The Truth Behind Italy's $1 Homes

these are italy's famous dollar homes this but here i'm not going to talk because there is a pigeon living in this bat and that's jillian a new homeowner in sambuca sicily a picturesque town in italy's countryside in danger of dying out that is until the government started selling abandoned homes here practically for free people from around the world came running hoping to get in on the deal and while the pandemic may have delayed some of these plans it hasn't deterred buyers even though the true cost of these homes is a lot more than a dollar holy moly over 20 towns across italy have started selling abandoned homes for a single euro or about a dollar and 10 cents for the sake of this video we'll call them dollar homes the towns selling these dollar homes are small and most of them are far out in the countryside and they've been suffering from rapid depopulation for decades in 1968 a massive earthquake hit sicily it caused so much damage that for some homeowners it was cheaper to cash in on insurance and move somewhere else completely the exodus continued from there across italy younger people left for the cities many moved to escape the poor job markets in their rural hometowns in sambuca the population has decreased by 30 percent since the 1950s there's not much work here right now so the only work is instruction and according to the wall street journal it's been especially bad in the last 15 years the town was small we used to be 8 000 people now we only 5 000 people and sambuca isn't alone tally up all those towns losing residents and that makes more than a million people in the last 20 years who have moved away from italy's rural regions and closer to the urban cities a lot of people went to uk to north italy and other parts of the world to have a job so here we have a lot of houses without people inside what's left are beautiful towns with abandoned homes an aging population and economies on the verge of collapse so we decided to repopulate these parts of the town now you can buy hanom with only one euro some towns like sambuca set up websites where prospective buyers could scroll through the homes for sale in the mountainous town of melise where they've lost 9 000 residents since 2014 town officials made the deal sweeter they would pay newcomers almost 800 a month to move here for three years and start a small business it didn't take long for publications to pick up the story and it blew up globally in some parts of sicily you can buy your own home for just one euro the headline kind of writes itself it's a beautiful home in rural italy for a dollar i mean who isn't going to click on that once the story got out people from all over came running the very beginning started on facebook i saw my mum had shared an article and when i saw it i thought i wanted to buy a house for a euro all the other stories sounded pretty similar we saw the cnn article right and an article in the belgian newspaper most of the newcomers came from the us and northern europe i'm happy for the the people who arrive in sambuca i'm enthusiastic for this big big revolution that's giuseppe he's the guy who launched the program in sambuca a town of nearly 6 000. sambuca got the widest media coverage after geosepi put 16 homes up for sale in early 2019. i arrive at the interesting people a journalist singer and actor everything you know it's important arrive young people young women and young men for stay in sambuca even though the towns are small and rural foreigners have flocked here looking to find vacation homes open airbnbs or even move here full time what sambuca has that i haven't experienced elsewhere is really the history of it i love how you can just see the stucco peeling off and the old stone just popping out right behind it it's like a little piece of history you literally could take a photo anywhere around about you so you could actually put them on the wall you know it's like a disney movie plus everyone we spoke to said the locals here were welcoming to the new faces and energy my neighbor i'm gonna make lasagna and she invited my wife to make it with her that's the best lasagna i ever tasted so landing a dollar home in these idyllic towns may sound perfect but there's a catch actually multiple catches you have to spend money to make the contract for the taxes and other 400 for a real estate company that could bring up the total to about 3 000 in some towns like sambuca the homes were actually sold at auction which meant they started at a dollar but ended up selling to the highest bidder more than a hundred thousand people sent in requests for 16 houses so competition was steep i looked at my emails one day and i saw this email and i went that's jillian she's from scotland and was one of the lucky auction winners in sambuca i'm at the house and this is the first time that we've seen it she ended up paying 1 100 for her new home so i picked up the phone to my long suffering husband and i said danny see when i say this i'm not joking but we've got lot number seven on that auction and he was like oh only one home in sambuca actually sold for the dollar listing price most of them ended up going for a few thousand but the most expensive home went for 28 000 then there's the security deposit we bought the house for the thousand euros at the same time we had to send a 5 000 euro deposit the deposit amount ranges from twenty three hundred to fifty six hundred dollars depending on the town homeowners will get it back if they start renovations within a year and agree to finish within three years of getting designs approved it's a safeguard for them to make sure that they don't almost give away these properties and then they sit vacant again because they want people to be in and using them and since most of the homes were in pretty rough shape they sometimes come with a requirement to spend at least 17 000 on renovations houses or really destroyed really so you have to do a lot of work that's bert and his wife nina they're from belgium and we're two of the first people to purchase dollar homes in musameli they purchased four dollar properties and have finished renovations on one of them if you buy a house at one guru you can expect it will be beautiful impossible plus when these new buyers still live abroad renovations take a while it's far so we're gonna have to hire somebody and also they don't have large hardware stores so i can't just like run down and grab lumber so what does a dollar home really cost let's do the math a dollar listing four hundred dollars in taxes a fifty six hundred dollar deposit say sixty thousand dollars in renovations plus flights back and forth for years add it all up and you're looking at seventy six thousand and one dollars still nothing compared to the hundred twenty four thousand dollars that forbes reported one sambuca resident expects to spend renovating and that's for a home that was supposed to cost a dollar so it might seem like a rip-off but if you buy those houses in belgium it's a million the fact that we will have a holiday home for for life for a fraction of the price that we would spend elsewhere you know what i would do again in a heartbeat and i haven't even finished it yet and so far the program has been a success in musamelli more than a hundred of the houses have been sold in the past year in sembucha all 16 of the original euro homes went in a matter of months today they've sold a total of about 60 and some people who didn't win a dollar home at auction stuck around to buy a normal listing like gary and tamara a couple from arizona who bought their home from a private seller for 20 thousand dollars now this home needs still needs quite a bit of work yeah it the roof is in it's got sheets but it's gonna be beautiful when it's done the dollar home sales stopped across italy due to the coronavirus italy was kind of seen as europe's ground zero for coronavirus cases with the majority in the much more densely populated north this means that there are a lot less cases in the south but the south is actually worse affected economically because it's a lot poorer gary and tamara haven't been able to travel to sambuca since it gave us some more time for the planning phase so we've been able to work with our architect to to sort of nail down all the odds and ends that we wanted to do as of july 2020 the program has started up again in sambuca and it's called casa for two euro so they are starting it back up despite the pandemic there's hope that all these newcomers will bring about change in these rural towns it started a light like a small economy here engineers architects designers that make plans make projects of the house the building companies can have a job also along with new businesses restaurants and airbnbs in sambuca and musameli tamra said you'll also see postings for english classes and i also think it's helped tourism because the last couple times i've been there i've been seeing more and more tour buses coming through so i really think it's put sambuca on the map of course more people in one sleepy towns will create some friction in mussomeli one of the local newspapers had launched something of a smear campaign against the new belgian inhabitants after one of them was arrested for being drunk and disorderly so there are some cultural differences that will need to be worked out and in sambuca people come out of town to eat food in here they love this place i mean it's beautiful and we go there too i love that too but the problem is it's too pre-piece i couldn't go there i don't like to eat as for whether all this new energy will really save these shrinking towns only time will tell in my time reporting in sicily the reaction to myself and the newcomers in town was really really positive i think they were just excited to see some fresh faces you see it now already all the houses are renovated there will be a new breath and breakfast at piazza roma beautiful in my street there's a new home and everybody is working on it and i think let me say 10 years it would be a beautiful city [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 4,596,577

Rating: 4.8796759 out of 5

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, sambuca, italy, homes, home, house, homeowner, depopulation, government, real estate, travel, abroad

Id: nP2vtDLTAgM

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/orcolonotmarco]

If you buy a home for €1 you know it’s not in good shape

[u/Duke-Von-Ciacco]

Mettiamo 80.000 in rinnovazioni.

La trasformi in un bnb o in un home restaurant e ci rientri velocemente

[u/Vanadio-L]

Scusa, ma che si aspettavano? È ovvio che vadano ristrutturate, il senso è proprio quello 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/tttulio]

what is the best website to find cheap properties in the whole of Italy?