Being in the thick of the Eurozone debt crisis doesn’t seem to have affected Italy’s appeal to British property-buyers, as revealed by recent data from the UK’s leading property portal.

Italy was ranked the fourth most searched for country on Rightmove Overseas during June, with 16 out of the 20 Italian regions featured on the site seeing a rise in popularity. This is despite the country being one of the EU states struggling with debt and whose leader has championed an easing of austerity measures and easier access to bailouts for its banks.

Italy’s top five regions in terms of searches were, in descending order, Tuscany, Lombardy, Lazio, Puglia and Abruzzo.

The secret of Italy’s appeal would appear to be the lifestyle it offers. Kirsty Lowe, author of the ItalyBuyingGuide.com, who lives in the Liguria region says: “In my small village life goes on as it always has, for example the summer festivities kicked off recently with the annual San Zane festival. The banking crisis, in Italy and the wider Eurozone, seems a world away when you go about your daily chores here, shopping in town, stopping for a coffee or gazing across the valley from my apartment.”

For details of property for sale all over Italy, visit the Italy listing on Rightmove Overseas. One way to save money when buying and restoring property in Italy is to use a currency specialist when transferring your pounds into euros to complete the purchase. For more information on this, contact Smart Currency Exchange.

To understand the full step-by-step process to buying a property in Italy, collect The Overseas Guides Company’s ‘Italy Property Buying Guide’