An Italian Home Away From Home - New York Times

Following on the heels of my previous post about real estate in Spain, I found this NYT story about a family with an apartment in Rome intriguing, and disappointing. Finding a place in From or Barcelona sounds like it is even more difficult than finding an apartment in San Francisco:

"At first, “we rented a villa in Tuscany every summer, stopping for several days in Rome,” Mr. Stoll said. He is a lawyer specializing in large-scale business litigation; his wife is a clinical psychologist.

“In 1993 and 1994, I spent 26 weeks out of the year in trial, so by 1996 I was burnt out and ready to take a break,” he said.

The family — including three of the couple’s four children — picked up and moved to Rome, where they rented a four-bedroom apartment between the Piazza Navona and the Tiber River in the city center. “It wasn’t easy to find such a large place to rent, so we were very lucky and had a marvelous year.”

When the year was up, Mr. Stoll was ready to stay on — the expansion of the Internet enabled him to conduct a good portion of his business from abroad. His wife, however, was less enthusiastic and wanted to get back to her practice in the States.

“Our compromise was to move back to Portland, but to rent a smaller place here in Rome, which would enable us to visit several times a year,” Mr. Stoll said.

But that was easier said than done.

The family had a hard time finding a place that met their requirements: a central location, nice views and at least two bedrooms. They finally took out an ad in a local English-language paper that eventually led to a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment of 150 square meters, or a little more than 1,600 square feet. It was just the right size, on a quiet street and with a terrace, too.

Link: An Italian Home Away From Home - New York Times