In the Beginning

If, like me, you have any sort of interest in Italy at all, then you f’sure would’ve picked up on all those €1 homes for sale there?

Pro-Brexit "The Sun" unwilling to even mention 1 euro

The ads started popping up on most mainstream press sites a year or three ago. And even the most cursory glance over the first few paragraphs would’ve told you these were predominantly for sale in many emptying rural villages in the south of the country, and the island of Sicily.

Some might say a novel solution to a problem only too common right now, and one faced right across Europe, as the young leave rural areas for the cities … at a time when birth rates are at historic lows.

You can’t blame the kids of course and, while urban drift isn’t a new phenomenon, this could be one possible solution, couldn’t it? ‘Restocking’ (for want of a better word!) these semi-abandoned villages with people seeking their own particular version of “la Dolce Vita”.

If you follow up on these stories, it appears many of those actually moving to such places appear to be middle aged, and looking to either retire or semi-retire themselves, with a few braver younger couples thrown into the mix.

These villages and towns are sited in areas you’d be hard pressed not to label as being ‘deprived’ and/or ‘poor’. Dwindling communities that have seen not years but often decades of decline, and perhaps even neglect.

This ‘homes for €1’ trend has now been picked up by the likes of Spain and France, of course.

Initial Research

As I’ve already said: If you have any sort of interest in Italy, then surely your interest was piqued?

Now I’m a little annaly retentive, y’see. If there’s any sort of a decision to be made: Fire up a Word document and/or Excel spreadsheet. In my defence here, the end result of over three decades in IT. Sorry!

Once I’d firmly established that this wasn’t any sort of scam, I looked for ‘catches’. Because there had to be some, right?

And, of course, there were. Although these seemed entirely reasonable. To me anyways.

"Doer-upper" or "crumbling ruin"? Mussomeli, Sicily

First off, the majority of these houses were in that state estate agents used to call “a handyman’s dream”, “a doer-upper” or “needs some TLC...” That’s because they’d been abandoned. Sometimes for decades.

Secondly, around two or three years was allowed for said renovations and, afterwards, you were expected to live in them at least semi-permanently, and maybe even needed to set up a functioning local business.

The actual requirements varied from place to place.

Following this initial research, I bit the bullet, and mentioned my interest to Alice, my long-suffering wife.

Who, to my great surprise, didn’t diss the idea out of hand.

Regardless of whether this was because she wasn’t paying attention to my babblings, or whether she was genuinely interested, with this outright and assumed permission, I charged ahead with even more detailed research.

Further Research Needed

Creating a file imaginatively named ‘Living in Italy’, I began downloading all sorts of websites and documents dedicated to €1 homes.

In Sicily only.

Because we’d visited some years ago, it was the only place in southern Italy we’d been as a family, and we adults had loved the climate, its people, and the cannoli, of course!

For and against...

Now armed with this much more detailed research, I got Alice off her iPhone, and delivered my now more detailed dissertation. Outlining what I saw as the possible pros and hurdles, folding in our current financial situation, and even mentioning the dreaded ‘B-word’: Brexit!

Ending it all with what I hoped was a winning smile.

This time, however, my effort was met with a, let’s just say, somewhat more muted response.

In my defence, I’m not one of those who gets a bee in their bonnet, and charges off toward the horizon waving their arms about all enthusiastically.

Not at all!

Undeterred, I resolved to change direction slightly. And redouble my efforts.

Especially since, during my research, I’d noted how some foreigners who’d visited Italy to buy their homes had f’sure ended up buying locally.

But not the €1 homes.

Instead they’d ended up with still uber-cheap local homes in rather better states of repair. We’re talking liveable now homes costing in the range of tens of thousands of euros only.

More on the down-low now, I’d present a more ‘balanced’ and ‘considered’ argument next time.

Optimistically assuming there would be one, of course!

More Soon…