Sea, hills or mountains: what the same budget buys in Friuli

Same sum, three areas: the coast and lagoon, the hills and plain, the mountains. Every figure in the table is the median of the towns in that area.

The coastal median blends two markets. Only 2 of its towns, Lignano and Grado, have a beach within ten minutes of the town hall; for the rest the beach is 12 min or more away. The mountains have their own exception: Sappada, where €200,000 buys 80 m² (homes for the snow).

In Lignano €300,000 buys 100 m², in Grado 135 m² (the two resorts side by side). Drive a quarter of an hour inland and the scale changes: in Aquileia the same money buys 330 m². With the house come:

• a milder winter, but only right by the water: Grado has about 15 frost days (a shaky figure: the climate grid does not reach its town hall), Aquileia, inland, already 56;
• warm nights: Lignano counts some 59 of them a year, with the thermometer staying at 20 °C or more;
• a hospital some way off: 24 min from Lignano to 24-hour A&E, 38 min from Grado;
• water: Italy's environment agency, ISPRA, places 53.2% of Grado's buildings in medium flood-hazard zones (flood risk town by town).

Across the hills and plain, €200,000 buys 200 m² or more in 124 of 138 towns, and the December sun is barely touched.

• San Daniele del Friuli: 210 m² and a hospital in town; fibre to the home, though, reaches just 2.2% of households.
• Cormons, below the Collio hills: 280 m², the sea 36 min away, direct Udine trains from a station 3 min away.
• Osoppo: 265 m², the sea in 56 min, the ski slopes in 48 min.

Beach and ski lifts both within an hour's drive: 14 towns manage it, none on the coast or in the mountains. The price is summer heat, and Osoppo lies in seismic zone 1 (what that means).

In the mountains €200,000 buys at least 300 m² in 33 of 58 towns; €300,000 stretches to 405 m² in Paluzza, against 100 m² in Lignano. What to weigh up:

• sun: at the winter solstice Paluzza's town hall gets 4 h, where a flat horizon would give 8 h 32 min (winter sun);
• hospital: Tolmezzo has A&E in town, but in 27 mountain towns the nearest is more than half an hour away, and none is closer than 32 min to a hub hospital;
• the house: in Paluzza 77% of buildings predate 1971; it tops 70% in 18 of 58 mountain towns, against 10 of 138 in the hills and plain. OMI values assume normal condition: a house in need of work costs less, but the work comes on top;
• summer, in its favour: 15 days above 30 °C in Paluzza.

Homes with no resident in 2011: 51% in the median mountain town (the emptying mountains).

Letting while you are away? When visitors come matters as much as how many.

• Coast: 5,683,700 nights in 2025, out of 11,028,200 region-wide; in Lignano June, July and August take 72%, December to March 3%.
• Mountains: 1,042,400 nights; some villages near the slopes have two seasons, Arta Terme for one (40% in summer, 36% in winter).
• Hills and plain: 2,192,500 nights, 467,400 of them in Udine alone; in the small towns the calendar is flat: San Daniele 37,100 nights, only 35% of them in summer.

Rules and sums: short lets in 2026 and the short-let calculator. Property tax follows the town, not the landscape: ILIA on an undeclared second home runs in 2026 from 0.76% to 1.06% (declaring a second home).

• Medians: a hamlet weighs as much as a city. For one particular town, see €200,000 town by town and the budget tool.
• Space: the budget over the town's OMI value, set by Italy's Revenue Agency as the median of its zones' mid-points for homes in normal condition; gross floor area, before taxes and notary. A rough scale, not a valuation.
• Times by car from the town hall, with empty roads; sun at the town hall, clear sky; climate from 1991–2020 averages, which understate the heat of recent summers (winters and summers). Trieste and the Karst form an area of their own.