Why Sicily? It doesn't sound as though Italian is a language she is familiar with.
France seems the best choice because her boyfriend is francophone. Having the language is very important not only for practical matters of living but because of the need to establish friendships. He can help a lot; because he is francophone and because they will be invited everywhere as a couple, she will be assimilated far more easily than otherwise. She has her own interpreter to ease her way in company whilst she picks up fluency. Not only that but he is sure to either have some understanding of French ways or, if not, he is sure to pick up signs from others that will stop misunderstandings at an early stage.
Rent or buy? Well rule one is never
ever buy anywhere that requires any work done to it. At all costs avoid any 'charming' old building, such as an old farmhouse. Pause and ask :" If it's such a great idea, a great opportunity, why has no Frenchman, not even a speculator, touched it ?" and "Why did the farmer himself leave ? " Rest assured that vast amounts of money, and even vaster delays, later you'll find out the answers, if you buy such a place !
In fact in France rule two is: Buy something brand new. That's what the locals like to do. For a start the legal costs on a new property, the fees charged, are much lower. Second the law protects the buyers of new property. Any defects and the builder has to rectify them, even if they appear some while after the purchase; depending on the defect this can be quite a substantial time after the building is finished, because the law acknowledges that some structural defects take a while to manifest themselves.
Renting has its attractions if only because you do not tie up capital that way. Remember too that the capital she has is in dollars. The exchange rate is always a consideration. On mainland Europe surprisingly few people own their homes. In Britain everyone either, it seems, does or aims to and the result is loads of young couples crippling themselves with mortgages from their earliest years together.In France the trend is now in the 'British' direction, encouraged by their government. In some areas there is quite a shortage of property to rent.
To give an idea of what is available an easy course is to search on the web for the sites of major estate agents (realtors). These are often simply nationwide associations of many small agents. Intending buyers may search by region, by type of property, by price and so on and the site directs them to and searches the agents' local list.The lists are constantly updated.The agents deal with developers of new sites as well as with built properties.
In France ORPI is one such; their site may be read in English, too:
www.orpi.fr The keyword is 'immobilier'. French Google exists :
www.google.fr and a hunt there for agence immobiliere should give a start too.
The national association of the profession is FNAIM. There is no substitute for touring an area and viewing a lot of stuff, to get a feel of what it is like and what you can and can't accept, but such lists help to narrow the search.
Oh, and one curious factor in Europe, notably in France, is price distortion by Easyjet and Ryanair. These two airlines fly at amazingly cheap rates but they do not just fly to big cities. Indeed Ryanair, in particular, has often picked out some small town because it has a small airport and is in some agreable area.For the airline the airport charges are tiny and the town will do a lot to encourage the new business. The result is that Britons find they can buy into the region and still be within cheap and easy reach of friends and family back home; so the local prices go up. Still if you don't want to feel isolated from the rest of Europe, it's a worthwhile thought to have an airport. Remember that flying internal flights in Europe is unusual; we prefer railways; except between very big places.
If you learn to live with the mafia, it's a great place.
