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don't fall for it. The market says these aren't worth buying. Don't go against the market.
> The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the street and says, "Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!"
> Without even looking, his older and wiser colleague replies, "Nonsense. If there had been a twenty-dollar lying on the street, someone would have already picked it up by now."
Italians are well known for being scammers, lazy and unprofessional. If you buy a place there - you are crazy.
When you read the words "$ house" the words you should read in your mind are "dilapidated building in a municipality with crazy back-tax scheme that would make the California RMV proud and probably also regulatory capture by relevant trade(s) that inflates the cost of repairing the building"
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
You wanna know how much a house costs look at the average income of the working households in the neighborhood. What they can afford is about what it costs.
Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
There are more properties available in Italy that would not likely require 200k button the order of 10s of thousands. Maybe that’s your ticket?
People here say these are remote but that is really mostly just how "spoiled" (in quotes because I'm "spoiled" that way too!) Germans are with commute. You can be 1 hour drive away (including traffic) from many fairly central places in Berlin & have very cheap housing outside the city (partially this is because traffic is actually not that bad in Berlin & partially because it's in the middle of an otherwise fairly empty & large plain[0]).
In comparison nowhere within reasonable 1 hour drive from central London is cheap, nor from SF/LA/NYC or heck even Tel Aviv.
This video [0] "The Truth Behind Italy's $1 Homes" by Business Insider, explains the concept, the motivation behind it and how these houses will cost you way more than 1$ in fees and restoration efforts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2vtDLTAgM
Transcript? Rather not watch a talking head.
There are hundreds of amazing ruins around Australia that the land owners can't justify renovating because the costs to do it justice are too much. Huge shame.
don't fall for it. The market says these aren't worth buying. Don't go against the market.
The market (especially in real estate) is not totally frictionless and arbitrage-free. Plus people can have genuinely different valuations for consumable assets (like housing) - that's the entire point of a market, to facilitate trade where both sides make a gain on the transaction. I don't think anyone would buy these houses as an investment, but if you wanted a quiet house in the countryside and spoke Italian alrea…
don't fall for it. The market says these aren't worth buying. Don't go against the market.
> There's an old joke that has two economists coming across a $20 bill on the sidewalk, which goes: > The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the street and says, "Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!" > Without even looking, his older and wiser colleague replies, "Nonsense. If there had been a twenty-dollar lying on the street, someone would have already picked it up by now."
This video [0] "The Truth Behind Italy's $1 Homes" by Business Insider, explains the concept, the motivation behind it and how these houses will cost you way more than 1$ in fees and restoration efforts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2vtDLTAgM
Transcript? Rather not watch a talking head.
Listing $1
Taxes $400
Deposit $5,600
Renovations $60,000
Flights $10,000
They talk about some of these homes requiring at least $17,000 of renovations to be done.
The houses are sometimes auctioned off, starting at $1, but they may be sold for more than $20,000.
The deposit is refundable if you start renovating within a year after buying the house.
If after a decade of reading about $500 houses in Detroit people haven't figured out what "cost of compliance" means then they probably never will at this point. When you read the words "$ house" the words you should read in your mind are "dilapidated building in a municipality with crazy back-tax scheme that would make the California RMV proud and probably also regulatory capture by relevant trade(s) that inflates t…
Less extreme example: When people sell their house 30% below market rate then you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you have to spend that saved 30% on remodeling the home. Cheap properties usually have problems but estimating how much it costs to fix them is difficult if you are not the owner. However, the owner knows that it would take X amount of money to repair the home so he deducts X from the market price to clear the sale.
When you're saving 99% expect to replace up to 99% of the house.
The only real way to save money is by doing the repairs/remodeling yourself but that's basically a second job.