La dolce vita for Canadians? What to know about making a permanent move to Italy

It has probably happened to you.

A beautiful vacation in a stunning location. Italy perhaps. Or Spain. Everything costs less than in Metro Vancouver — even property. And then the  daydream of what it could be like to live — or retire — here permanently. Could this be possible?

Jennifer Sontag speaks from experience. She had been overseas in 2018, trying to figure out how to get Italian citizenship through her great grandparents, who were from Italy. She finally made the move to Palermo, in Sicily, in 2021, an initiative largely prompted by wanting better access to health care, which is less expensive compared to her native U.S. What initially began as a concierge business has now expanded into ViaMonde, a company with a raft of experts to assist Canadians with navigating the visa and citizenship trail in Italy and Spain.

Postmedia caught up with Sontag to find out what’s involved in making the move, and what the most important financial question reveals.

Q: Vancouver has a large Italian Canadian population — are you seeing an increase in the number of people wanting to make a permanent move to Italy?

A: Yes, the number 1 reason we hear from our Canadian clients is that the cost of living is rising, and they are looking for a better balance in their lives. Since most are mid-life, they are business owners, freelancers, or working remotely. Some are retired but many are still in their prime working years and want more. We recently had a couple originally from Toronto who lived in Vancouver the last few years. After they made the move for citizenship, the man’s father called and said he and his wife also wanted to move since their son — now a citizen — and wife were planning to have a baby. They made the move and the entire multi-generational family is now living in Milan, with good access to flights to visit the 101-year-old grandmother of our original client.

Q: What are the top reasons people want to do this?

A: The desire for a better, simpler, healthier, and more affordable life are driving the decisions, while the ancestral connection is the mechanism making it possible.

Q: Do non-Italians to want a piece of that, too?

A: Absolutely. Our work is to help our clients separate the dream from reality and choose a place where they can have both.

Q: Is the best advice for those wanting to make the move to learn the language?

A: Not necessarily. Learning the language is important but let’s be realistic: teaching an adult a new language is difficult when they are not immersed in it. Our advice is to learn the basics and have a plan in place for arrival. That is where we help our clients: we offer a smooth landing, handle the bureaucracy and the negotiations, manage contracts in Italian, and they learn to live while learning the language. Otherwise if we waited for fluency, no one would make the move. It starts with the location, then we layer on the house and everything else.

Q: What are the most common misconceptions of those wanting to move to Italy or Spain?

A: That it is impossible or that you have to have a lot of money to do it.