Baltimore, MD has $1 houses as well. They expect you to a certain number of upgrades on it within a specific time. Some say it is actually more expensive in the overall analysis than buying a regular house.
The Italian towns selling houses for €1
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Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#12A core idea is that a house sells for a positive value. But that presumption is likely false. Houses at unattractive places in poor condition might actually represent a negative value. As such, even 1 EUR houses might be severely over-valued. It should be interesting as tax code could also take that into consideration.
It's interesting as a thought experiment. You can easily make any house $1 with the "right" tax code. So I'm definitely curious about the situation here.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#13(Pretty sure there have been other HN threads about this, but I couldn't find them. Anyone?) Edit: thanks everybody! I bought one of Sicily's famous $1 homes and spent $446K renovating it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371806 - Dec 2024 (2 comments) Italian town is struggling to sell off its empty homes for one euro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812671 - March 2024 (28 comments) Old towns eager f…
It's been a very common thing to see over the years, the COVID outbreak was particularly bad in Italy so I guess that took away more of the elderly population while the younger population seek more security and middle class jobs in towns and cities.
The scheme started before covid. The migration from these areas to bigger cities have long been going on.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#14Great sales pitch, but this is a key excerpt:
> What was the catch? It seemed most municipalities required you to renovate the house within a couple of years of its purchase, and due to high levels of interest, the houses often went to auction, ultimately selling for much more than a single euro.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#15Baltimore, MD has $1 houses as well. They expect you to a certain number of upgrades on it within a specific time. Some say it is actually more expensive in the overall analysis than buying a regular house.
Can I turn them into server farms?
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#16Baltimore, MD has $1 houses as well. They expect you to a certain number of upgrades on it within a specific time. Some say it is actually more expensive in the overall analysis than buying a regular house.
Can I turn them into server farms?
Sure, if you can design a server farm with no copper wiring in it
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#17A core idea is that a house sells for a positive value. But that presumption is likely false. Houses at unattractive places in poor condition might actually represent a negative value. As such, even 1 EUR houses might be severely over-valued. It should be interesting as tax code could also take that into consideration.
There are indeed many places where the land value is effectively zero and the building is also worthless. But offers like these often have other obligations so the 1 euro cost is not the all in price.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#18Oldest mention I found was from 2008:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7596341.stm
After that it seems there has been quite lot of uptake. But idea was always the same price is token payment, and there is requirement to repair these very old and very dilatated houses.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#19I come from a small rural place in Norway, at the lowest point the municipalities started selling old houses for next to nothing, as in equivalent to $100. No strings attached.
But of course, the person living there would have to pay (equivalent to) $1000-$1500 / year on fees related to water, waste management, cleaning of chimney, etc. And you'd probably like to have the house insured.
And these weren't nice new houses. Mostly shacks built right after ww2, some not having been lived in for 10-15-20 years. Complete renovation projects.
What would happen is that some people from out of town would buy a house, plan to renovate it, but then mostly do nothing. Then many would forget to pay the municipality fees, often times for years. Eventually the unpaid bills would be sent to collection agency, and then a forced sale on behalf of the creditors. But now the houses were in even worse shape, so no one would purchase them at all.
Eventually they'd be torn down.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#20A core idea is that a house sells for a positive value. But that presumption is likely false. Houses at unattractive places in poor condition might actually represent a negative value. As such, even 1 EUR houses might be severely over-valued. It should be interesting as tax code could also take that into consideration.
There are indeed many places where the land value is effectively zero and the building is also worthless. But offers like these often have other obligations so the 1 euro cost is not the all in price.
Or even negative. If there is some entity that can force the buildings to be demolished by the owner.