Imagine paying as little as €1.00 for a home like
this.
That's what happened in Italy a few years ago.
In parts of Italy they are practically giving houses away.
The plan was to inject life and money back into
dying towns.
But for many foreign buyers it wasn't smooth sailing.
We met Tamara and Gary Holm in 2019 when they
had just bought their home in Sicily.
Words are failing me. The couple had their work cut
out for them.
It seemed the house had gone untouched since the 1960s.
Oh,
this place is a lie.
We went back to Sicily to see the transformation
and find out exactly how much they spent on it.
OK, let's talk money, because that's what everybody wants to
know.
How much did this really cost?
So did the Euro home scheme work?
So a lot of my friends were saying to me,
look, it seems like a scam and it's it's probably
too good to be true.
And beyond the €1.00 price,
how much did buyers actually end up spending?
We're
here
via Delfino. We made it.
We got the keys. This was Tamra and Gary Holm
in 2019,
The Lock works.
They began their search for a Sicilian home like many
others,
after seeing the media hype surrounding the scheme.
We heard about it through the
CNN article. So I think we definitely had some doubts
of like,
are they really selling houses for a dollar?
The couple narrowed their search to the town of Sambuca
in central Sicily.
Like hundreds of towns across Italy,
its population had been shrinking for decades
as younger generations left the countryside for bigger cities in
search of work.
Originally, the local government put up 16 homes in Sambuca
on sale for €1.00.
Most sold for that amount,
but some in better condition went to auction.
That's what happened in Tam and Gary's case.
They bid €5000 for a house and lost.
What they ended up buying was this.
I kind of knew that what we ended up buying
was the one just in my gut.
More than 600 year old townhouse
with two bedrooms and a roof terrace with views over
the town.
Instead of €1.00, it cost them 19,000.
At first, the couple thought they'd just spruce it up.
Simple, I think, and have a place livable in a
few months.
We went in thinking we're just going to paint it
nice.
Yeah, just some new new furniture,
some new appliances, Bada Bing.
But they soon realized they'd have to spend a lot
more money than planned.
Yeah, because it needed plumbing,
it needed some electrical works.
There was definitely work that need to be done
on things like repairing a leaking roof that had caused
mold throughout the house
and moving walls to create a more modern living space.
On top of the €19,000 for the house,
they paid €4000 for the agency.
Then a one bedroom house next door came up for
sale at
€8000. So then we had to buy that of course
which added another
€4000 agency
to join the two properties.
They needed to tear down a three foot stone wall.
The central staircase needed reengineering.
So then we had to go from,
from that lower point below,
here, up into this room and
up into this room. And they put new support beams
in place.
You got to make sure the place doesn't fall down.
It's been there forever, you know.
And so that restructuring definitely was a bigger expense than
we had anticipated.
After four years, this is how it's been transformed.
Refinished walls,
New tile in the bathrooms,
in a refurbished rooftop terrace that will eventually hold an
outdoor kitchen.
As for the total cost of the renovation,
we'll let Tam and Gary do the math later.
It wasn't just young people moving into the cities that
emptied out towns like Sambuca.
An earthquake shook Sicily in
1968, reducing thousands of properties to rubble
and leaving many more too unsafe to live in.
Devastation in Sicily, where earthquakes have obliterated whole towns and
villages South of Palermo,
the capital. Now more deaths and injuries have brought about
a mass exodus to the Italian mainland.
Some homes remained untouched for years.
New settlements were built outside,
but the Old Town centers were neglected.
Italy was also hit hard by the global economic crisis.
In 2008, many residents left the country altogether.
We need to improve our town so the more people
come,
the better we are. So how much you work here
right now?
Italy's first one year home scheme started in Salemi,
a town in western Sicily.
In 2008.
The town had around 4000 old crumbling homes.
At the time many owners couldn't afford the cost of
renovations or the tax they had to pay on a
second property,
so they simply handed them over to the city to
sell.
The scheme spread across Sicily and to the mainland
and by 2019 headlines were attracting buyers from around the
world.
But as quickly as news spread about the €1.00 homes,
so did reports that the scheme might be too good
to be true.
On top of the purchase price,
home buyers face added costs like legal expenses and agent
fees that can range from 2000 to
€5000
to make sure buyers actually stick around and invest in
the property.
Some schemes also ask for a deposit of several €1000,
which will be returned if the renovation work on the
facade is completed within three years.
But there was also the state of these homes.
While some homes could be restored and made livable for
between 15,000 and
€30,000, some buyers spent as much as
€100,000 fixing them up.
Danny McGovern bought a €1.00 house in the Sicilian town
of Mussamelli in January 2020.
I wanted to live somewhere that was quiet and tranquil,
I guess the antithesis of London because I've been there
for 23 years.
Danny spent several months looking at more than two dozen
homes before settling on this one,
which he bought for €1.00.
But then the pandemic struck.
Danny was stuck in London and the property suffered,
and then when I returned to Mussamelli there was a
lot of extra damage that had been done to the
house.
A leaky roof in the house next door caused a
massive amount of water damage in Danny's home.
The cost to renovate it went were doubled.
So this was the original €1.00 house that I bought.
You can see though, because it hasn't been looked after,
it's just continuing to crumble.
Danny sold the house back to the agency for €1.00.
So even though you might find one that's
A1 euro, you've got to be really careful to look
at.
You know, what are the houses next door,
What conditions are they in?
This would be a money pit for sure.
What he eventually found was this house.
I got this house for under 10 grand.
It's in good condition, you know,
I still need to do quite a bit of work
on it.
The bathroom needs to be totally renovated.
It's a really old bathroom.
The house was also furnished,
which is amazing.
And then we go up another level.
The main things for me and what you need to
look out for is,
are the foundations, goods? Is the roof good?
The houses next door, are they in good condition?
Are there people living in the houses next door?
And this house? To me
it seemed to be fine
and perhaps the best part of the house,
the stunning view over the Sicilian countryside.
Before buyers like Danny started snatching up homes in Musa
Valley.
The population had fallen to about 10,000,
but if you counted all the empty homes,
there was enough space for 40,000.
This is Tati Negrili, the deputy mayor of Musa Mele.
He helped set up the one year scheme here in
2017.
The whole town was Anty,
so we want to repopulate that part of the town.
The plan was a success from the start.
In the first five years,
the town sold 300 houses.
Now we can see a lot of people from all
parts of the world then speak English,
speak French, speak Spanish. Unlike Sambuca,
Mussamelli doesn't sell homes at auction.
Their Euro homes all sell for the €1.00 ticket price.
But what are called premium homes can be bought anywhere
from 5000 to
€60,000.
Consider that at €1 we have sold maybe
95% houses.
The influx of foreign buyers has brought a boost for
local shops and tradespeople.
The deputy mayor says 10 times more tourists are visiting
them before the scheme started.
The boost from new buyers,
on top of the money from the EU and Italian
government,
is allowing them to invest €70 million into the town.
Plans include new roads and a more than
€1,000,000 remodelling of the town Central Square,
Piazza Umberto. We want to invest in the Old Town
of Mussomelli because we want to give more services to
foreign people that invest here.
We want to give more energy to this part of
the town
and Danny is already bringing energy back to Mussomelli.
He opened The Good Kitchen in July
2021 with the mission to provide free meals for the
town's most vulnerable populations like the elderly and the poor.
I wanted to start a project which would give me
the inroads into life in this town.
He rents what was an abandoned store in the town's
main square for only
€150 a month.
It's grown into this beautiful hub in the town where
we have cooking classes for kids.
We do a Sunday lunch or sometimes we have up
to 50 people come and eat and sit down and
share a meal together.
Danny collects surplus food from the surrounding area
and delivers meals and produce to families in need every
week.
My friend there, Angelo, I meet with him every Thursday.
He collects a lot of surplus produce from that market.
When we visited Danny, the Good Kitchen was celebrating 2
years of serving.
The community feels like the first year.
Lots of people here, lots of pasta.
Everyone here with a good intention and
full of love.
Back in Sambuca, Tam and Gary are slowly making friends.
The couple lives in Los Angeles most of the time,
but they try to visit a couple times a year.
Today, they're visiting their local winery.
Not only is the town beautiful,
they say the people are equally warm and inviting.
I think one of the things that I really fell
in love with in Sambuca was the people.
Everyone has been super welcoming
thanks to the one year old scheme.
The town is home to a large international community.
People that already lived here for generations and generations are
so nice and so cool with that and ready to
like make friends with people from around the world.
I think they see the value in
outsiders coming in to sort of
rejudge the economy and and tourism,
and I think it's definitely a boom for the town.
But the homes say potential buyers need to do their
homework before taking the plunge
and they should visit as many times as possible.
Most €1.00 schemes will only allow people to invest if
they're there to collect the keys in person.
Make the adventure. You got to hit the road
and see if you connect with a town you don't
just want to buy and not even know anything or
no feel for the town.
You got to got to get up in there.
It's not an experience for everyone.
Learning the language is key,
especially when dealing with contractors and local bureaucracy which can
be a lengthy and costly process
for Danny. You spent about
€10,000 for a home that was moving ready.
As for Tam and Gary,
our whole rental budget was around
€120,000, so 30 for the houses,
128,000 in feet, so around
160,000 all in is what it looks like
and I think we're pretty close to that.
I have some math to do,
but I think we're there.
After renovations, the couple was left with A4 bed,
4 1/2 bathroom house. The average price for a home
this size and their native LA
would be over $1,000,000.
But it brought us here.
It brought over 100 people apparently into this town
to see what you can get from not a lot
of money
and just get this sort of dream.
You know who doesn't want to have a house in
Italy?