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Old towns eager for new blood sell Italy homes for $1
- boomskats 5y agoIsn't this old news? [0][1] [0]: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-home-websites/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-home-w... [1]: https://1eurohouses.com/ https://1eurohouses.com/
- yosito 5y agoSuper old news. I see this pop up every couple of months.
- silisili 5y agoYep, and always with the same caveats. The dollar houses typically, but not always, need something like a house's real cost worth of renovation. There's no citizenship attached, so one can't just up and move into their new house. And of course, you'd really want to know Italian. This is all super reasonable, but makes for clickbait headlines.
- mdp2021 5y agoPlease also note that those houses are supposed to be in declined tiny villages in the most remote places. Surely, you do not want to commute from there to a job in the city.
- tluyben2 5y agoIt is an acquired taste, but working remote as a software engineer and manager as I have been for decades, I cannot imagine anything better.
- masklinn 5y ago> working remote That assumes there's viable internet connection, which is often not the case in small remote villages (that is one of the huge caveats).
- vimy 5y agoThat’s where Starlink comes in.
- tluyben2 5y agoTrue, if you need that (I do), but I have not encountered issues since the past 15 or so years. Before that it was harder. Obviously there are places that have nothing: I have lived there too and that is a lot more hassle. For me still better than a city. Each their own.
- foepys 5y agoMaybe this will change with Starlink or over time but usually remote places in Europe have really, really slow internet connections (if any) so they are not really suited for remote work unless you can do everything via Citrix or similar.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoI see this a lot. Don't you like culture or people? There's nothing out there, only ignorant old people.
- vmception 5y ago> Surely, you do not want to commute from there to a job in the city. The 2010s called and wants last decade's arguments back.
- schraeds 5y agoFor a majority of people, and for whole swaths of the economy this will always still be true. Can't really bartend or lay bricks remotely.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoLay bricks? Wut? I thought most houses are 3d printed nowadays…
- Retric 5y agoYes and no. When software developers are working remotely their bartenders are going to be in the same areas. Cities can’t just be waitress jobs for other waitresses, they need a core of non service jobs to work.
- kibwen 5y agoTo a point. Economies of scale will still exist for things that cannot be done remotely, which means that population density will continue to beget population density.
- Mikeb85 5y agoWho said anything about commuting? These schemes are typically looking for remote workers or those looking to setup tourism businesses.
- rbanffy 5y ago> but makes for clickbait headlines. Would be more fun if it were Transylvania
- kube-system 5y agoThere are (/recently have been) similar programs in the US too. They're not as valuable as clickbait though, because people here are familiar with how undesirable the locations generally are.
- silisili 5y agoYeah, the one I remember popping up was Olathe. They really tried to push it and make it sound nice. Would be better for them if there weren't an entire documentary episode about a community fear of foreigners and some murders.[1] Come for the money and housing assistance. Stay if you survive. 1 - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8119994/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8119994/
- seattle_spring 5y agoIs it the same thing though? I would guess the most undesirable places in Italy are still much better than even some mediocre places in the US.
- kube-system 5y agoThe similar programs that I've seen (over the past 10 years) in mediocre locations in my area of the US were in better locations than the these ones in Italy. They were in commuting distance to good job markets, had good internet access, easy access to building materials, labor, and capital, basic public transport, etc. Those programs have since ended, because they were successful. I'd imagine any of these programs that are in good locations don't last long.
- iso1210 5y agoYes, the article mentions it's been going for at least 10 years > Gangi has been completely transformed since it launched the one-euro housing craze in Italy in 2011, Mayor Francesco Paolo Migliazzo said. A medieval hamlet with frescoed churches and steep, narrow stone pathways, it was declared the most beautiful small town in Italy in 2014. Today, tour guides shuttle groups of visitors along historic and artistic walking routes. Alas it doesn't go very deep into how things have turned out for people buying the houses, or for the villages those houses are in
- anyfactor 5y agoIf they don't get you with the price, they will certainly get you with regulations.
- gandalfian 5y agoI liked the quote from elsewhere in which an American pointed out that after the required taxes, bank charges and payments for buying the house in Italy her 1 euro house cost her about €2000 just to buy. Good marketing though.
- 0ld 5y ago> her 1 euro house cost her about €2000 …and then 100k more to bring it to normal living condition
- jdhn 5y agoA €102,000 house in Italy doesn't sound like the worst deal in the world.
- walrus01 5y agoYou can get a pretty decent house in some rural economically depressed parts of the USA for $100k, if you look. Use zillow, set price ceiling to 100k or 110k, 2BD and 1BA or 1.5BA, start browsing map to random small towns in the midwest and prairie states.
- jdhn 5y agoYou still can get a house for that much in Detroit, however you'll potentially be living in a dangerous neighborhood. Safe Detroit neighborhoods have actually soared in cost even if they aren't in the downtown area, believe it or not.
- walrus01 5y agoIf I were to do something like that for habitable, ready to move in house under $100k in some post-industrial economically depressed city, it sure wouldn't be Detroit with all the big city problems that come with that... Somewhere much smaller like Oswego, NY or Elmira, NY. a somewhat randomly chosen example in 45 seconds of searching: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/51-E-5th-St-Oswego-NY-13126/53759002_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/51-E-5th-St-Oswego-NY-131...
- santiagobasulto 5y agoI moved to Italy 5 months ago (and got my Citizenship through my great grandfather). I live in a small town (~4k people). These homes are usually in very bad conditions; there's shitty internet and heating. PS: If you have italian ancestors and are interested in getting your citizenship let me know, I'm writing a blog post with my experience so far :)
- delgaudm 5y ago+1 Interested in hearing about your experience getting citizenship.
- eddieh 5y agoSo what you’re saying is there’s a market for innovative ISPs and HVAC installers?
- metalliqaz 5y agofrom the article it sounds like the market is too small to be profitable
- znpy 5y agoAs an italian whonis very familiar with that kind of situa... good luck with that.
- foota 5y agoAre you going to run into extra-legal problems?
- busyant 5y agoWhat's your contact info? Grazie.
- figers 5y agoMy wife is starting to go through this, would love to learn about your experience and any tips you can share.
- rectang 5y ago
- ciguy 5y agoThis is old news and this program is a borderline scam used to inject naive (mostly American) retirement dollars into hopelessly backwards and corrupt remote Italian villages. I'm an Italian citizen and I've been to these villages. They can't even pay young Italians to live there. The local governments are so inept and corrupt doing literally anything becomes a 6 month long nightmare of paperwork and petty denials. Many people buying these houses find out later that there is a 1 year deadline for completing the work, and that unless they use the very expensive and slow local craftsman the permits will never get issued. This program is for suckers and is designed to part them from their money and give it to local mafia run govts and tradesmen.
- mdp2021 5y agoIn which region were those villages? I doubt the same will happen everywhere. Edit: in fact, I just checked one such requirements list, and for example this local administration set the time limit for the renovations as 3 years, not 1.
- pacman2 5y agoWell, we all know these houses a in bad shape and require a major investment but I don't think this is a problem. Fact is, you will create a tax liability there since most of this programs don't only require you to renovate the house, they also expect you to move there. . As much as I love Italy, I would not take the house with 50k USD on top of it for free. Don't worry. Other countries will follow soon as online work becomes more available and the societies overage more. For some countries a collapse may be unavoidable. Crazy real estate prices? No retirement for you but please pay the retirement for the boomers? Sky high taxes? Good luck!
- dobladov 5y agoEuropean governments should combine this with providing better unlimited mobile internet, we are so far behind Asian countries in this regard. The only thing avoiding me from living in a remote area is the difficulty to have reliable and reasonable priced internet. Yes, there are things like Spacex, but is not completely ready yet, and the cost is too high at the moment.
- arthur_sav 5y agoCompared to the rest of the world, i'd say mobile internet is great across EU. Nordic countries in particular have the best service & price i've seen so far. It's true though, remote areas still struggle with good internet.
- kzrdude 5y agonordics have too high data prices still, though.
- arthur_sav 5y ago$25 for 20GB/month & 100GB/month for $40. More than enough for mobile and considering the salaries, it's pretty cheap.
- mdp2021 5y agoThere are places in Europe with one third of those costs-per-GB.
- jussoli 5y agoUnlimited, uncapped 100-300 Mbps with tethering 15-25€ per month. 5G up to 1000 Mbps at 30-50€. Inexpensive, 99% population cover and good networks. Finland says hello.
- avereveard 5y agoEuropean governments should combine this with a European contact law for remote workers, easing up specific country residency requirements and with that pension fund management and income tax ripartitions between countries. Right now remoting between countries is a mess, because you need to adhere to the contract law of the country of residency, and while that's good because your taxes go toward the infrastructure you actually use, it's a major limiting factor in worker mobility as not many companies have legal and financial representatives in all the countries one is free to live and work with across Europe.
- baybal2 5y agoThey have quarter of a million African refugees to house. I think the solution is obvious.
- Mikeb85 5y agoIt's not that simple since those refugees need to be productive. Are they going to create businesses? Invest in the town? There's a reason they usually go to larger cities... Schemes like this try usually try to attract rich foreigners or educated professionals looking to opt-out of the rat race for the investment angle. Not just labour.
- baybal2 5y agoNo rich foreigners are needed. You need healthy, young, and muscular foreigners. And not lazy ones.
- Factorium 5y agoThis is not the Roman Empire. Those same healthy young men failed at much beyond subsistence agriculture in their home countries. IQ - a factor of genetics and upbringing - is far more important. Predilection away from violence and crime is another. Most of the migrants from Africa/Middle East represent huge social and economic burdens that might very will permanently sink some European countries, given the differential levels of fertility between the native and introduced populations. Non-Western migrants in Denmark cost that country about 10% of its total Government spending: https://www.thelocal.dk/20211015/denmark-says-non-western-immigrants-cost-state-31-billion-kroner/ https://www.thelocal.dk/20211015/denmark-says-non-western-im... https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/government-spending#:~:text=Government%20Spending%20in%20Denmark%20averaged,the%20first%20quarter%20of%201991 https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/government-spending#:~:.... Here's social welfare use in the Netherlands: http://i.imgur.com/dqTa8d4.png http://i.imgur.com/dqTa8d4.png
- baybal2 5y ago> economic burdens that might very will permanently sink some European countries, given the differential levels of fertility between the native and introduced populations. And yes, EU needs productive people, I mean people who can breed well to repopulate its greying small towns. Native population wait until mid thirties, or not having any. A simple math tells you will soon run out of tax payers to support the government, and the government will collapse.
- jll29 5y agoIf they had decent WiFi (which they may not yet have), one could start a place for and run by geeks, say "Geektown". After the pandemic, I'll take many folks some time to be able to live without those daily Amazon deliveries again...
- tpmx 5y agoJudging from my youtube recommendations there are a number of brits/germans/etc moving to northern Sweden to buy cheap but now crappy houses that need a very large amount of work (foundation work/insulation/fixing various rotten wooden parts/sometimes even roof leaks/etc). They seem to be seeking a homestead/off-grid kind of life. I'm kind of skeptical on how they'll survive the coming winter, but we'll see. :) Good for them if they're able to fix those houses, I guess.
- throwaway984393 5y agoGreece has dirt cheap homes in some of the most beautiful vistas in the world. It is an administrative nightmare to buy the homes, however, and the country has no realtors. Bribery can be a necessity. But it can be an amazing place to live and extremely cheap by US standards.
- gjkood 5y agoI would recommend watching "The Durells in Corfu" for some wonderful stories about a British family living in a remote Greek village. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Masterpiece-Durrells-Corfu-Seasons-1-2/dp/B079PBNSKZ/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2CAR36VV21UBE&dchild=1&keywords=the+durells+at+corfu&qid=1635702587&sprefix=durells+at+cor%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/Masterpiece-Durrells-Corfu-Seasons-1-...
- jmercouris 5y agoRealtors exist in Greece, I’m not sure where you got your information that they do not.
- gjkood 5y agoI wonder how the availability of Starlink in the truly remote areas will make remote work more accessible. Of course being truly remote also means lack of accessibility to basic facilities that we take for granted. But there is a certain romanticism about being able to work remotely while enjoying the beautiful vistas.
- marban 5y agoSame for Japan https://blog.gaijinpot.com/buy-abandoned-house-in-japan/ https://blog.gaijinpot.com/buy-abandoned-house-in-japan/
- Factorium 5y agoI looked at doing this in Ukraine. Here you can buy 650m2 block of land on the outskirts (20-30minutes drive) of a 2nd tier city for about $10,000. However, I decided its better to just buy land in the USA instead for the following reasons: 1. Unless you can speak the language, or have a family connection to the workers, local tradespeople will overcharge you by 100%. If you don't speak the language, you'll need to hire a local project manager/translator anyway. 2. The selection of materials is very limited. 3. The pace of construction and design standards are stuck in the Soviet era. 4. There is nothing to do and no one who speaks English in these towns. 5. With the amount of time and money spent on building a nice house, paying a bit more for better land in a better area/country does not represent a large % increase in total costs. 6. Usually a lack of connectivity to one or more of electricity, gas, water, internet, sewer. 7. Due to the poor fertility rate of these countries, finding an eventual buyer for your house is going to be very difficult. Housing outside the cities of these countries is going to trend towards scrap value. 8. The higher latitude and lower average temperature mean either greater need for passivhaus-style design, or higher heating expenses. (Less of an issue in Italy). For example most of Ukraine is located at the same latitude as Northern Canada. 9. There's no mortgage system if you need to borrow money. If you live in one of these areas, its little different to living in a small town in the USA in terms of total housing cost. If you're willing to build something, you can design and build a simple ICF house, with off-grid electricity, geothermal heating, well water and septic system, and Starlink internet. Why go through all this trouble in Europe when you can still buy cheap, decent housing like this in the Midwest USA: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5017-Madison-St-Omaha-NE-68117/75887013_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5017-Madison-St-Omaha-NE-...
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoPeople are buying apartments in Valencia (300k is a lot for Spaniards but bargain bin tier for Dutch boomers) however who the hell wants to live in a remote Italian village? Location location location as estate agents say
- rsj_hn 5y ago> who the hell wants to live in a remote Italian village? I do. Those are very popular among tourists as you have beautiful countryside, mild weather, great food, clean air, and amazing sites to visit all around. Friend of mine bought a vacation home there (small village in Tuscany) and an invite is much sought after to go exploring the Tuscan countryside. I can see someone wanting to live there, especially if they work remote. The main problem is really lack of english, but for a young person Italian is pretty easy to pick up.