell,” he said.

Mr Johnson said he will miss his Italian property but believes that he made the right choice, despite losing a “significant” amount of money in selling it at a lower price.

“I feel so frustrated about how it all went down,” he said. “I was forced to undersell such a lovely property just because I got in a panic over these new travel regulations, maybe I’ve been over-cautious, maybe I’ve been far-sighted,” he said.

“I already have nostalgic memories of the place,” he added. “Brexit has definitely killed my Italian dream.”