Rising home sales by Americans in Europe.
The Mitas familyThe Mitas family is part of a wave of Americans moving to European countries.
Ronda Kaysen
Ronda Kaysen, who writes about real estate, traveled to Greece, Portugal and Spain to tell the story.
Ben Mitas sipped Vinho Verde from a stemmed glass while watching his daughter ride a swing one January afternoon. He bought wine from a kiosk, the ubiquitous parka kiosks, a luxury of life in Lisbon.
G Mr. Mitas and his wife Megan moved to Portugal from Florida in 2019, renting a four-bedroom apartment for 2,500 euros (or about $2,700) a month in Campo de Ourique, a quiet neighborhood with small stores and restaurants. Last year, they bought a 19th-century house in Lapa, a historic district high above the river with 18th-century embassies and palaces and tile-clad mansions, which they intend to renovate into their "forever home," said Ms. Mitas, 31. Mr. Mitas, a 40-year-old mortgage broker, travels to Florida frequently for work, but their life is in Lisbon, where their two young children attend daycare and nursery school.
The family fits in perfectly with the local environment. Here in the Portuguese capital, English speaking people seem to be everywhere. That afternoon, as Mr. Mitas took his daughter to the park, two women sat on a nearby bench, strollers under their feet, chatting in English.
Rita SilvaThe previous evening, Rita Silva, a researcher at Habita!, a housing rights organization, reclined attentively on a tattered red couch, elbows on her knees, surrounded by bookshelves and handmade banners at the group's headquarters in the trendy Intendente neighborhood. She was preparing to meet with Lisbon residents facing eviction. Even Habita! is feeling the pressure: the group's landlord won't renew a lease that expires next year. Lisbon "is no longer affordable for people living and working in this country," Ms. Silva said.
Americans unable to afford the homes they want in the American cities where they want to live, such as San Francisco and New York, are moving to Southern Europe in significant numbers. Attracted to the region by its mild climate and low cost of living, made even more affordable by the strong dollar, many Americans delight in swapping an automobile-dependent lifestyle for the opportunity to live in a picturesque European city inexpensively.
What is cheap for these Americans is extremely expensive for Southern Europeans because their average wages are significantly lower than Americans. Locals compete for housing with wealthy foreigners in already distorted markets through Airbnb and corporate real estate investments. The result is a generation unable to start living independently, with more than 90 percent of southern Europeans under 35 still living at home, surpassing their American peers. Those with apartments face evictions and unpredictable rent increases in cities with weak tenant protections, such as Lisbon, Barcelona and Athens.
"It's heartbreaking," said Alkis Kafetsis, a 40-year-old project coordinator at the Eteron Institute for Research and Social Change in Athens who studies housing issues.
The rise in foreign investment is no accident.
The Mitas family is part of a wave of Americans moving to European countries.
Ronda Kaysen
Ronda Kaysen, who writes about real estate, traveled to Greece, Portugal and Spain to tell the story.
Ben Mitas sipped Vinho Verde from a stemmed glass while watching his daughter ride a swing one January afternoon. He bought wine from a kiosk, the ubiquitous parka kiosks, a luxury of life in Lisbon.
G Mr. Mitas and his wife Megan moved to Portugal from Florida in 2019, renting a four-bedroom apartment for 2,500 euros (or about $2,700) a month in Campo de Ourique, a quiet neighborhood with small stores and restaurants. Last year, they bought a 19th-century house in Lapa, a historic district high above the river with 18th-century embassies and palaces and tile-clad mansions, which they intend to renovate into their "forever home," said Ms. Mitas, 31. Mr. Mitas, a 40-year-old mortgage broker, travels to Florida frequently for work, but their life is in Lisbon, where their two young children attend daycare and nursery school.
The family fits in perfectly with the local environment. Here in the Portuguese capital, English speaking people seem to be everywhere. That afternoon, as Mr. Mitas took his daughter to the park, two women sat on a nearby bench, strollers under their feet, chatting in English.
Rita SilvaThe previous evening, Rita Silva, a researcher at Habita!, a housing rights organization, reclined attentively on a tattered red couch, elbows on her knees, surrounded by bookshelves and handmade banners at the group's headquarters in the trendy Intendente neighborhood. She was preparing to meet with Lisbon residents facing eviction. Even Habita! is feeling the pressure: the group's landlord won't renew a lease that expires next year. Lisbon "is no longer affordable for people living and working in this country," Ms. Silva said.
Americans unable to afford the homes they want in the American cities where they want to live, such as San Francisco and New York, are moving to Southern Europe in significant numbers. Attracted to the region by its mild climate and low cost of living, made even more affordable by the strong dollar, many Americans delight in swapping an automobile-dependent lifestyle for the opportunity to live in a picturesque European city inexpensively.
What is cheap for these Americans is extremely expensive for Southern Europeans because their average wages are significantly lower than Americans. Locals compete for housing with wealthy foreigners in already distorted markets through Airbnb and corporate real estate investments. The result is a generation unable to start living independently, with more than 90 percent of southern Europeans under 35 still living at home, surpassing their American peers. Those with apartments face evictions and unpredictable rent increases in cities with weak tenant protections, such as Lisbon, Barcelona and Athens.
"It's heartbreaking," said Alkis Kafetsis, a 40-year-old project coordinator at the Eteron Institute for Research and Social Change in Athens who studies housing issues.
The rise in foreign investment is no accident.
The previous evening, Rita Silva, a researcher at Habita!, a housing rights organization, reclined attentively on a tattered red couch, elbows on her knees, surrounded by bookshelves and handmade banners at the group's headquarters in the trendy Intendente neighborhood. She was preparing to meet with Lisbon residents facing eviction. Even Habita! is feeling the pressure: the group's landlord won't renew a lease that expires next year. Lisbon "is no longer affordable for people living and working in this country," Ms. Silva said.
Americans unable to afford the homes they want in the American cities where they want to live, such as San Francisco and New York, are moving to Southern Europe in significant numbers. Attracted to the region by its mild climate and low cost of living, made even more affordable by the strong dollar, many Americans delight in swapping an automobile-dependent lifestyle for the opportunity to live in a picturesque European city inexpensively.
What is cheap for these Americans is extremely expensive for Southern Europeans because their average wages are significantly lower than Americans. Locals compete for housing with wealthy foreigners in already distorted markets through Airbnb and corporate real estate investments. The result is a generation unable to start living independently, with more than 90 percent of southern Europeans under 35 still living at home, surpassing their American peers. Those with apartments face evictions and unpredictable rent increases in cities with weak tenant protections, such as Lisbon, Barcelona and Athens.
"It's heartbreaking," said Alkis Kafetsis, a 40-year-old project coordinator at the Eteron Institute for Research and Social Change in Athens who studies housing issues.
The rise in foreign investment is no accident.
Almost 10,000 American citizens will be living in Portugal by 2022, a 239 percent increase from 2017, according to data provided by the Portuguese government.
Americans settling here indulge in a life where the weather is pleasant, long lunches make them happy, and they can get by with translators and a few phrases. Americans say that even if they try to strike up a conversation, locals are quick to switch to English because it is so common in European cities. But their children come home bilingual, giving parents like Mr. and Mrs. Mitas access to little translators to help them navigate the tricky moments when Google Translate is insufficient.
"Their main concern is lifestyle migration. They really want to live here and have a more cosmopolitan lifestyle," said Luis Mendes, an urban geographer at Lisbon University.
"You live much freer and nicer here," 17-year-old Cristian said as his 8-year-old sister Evangelia rolled past him on roller skates on her way to the dining room to make a lap around the dinner table. "Everybody's calm, it's not like, 'Do this, do this, do that.'"The Mallios family lived in Colts Neck, N.J., a rural community in central New Jersey with sprawling estates and stables, including one owned by Bruce Springsteen. They arrived in Greece in July 2020, after Melissa and Demetrios Mallios bought a €350,000 house on the island of Evia near Athens. The purchase qualified for a golden visa, a permanent residency program available in several European countries that gives property buyers years of residency in exchange for a significant cash investment in the property.
The family spent the 2021 school year renting a house in Athens while their children attended an international school. By 2022, Mr. and Mrs. Mallios had put their New Jersey home up for sale and bought a 1.45 million-euro apartment in Kifissia, a northern suburb of Athens with wooden walkways and multimillion-euro villas hidden behind high stone walls. High-end homes in Kifissia sell for around €427 per square foot, 44 percent more than similar homes in other parts of Athens, according to RE/Max Europe. On Sunday night, the families walked around the center of Kifissia, which is full of luxury restaurants, cafes and boutiques - Bottega Veneta, Max Mara and Wolford, an Austrian lingerie brand.
The Mallios children now attend a private virtual school, Pearson Online Academy, which allows them to move between homes in Athens and Evia, but doesn't give Evangelia much opportunity to learn Greek and form friendships with locals. "I miss New Jersey," she said.
Her brother, however, learned the language from his friends on the basketball team. "Put a mat or two in your sentence and you'll speak almost fluently," he said, referring to the common obscenity. And her father, Mr. Mallios, a 52-year-old Greek-born venture capitalist, speaks the language.
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