Once we realized that we would not be getting our Chianti hamlet, Eric and Dan hit the internet to comb through every property we had ever looked at. Being Eric and Dan, there was a very organized and well-documented spreadsheet of a veritable cornucopia of Italian villas that we had discarded for one reason or another. Now we went back into that spreadsheet with new eyes, clicking through every picture and measuring every distance from a small, picturesque town, on the off chance that we had thrown out some diamond in the rough.

Hours turned into days and we started looking at new properties along with the old. We started wondering if we were being too inflexible in our requirements. Maybe we needed to start looking further out. Originally, we wanted something within an hour to an hour and a half from an airport, but maybe four hours wasn’t so bad after all? Many terrible thoughts like this were had, with everyone talking everyone else off ledges, and finally agreeing that we really ought to give another try to finding something that checked all the boxes. The Chianti property had been so close, but maybe that was just the bad relationship before we met the one we were going to marry. Maybe our perfect place was still out there.

Somewhere in our fevered wanderings on the internet, we discovered something new: auctions. But like with all new things, we were wary. After all, the amount that we know about Italian bureaucracy could fill a very small thimble labeled “Complicated Things.” We were barely surviving the real estate process (and still wondering if we would ever see our deposit again), so did we really want to introduce a new process we knew nothing about?

We started finding some really cool properties going up for auction but then after researching, most had already been sold or had major issues. One seemed perfect but the auction included all the lands except the one critical hectare right in the middle of the villa where the well and patio were. Another looked good initially but then we saw the government had granted itself a high voltage power line easement right through the main guest area.

And then we saw it: the perfect property.

A gorgeous villa outside of Siena on 150 acres, with a small olive grove and vineyard, the right amount of rooms, and not in an insane state of disrepair, but stunning with old stone facades and Italian charm positively brimming from every cypress tree. It even had our new requirement, which was it needed to look like a gladiator might have considered it heaven at one point.

All at the price point that we had originally budgeted.

This. Was. It.

And it was coming up for auction in…

Three days.

Having absolutely no idea how to set ourselves up for an auction in three days, we talked ourselves out of it. It wasn’t perfect, after all. Surely its cypress trees were substandard in relation to other, straighter, cypress trees, if you squinted a bit. And one of the rooms had blue paint in it, I mean, were we really going to pick another color? So much work. Also it was thirty-five minutes from Siena, five minutes more than we initially were considering, so put that in the ‘forget it’ column too.

And, you know, other things, probably. We just couldn’t think of any.

It was hard to let go. Squinting at the trees aside, it was exactly what we were looking for, and we couldn’t get it.

The auction came and went. Anyone who has had to go through the home buying process knows there are some places that you just weren’t fast enough to jump on, and they stick around in your mind, becoming the one who got away, that you could have built a beautiful life with if you had just been given the chance. Now our search had to be conducted knowing that we missed our dream property by a few days. Morale was, shall we say, medium.

Since wallowing in repose with a glass of wine in one hand and a box of chocolates in another is firmly my department, I made sure to do a good job of it while Dan and Eric went back to looking for another place to fulfill our needs.

That is when we learned another fascinating piece of Italian property buying.

If something goes to foreclosure in Italy, it then goes to auction. And sometimes when things go to auction, people just…don’t show up. If no one shows up to the auction, well, the next logical step for the bank is to put it back up for auction.

The new auction was scheduled for December, which meant we had plenty of time to investigate how to prepare for this process. We immediately reached out to our trusty lawyer, Giorgio, who said the auction process was pretty straightforward. All you need is to put up 10% of the sale of the property as a deposit to show that you are a ‘serious buyer,’ and then win the auction. Easy! Then you just need to wait for the paperwork to be signed by the judge, because what would be the joy of winning if you didn’t get to wait around for a little while?

In preparation for the auction, Eric did the hard work of taking another beautiful trip to Italy scope out the area around the new villa, and see if it was worth the auction price. Armed with our team, and all the lessons we learned from evaluating the prior property, he went in with newfound expertise and a keen eye.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, he fell in love with the property and surrounding area. And so did we, through his pictures of the nearby town that he sent back. For the first time, I started daydreaming about living in a little town called Monticiano, outside of Siena, with just a few little shops and bars, and a natural hot spring nearby.

All that we needed to do next was secure our spot at the auction. We were informed there were other interested parties this time around, so Eric and Dan got to work right away. Securing the ability to participate in the auction involved setting up an Italian company, no small feat on its own. This required us to have an Italian representative, to which we appointed one of our lawyer’s young colleagues, and then also to set up a bank account. Oh good, we thought, something with which we are finally familiar! We decided to keep it simple and set up an account at your everyday, run-of-the-mill bank.

As with all things Italian and Sienese, even our banking is romantic and steeped in history. We set up our account at the oldest continuously running bank in the world, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which opened in 1472, a whopping 552 years ago. For context, that is a whole twenty years earlier than 1492, when Columbus set sail looking for India and decided the Americas were close enough.

Bank account secured, then came the harder part: getting the right amount of money for the auction deposit.

With the ability to ask Alexa to play ‘Despacito’ whenever one demands a bailaton beat in one’s kitchen, you would expect that money could be transferred as quickly as they transferred that chocolate bar in Willy Wonka (the original, not Tim Burton’s fever dream from 2005). But no, you actually cannot transfer money as quickly as a fictional chocolate bar, and we were coming up on Thanksgiving in the US, a week away from the auction, unsure if because of digital paperwork and American holidays if we were even going to have the deposit to make our 10%. But all of us just felt in our bones that this was our property. Surely it would all work out somehow, we just needed to figure out the ‘how’ bit.

Now, Christmas miracles are very well-known, but there is the lesser known Thanksgiving miracle, something we were surprised to receive because who knew that turkeys had that sort of ability? But there it was, right before Thanksgiving, a miracle of finance.

The deposit from the Chianti property appeared in our Italian bank account, just the amount we needed to enter the auction. No waiting years to get it back, after all!

It was now time for the actual auction. For weeks we refused to even speak of ‘if,’ and only said, ‘when we get this property.’ We didn’t want any spirit or deity or miracle-working turkey out in the universe to hear any equivocating. Giorgio entered us in the auction and let us know that there were a few other parties that had entered. “So we will not be alone…” he wrote us, with what I considered a delicious flair for the dramatic fitting for the moment.

The auction would take place at 12:30am Eric’s time, 3:30am Dan’s and my time. We counseled our lawyer on our maximum bid, and then all went to bed not knowing how we would wake up. Did we win? Did we have to reach our max?

Did we lose?

On opposite coasts of the US, we all could barely sleep for not knowing. As the caretaker of a toddler, I usually wake when he does around 9am, but this morning, I checked my phone at 5:30am, at 7am, and then crept out of bed at 8am to find Dan in the kitchen, looking up from his phone, incredulous.

“We won,” he said. “We’re moving to Italy.”