Italian Village Where Houses Are Being Sold For €1 Each. If you’ve been dreaming of living in the Italian villa from Normal People for your post-lockdown getaway, guess what? For just €1, you can now taste unlimited pizza, pasta, and prosecco while soaking up the rays in your very own Italian house.
The pandemic is raging, quarantine laws are shifting by the day, and we’re all unsure when we’ll be able to holiday again, yet one item in the travel universe stays constant: Italy’s €1 homes.
Another Sicilian city, Castiglione di Sicilia, is offering houses for the price of a coffee this month.
The town of Taormina, near trendy Taormina and the beaches of Sicily’s east coast, offers a bumper crop of houses: approximately 900 empty homes on the slopes of Mount Etna.
Most of them are in the city’s historic districts. Around half of them are destroyed and will be given away for €1 ($1.20). The remainder is in great shape and can be sold at a low price, starting at €4,000 to €5,000.
Mayor Antonino Camarda has embarked on an ambitious initiative to resurrect his village, which has shrunk in size from 14,000 in the early 1900s to only 3,000 today.
“We have a massive architectural legacy to save, full of tradition,” he says, adding that “over time, so many people have left, leaving behind a lot of vintages, picturesque buildings, many of which date back to the Renaissance.”
Castiglione di Sicilia is pricing the assets according to their condition, unlike some other towns with similar schemes that have placed together a work tonne of houses for €1.
“We’ve done an in-depth analysis cataloging each property based on maps and land registry records, and buildings will be sold at various prices depending on their circumstances, beginning at €1,” says Camarda.
The program, which began in March 2021, is the city’s largest of its kind, with at least 400 properties in good condition that only require minor repairs.
If you want to get your hands on one? To best balance demand with supply and help liaise between parties, potential buyers can contact sellers with a clear plan of what kind of house they’d want and how they’d renovate it. A joint task force will oversee the initiative.
“We’re working on two fronts: reaching out to old sellers who are eager to sell their family properties and reaching out to potential customers,” says Camarda.
What’s the catch, then? Buyers have three years to finish their renovations. Unlike most other schemes, however, there is no upfront payment required to ensure that the job will be completed.
Instead, they need owners to purchase a €4,000 insurance package from a bank.
“This will cost the new owner €100 a year,” Camarda notes, “which sounds like a more reasonable amount than a deposit guarantee.”
In comparison to the rest of Italy, Sicily has low local taxes. Buyers should also take advantage of the Italian government’s “super bonus” programme, which provides tax exemptions of up to 110 percent for environmentally sustainable upgrades.
“We’ve already had a lot of emails from clients and people all over the world, and there’s a lot of options here.”
An auction will be held if there is a lot of competition in the same land.
Yes, it’s true. That’s around 90p, which is less than an ice cream cone.
So it’s time to start looking for design ideas on Pinterest because the only catch is that you’ll need to use your magic wand to get your hands on a house.
Cinquefrondi, in Calabria’s southern area, is looking for new settlers, and they’re gaining attention by marketing their “Covid-free” Italian village, which has had no recorded cases of coronavirus.
While many young people are leaving Cinquefrondi searching for jobs, the Italian village’s mayor, Michele Conia, told CNN that they are planning to repopulate the village by providing homes for a shockingly low price in an initiative called “Operation Beauty.
‘Finding new buyers for the many empty houses we have is a vital part of Operation Beauty, which I initiated to restore degraded, forgotten areas of town,’ he said.
‘I grew up in Germany, where my parents had emigrated, and so I returned to my homeland to save it. Over the years, many too many families have left, leaving vacant homes behind. We can’t give in to despair.’
The rugged Aspromonte National Park surrounds it, and it also has views of the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coasts. It sounds like a fantasy.
‘We climb between the refreshing hills and two warm seas, there is a pristine river nearby, and the beaches are just 15 minutes away by vehicle,’ Conia added. However, a whole neighborhood of my town is deserted, with vacant houses that are both dysfunctional and dangerous.’
You only have to pay a €250 premium policy protection charge before the house is repaired, and you have three years to finish it (or face a €20,000 fine). For the price of a flat white, you can have an Italian home. We’ve made up our minds.