Decision to Move Abroad Pt.4 – How Abruzzo Rural Property Guided Our Path to Torrebruna

By the time we’d let go of l’Estartit and worked our way through Granada and Sicily, we weren’t browsing anymore — we were watching, almost obsessively, for the next thing the internet would show us. That’s how Abruzzo found us. Not through a guidebook or a recommendation from a friend, but through an algorithm that had clearly picked up on what we’d been searching for. Within days, our feeds were full of it: Idealista, Exclusive Property, Majellacase Immobiliare, Abruzzo Property — village after village we’d never heard of, each one a small, quiet advert for a life we hadn’t lived yet.

One listing stopped us: a five-bedroom semi-detached house in a village called Carunchio.

Carunchio: A Promising Start That Went Quiet

Carunchio sits at 714 metres in the province of Chieti, its streets winding up toward the ruins of an old castle, with the Trigno valley spread out below. It’s tiny — somewhere around 550 people — but it has the kind of layered history you feel just walking through it: noble palaces, old religious festivals, the sort of place that still runs on its own rhythm rather than a tourist calendar.

We enquired in August, right in the middle of ferie d’agosto, when most of Italy simply closes for the summer. The agent was upfront about it — everything would go quiet until the holidays ended, and then they’d be in touch to arrange a viewing. Fair enough, we thought. We were happy to wait.

Except the holidays ended, and nothing came. Days turned into weeks. When we finally chased it up by email, the reply was polite but noticeably cooler than before — no real explanation, just a sense that arranging a viewing wasn’t going to happen. Maybe it was bad timing on their end, maybe something had changed with the property. We never found out.

It stung a little, if I’m honest — Carunchio was the first place that had made this whole move feel like a real possibility rather than an idea. But I also wasn’t going to buy a house I’d never set foot in, sight unseen, from another country. So we let it go, and moved on.

Finding Abruzzo Rural Property

We came across Abruzzo Rural Property almost by accident, through a YouTube video. What struck us straight away was how differently they presented things — no glossy sales pitch, just calm, honest walk-throughs of rural homes that talked about the life around the house as much as the house itself. So we sent them our list, which by then we’d narrowed right down:

• An independent house, not an apartment
• Real privacy — after years of shared walls and shared noise, that mattered more than almost anything else

One small thing made a real difference to us: they work in English, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. Maltese wasn’t on the list, but I speak Italian fluently, so that was never the issue — the issue was that translating every conversation for Lesley, back and forth, was exhausting for both of us. Being able to deal with them in plain English meant she was part of every conversation, not waiting for a summary afterwards.

Three Properties, One “Jackpot” Moment

Their reply came back with three properties that matched what we’d asked for almost exactly. I remember turning to Lesley and saying, half-joking, “I think we’ve hit the jackpot.” We asked to view two of them; the third was too far to fit into the same trip, and they said so plainly rather than trying to squeeze it in. Small thing, but it told us they were being straight with us rather than just trying to fill a viewing schedule.

What stood out over the following weeks wasn’t any single grand gesture — it was the pattern. Questions got answered properly, not brushed off. Nobody pushed us toward a decision or made us feel like we were on a clock. When we asked about a village we’d never heard of, we got a real answer about what it was actually like to live there, not just a list of nearby amenities copied from a listing. After Carunchio’s silence, that consistency mattered more than we expected.

How Torrebruna Entered the Picture

Torrebruna wasn’t on our radar at all until Abruzzo Rural Property put it in front of us. It didn’t arrive with any fanfare — just another option among the three, alongside villages we’d never have found on our own. But once we saw it, and later stood in it, it was the one that felt right: a small, peaceful hilltop community, close enough to daily life in a nearby town, without the pull of anywhere touristic.

We wouldn’t have found it browsing Idealista on our own. That’s really what an agency like this is for — not just showing you what’s for sale, but showing you the places you didn’t know to look for.

Recommended Outbound Links

• Abruzzo Rural Property — the agency mentioned throughout this post
• Italian National Tourism Board: Abruzzo
• I Borghi più belli d’Italia — Italy’s official “most beautiful villages” association, which lists villages like Carunchi

Final Reflections

Looking back, the path to Torrebruna wasn’t a straight line — it was a flood of listings, one door that closed in Carunchio, and an agency that turned out to know Abruzzo better than any website could. Abruzzo Rural Property didn’t just send us property links; they answered honestly, kept their word about viewings, and pointed us toward a village we’d never have found ourselves.

If you’re somewhere in the middle of your own move to Abruzzo, that’s the one piece of advice we’d pass on: find people who’ll tell you the truth about a place, not just its square footage.