Foreigners in Sardinia: who’s buying, where are they settling, and why the island is attracting a growing wave of international residents

Some places are easy to describe. Sardinia is not one of them. The island resists summaries, resists categories, resists the kind of clean marketing narrative that works so well elsewhere. It has its own rhythm, its own silences, its coastline protected by legislation that other Mediterranean regions can only envy. And it is precisely this resistance — to speculation, to saturation, to the banalisation that has undone so many sun-soaked destinations — that makes it one of Europe’s most coherent international residential markets today.

The numbers tell a story in two parts. On one side, the official registers — ISTAT data, reliable and measurable: 52,041 foreign residents, representing 3.3% of a total population of just over one and a half million. A modest figure, barely visible against Italy’s national average. On the other, the property market data: according to several sector analyses, foreign buyers may have accounted for the majority of transactions in certain coastal areas during the 2019–2023 period. The gap between these two realities says everything. Sardinia is not an island people emigrate to. It is an island people choose — deliberately, often after years of visits, reflection and return — as the place to anchor part of their lives and their wealth.

Who are these buyers? Where do they come from? Where do they settle, and why there rather than anywhere else? These questions deserve precise answers, stripped of summer-holiday clichés and tourist-brochure shortcuts. What follows is a strategic reading of a market in transformation.

A chosen island — foreign nationals in Sardinia, portrait of a discreet presence

52,000 official residents: the ISTAT data in context

The figures from Italy’s 2023 permanent census are clear in their simplicity: Sardinia is home to 52,041 registered foreign residents, drawn from 156 countries. The largest group is Romanian (21.4%), followed by Senegalese (8.1%), Moroccan (7.4%), Chinese (6.2%) and Ukrainian (6.1%). Taken alone, this picture is misleading. It reflects traditional economic migration — labour movement, family reunification — which represents only the visible, administrative layer of the island’s foreign presence.

What these figures fail to capture is the patrimonial reality. A retired German spending five months a year in his villa near San Teodoro. A French couple who bought a stone farmhouse in the Ogliastra hinterland. A London-based consultant whose Alghero home has been the family’s anchor for twenty years. None of them appear in the residential statistics. They are property owners, local taxpayers, regular consumers — yet registered residents nowhere on the island.

Understanding foreign presence in Sardinia requires distinguishing rigorously between three categories that official data conflates: registered residents, non-resident seasonal property owners, and newly arriving permanent residents in the process of settling. These three groups operate according to entirely different logics, have entirely different needs, and carry entirely different implications for the property market.

The invisible diaspora: seasonal owners and diffuse presence

The largest and most economically significant category is precisely the one the registers don’t count. These foreign property owners — predominantly German, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian and British — have built, over the course of decades, a quiet residential fabric along Sardinia’s coastline. They bought in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, often through family or professional networks, sometimes at prices that are now difficult to imagine.

Their relationship with the island is intimate and entirely non-touristic. They know the local markets, the craftsmen, the doctors. Many speak a few words of Sardinian. Their children have grown up playing on the same beaches for thirty years. This generational continuity is one of the deepest — and least documented — characteristics of foreign presence in Sardinia.

This segment today represents a significant share of the resale market. When a family villa passes from one generation to the next, or changes hands within a German-speaking network of acquaintances, the transaction often never appears on any public listing platform. It feeds the off-market world that is one of the structural hallmarks — and one of the real advantages — of the Sardinian property market.

New mobilities: who is actually settling year-round?

Since 2020, a third figure has emerged with increasing clarity: the “new life buyer” — someone who is not purchasing a holiday home in Sardinia, but reorganising their entire life around a new territory. Remote worker, entrepreneur at a transitional stage, early retiree, family in search of space and stability — this profile is heterogeneous in form but remarkably consistent in motivation: a desire to break with a professional or urban geography that no longer makes sense, and to choose a living environment that does.

For this buyer, Sardinia offers a singular proposition. It is not remote — two hours by air from Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, London. It is not expensive day to day — the cost of living remains broadly lower than in major Western European cities. It is safe, stable, well integrated into the national healthcare system. And it offers what few Mediterranean destinations can still honestly promise: kilometres of undeveloped coastline, intact natural landscapes, a living culture that has not been museified for mass tourism.

The geography of desire — where are international buyers settling?

The Gallura and Costa Smeralda: the world benchmark for luxury

Any discussion of Sardinia’s international property market must begin where the world’s gaze falls: the Costa Smeralda. Created from scratch in the 1960s by the Aga Khan’s consortium, this stretch of the island’s north-eastern coast has become, over six decades, one of the most expensive and coveted places on the planet.

The available data paints a telling picture. According to several luxury property market observatories, the high-end villa segment in the Costa Smeralda represented several hundred million euros in total market value by end-2025. On the most exclusive segment, certain analyses place per-square-metre values among the highest in Italy, in the Porto Cervo and Porto Rotondo areas. Reports from specialist luxury residential firms — including Knight Frank in its 2023 Wealth Report — have consistently ranked the Costa Smeralda among Europe’s most dynamic prime residential markets, with significant value growth recorded since 2020.

But the Gallura is far more than the Costa Smeralda. Olbia — a coastal city of 60,000 with an international airport — is the logistical hub of the entire north-east. San Teodoro, Budoni, Porto San Paolo, Cannigione: each a micro-market with its own dynamics, its own clientele, its own price range. This is where German and Swiss buyers have historically been most active, loyal to areas their families have frequented for generations.

This is a mature market. Prices are high, stock is scarce, and transactions are often conducted discreetly. It no longer offers first-time entry opportunities, but it does offer something few markets can match: relative liquidity, stable long-term value appreciation, and legally protected land scarcity.

Alghero and the North-West: Sardinia for year-round living

Alghero is, alongside Cagliari, the Sardinian city that comes closest to the model of genuine permanent international residence. Founded in the fourteenth century by the Aragonese crown, it has retained a Catalan identity that sets it apart from every other Sardinian city — and from most Mediterranean ones. Its historic centre is dense, lively and genuinely liveable year-round. Its airport — the island’s third largest — operates direct routes to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Zurich and several other European capitals, including outside the summer season.

That connectivity changes everything. For a British or French buyer contemplating a permanent move, accessibility is usually the first filter — and Alghero passes it with ease. The territory surrounding it — Castelsardo to the north, Stintino at the north-western tip, the Logudoro and the Sassarese countryside inland — is less spectacular than the Gallura, but more balanced, more liveable, more authentically Sardinian.

This is where French buyers are most active, drawn by cultural affinity, the understated beauty of the Riviera del Corallo beaches, and a market that remains accessible. Castelsardo, perched on its rocky promontory, is one of the most sought-after destinations for Dutch and Belgian buyers, who find there a combination of reasonable prices (around €2,000/m²) and an authenticity that saturated tourist areas can no longer offer.

The emerging South: Villasimius, Cagliari, Costa Rei and the new frontier

For a long time, the south of Sardinia was terra incognita for international buyers. The Costa Smeralda captured all the attention, all the conversation, all the budgets. The south was for Italians. That era is over.

According to several sector studies published between 2023 and 2025, international buyer interest in the southern part of the island has seen marked growth in searches conducted during tourist stays — a signal that direct contact with the territory translates quickly into purchase intent. Villasimius, on the south-eastern coast, is now consistently cited among the most dynamic segments of the prestige market in southern Sardinia. Available data suggests average values of around €3,500 to €4,000 per square metre on the coastal segment, with notably higher peaks in the most sought-after areas, driven in part by demand from Central European buyers.

Cagliari itself is in transformation. The island’s capital — a university city, administrative and cultural hub with a metropolitan area of half a million — is seeing the share of foreign buyers in its residential transactions double. It offers what no other Sardinian city can: a city centre that is genuinely alive year-round, real institutions (university, hospitals, consulates), actual cultural life, and air connections to destinations across Europe. For international families considering permanent relocation, Cagliari is the only Sardinian city that ticks every box.

The authentic interior: a niche taking shape

There is a Sardinia that few international buyers have yet discovered, and that those who have found it tend to keep to themselves: the island’s interior. The Barbagia, the Supramonte, the Ogliastra, the Marmilla — these territories offer landscapes of sovereign beauty, farmhouses and stone cottages at prices that seem almost impossible by coastal standards, and an authenticity that mass tourism has not yet touched.

The market here is embryonic, fragmented, poorly documented. But it exists, and it is moving. British and American buyers, often drawn to the idea of slow living, are purchasing farms and converting them into life projects — organic agriculture, agritourism, active retirement. These acquisitions remain marginal in volume, but they may anticipate a deeper trend: the gradual recognition of the interior as a credible alternative to saturated coastal markets.

Holiday home or permanent base — two markets, two logics

The villégiature buyer: patrimony, heritage and seasons

The holiday home remains by far the dominant form of foreign property ownership in Sardinia. It follows a specific logic: the purchase is not driven by an immediate life project, but by the construction of a long-term family asset — a transmissible geographical anchor.

This profile is typically between 35 and 55 years old. They work remotely — consultant, digital entrepreneur, creative professional, executive in transition — or are navigating a professional reinvention. They have visited Sardinia many times, sometimes since childhood, and have spent years quietly developing the idea of this move. The pandemic often served as the catalyst: it demonstrated that the office was elsewhere, that geographical proximity to a workplace was no longer an absolute constraint, and that the quality of one’s living environment was worth interrogating seriously.

This is a deep and stable market. It does not track fashion or short property cycles. It generates significant seasonal rental income — villa rentals in the Costa Smeralda or around San Teodoro in July and August reach exceptional levels — and contributes substantially to the local economy year-round through maintenance, services and hospitality.

“Sardinia isn’t an island people move away from. It’s an island people choose to live on.”

The new life buyer: reimagining life from the Mediterranean

The figure of the new life buyer emerged clearly around 2021 and has grown in significance ever since. It describes those making the radical choice — not of buying a holiday home in Sardinia, but of making it their primary base.

For this buyer, the purchase criteria are not those of a holiday-maker. High-speed internet connectivity takes priority over a sea view. Airport accessibility matters more than proximity to the beach. The quality and year-round availability of healthcare is a decisive factor. Alghero and Olbia respond best to these requirements among the coastal cities. Cagliari surpasses them all on urban criteria.

The international retiree: when fiscal logic accelerates a life decision

The third figure is perhaps the most strategically significant for Sardinia’s residential market — and the most directly connected to the legal and fiscal architecture Italy has built in recent years.

Under Article 24-ter of the TUIR, any foreign pension recipient transferring their tax residence to Italy in an eligible municipality in the southern regions — Sardinia included — may opt for a flat tax of 7% on all foreign-source income. The regime runs for nine years, carries no income ceiling, and covers not only pension income but also capital revenues generated abroad.

For a retired German, British, Swiss or American with annual pension income of €80,000 to €150,000, the tax saving is substantial. In Germany, such a pension is subject to marginal rates of 35 to 42%. In Sardinia, the same income is taxed at a flat 7%. The annual difference can reach €25,000 to €50,000 — which, over nine years, comfortably exceeds the acquisition value of many Sardinian properties. The practical application of the regime depends on individual circumstances, applicable tax treaties and requires prior validation with a qualified tax adviser.

The 7% flat tax and the elective residence visa — what Sardinia offers that its competitors no longer do

Article 24-ter of the TUIR: how it works and who qualifies

The scheme, introduced in the 2019 Budget Law and regularly clarified by the Agenzia delle Entrate, has a straightforward architecture. Any holder of a foreign-source pension, regardless of nationality, may benefit from the regime provided they meet four conditions: they must not have been tax-resident in Italy during the preceding five years; they must transfer their residence to an eligible municipality in the Mezzogiorno; they must come from a country that has concluded an administrative cooperation agreement with Italy on tax matters; and they must formally opt into the regime in their first Italian tax return.

The scope of covered income is broad: old-age pensions, disability pensions, survivor’s pensions, supplementary foreign-source retirement income, and capital income generated abroad. A recent amendment has raised the eligible municipality threshold from 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, opening the scheme to urban centres with real infrastructure and making the life transfer genuinely practical for a much wider range of candidates.

The elective residence visa: the route for non-EU, non-retired buyers

For non-European nationals who are not yet retired — post-Brexit British, Americans, Canadians, Australians — the elective residence visa (visto di residenza elettiva) is the key instrument. It permits legal residence in Italy without engaging in professional activity, on proof of sufficient passive income. It is renewable, and opens the path to permanent residence after five years and citizenship after ten.

This visa is little known, rarely mentioned by estate agents, yet decisive for a growing category of potential buyers in Sardinia. It represents a significant commercial angle for any player in the Sardinian property market addressing an international clientele.

Sardinia against its Mediterranean competitors — a strategic reading

Why Sardinia holds where the Balearics are buckling

The comparison is unavoidable — and instructive. The Balearic Islands — Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca — dominated the luxury second-home market for Northern European and American buyers for two decades. Several market analyses now highlight the cost of that success: an oversupply of high-end property, increasingly restrictive regulations on short-term tourist rentals, summer congestion, and the progressive erosion of the very authenticity that had made them desirable.

Sardinia offers a structural alternative — but it came close to not being one. From the 1970s through to the early 2000s, certain coastal areas experienced intense, often poorly controlled property development. The Tuerredda case — where a major resort project came within reach of transforming an untouched southern cove into a hotel complex — became the symbol of this speculative pressure. It was precisely to put an end to it that the Autonomous Region acted with resolve, though not without political resistance: the Salvacoste Law (LR 8/2004) froze all new construction within a two-kilometre band from the shoreline; the Regional Landscape Plan (PPR), adopted in 2006 — the first in Italy compliant with the Cultural Heritage Code — elevated the entire coastline to the status of a protected landscape asset. Subsequent attempts to dismantle these instruments were blocked by the administrative courts. In February 2026, the Region strengthened the framework further with new coastal planning guidelines extending regulated jurisdiction to one nautical mile offshore.

What others experienced as a burden, Sardinia has turned into the foundation of its long-term value. What cannot be built cannot be cheapened. Land scarcity is legally protected — and it is that protection which underpins price resilience in the coastal zones most exposed to international demand. The application of these rules does remain uneven across municipalities, and translating regional guidelines into coherent coastal projects is a genuine operational challenge; but the framework exists, it has held, and it continues to be reinforced.

Land scarcity as the foundation of value

Luxury property markets operate according to different rules from ordinary ones. In zones of structural scarcity — and the Sardinian coastline is a paradigmatic example — value is underpinned by the impossibility of reconstituting supply.

No new seafront villas can be built at Porto Cervo. No new sea-facing plots can be created at Villasimius. What exists is what will exist. This equation — growing international demand, fixed supply — is the fundamental guarantee of long-term price resilience, independent of economic cycles. Several specialist property observatories have noted meaningful growth in Sardinia’s prestige segment in 2024, against a broadly more cautious European backdrop.

The off-market: a structural feature of the Sardinian market

The off-market — transactions that take place without ever appearing on public listing platforms — is a structural component of the Sardinian property market, and probably one of its least well-understood characteristics for buyers coming from other markets.

Many significant owners in Sardinia — long-established families, early buyers from the 1960s to 1980s, heirs to remarkable properties — have no interest in selling to just anyone, or under just any conditions. They transact within networks of trust, to known or recommended buyers, on timelines that suit them. For an international buyer in search of something genuinely singular, access to this off-market world is often more important than scrolling through listing portals.

Outlook — how is international demand in Sardinia evolving?

The impact of remote work and new residential mobilities

The pandemic of 2020–21 acted simultaneously as a revealer and an accelerator. A revealer of aspirations that had long existed but been suppressed — the desire for space, for nature, for a slower pace — and an accelerator of the technological transition that was making those aspirations finally achievable. The normalisation of remote work removed the constraint of geographical proximity to an office, transforming the question “where can I live?” into an open one for millions of Europeans.

This is not a passing trend. It reflects a deep structural shift in the residential preferences of Europe’s affluent classes — a reorientation toward quality over centrality, toward durability over immediacy, toward the authentic over the standardised.

Rising American interest and a new Swiss dynamic

Two movements deserve particular attention. American buyers, first: their presence in Sardinia remains modest in absolute terms, but it is growing at pace. They are drawn by the combination of a historically weak euro against the dollar, an incomparable quality of life, and a US-Italian tax framework that makes settling there genuinely advantageous. Their budgets tend to be substantial — €600,000 and above — and their expectations around service quality and finishings tend to pull the market upward.

Swiss buyers, meanwhile, have long been among Sardinia’s most loyal international market. But the profile is evolving. The established families of the German-speaking bourgeoisie who bought at San Teodoro in the 1980s are being succeeded by younger, more mobile buyers who are no longer simply seeking a summer residence, but a permanent Mediterranean anchor — partly in response to growing cost-of-living pressures in Zurich, Geneva and Basel.

The south of the island: the next territory of desire

The frontier of international demand is shifting southward. This is the single most significant observation in the data from 2024 and 2025. For decades, the geography of Sardinia’s attractiveness to foreign buyers was drawn around a northern axis: Costa Smeralda, the Gallura, Alghero. The rest of the island was, for the most part, unknown territory.

That map is being redrawn. Cagliari is seeing the share of foreign buyers in its residential transactions double. Villasimius and Costa Rei are experiencing unprecedented demand from German, Austrian and Swiss capital. The Sulcis and the western coast are beginning to feature in the searches of the most price-aware and authenticity-driven international buyers.

This southward movement is not a market searching for cheaper options. It is a maturing international market beginning to understand the island in its entirety — and to recognise that its value is not concentrated in the few kilometres of the Gallura, but spreads across 1,850 kilometres of coastline, through dozens of different landscapes, for dozens of different life projects.

Sardinia has never needed to be invented to be seductive. It simply needs to be understood — in its geographical complexity, its institutional and fiscal richness, the diversity of human projects it can accommodate. What it offers the international buyers who look beyond the clichés is not merely a property: it is a way of life, a patrimonial logic, and a form of freedom that few Mediterranean territories can still offer with this degree of coherence.

A note on sources and data

This article draws on public data (ISTAT, Agenzia delle Entrate, Italy’s 2023 permanent census), specialist property market observatories, and sector analyses published between 2023 and 2025. Figures relating to the prestige property market may vary according to the methodologies and segments analysed; they are presented as indicative illustrations of general trends, not as certified market valuations. For any investment or relocation decision, readers are encouraged to consult qualified professionals — notaries, internationally specialised tax advisers, and licensed local estate agents.

Moving to Sardinia: Understanding the Rise of Foreign Buyers