Live data from Hacker News

1-Euro Houses

1eurohouses.com

31–40 of 196 posts

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#31
post #17

I looked into this pretty extensively when Italy announced it and like most government initiatives there it's a borderline scam and was done for the PR not because it makes sense. Each of these houses requires extensive renovation work, usually of the type that can only be performed by an expensive specialized contractor. Besides the expected costs for this work (Which will be at least 20k Euros up to 200k or more) y…

In theory, could someone who wanted to spend a year in Italy buy one of these houses for 1 Euro and just not initiate any of that repair work?

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#32
post #15
post #5

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…

Move to Italy and buy one of the €1 houses in the article? The language is easy for you, and depending where you are in Spain, it might be a closer move than to other parts of Spain. Of course there's a catch, but if what you really want is to own your own home and you're flexible about where you live, you're the right person for this kind of initiative.

I think you're dismissing the tax implications too easily. Unless they are waiving the taxes you're still going to pay a at least 10k€ just for the title change alone.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Heck, there are a lot of properties in Germany (where there are actually jobs) that would require less than €200k. 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…

>Heck, there are a lot of properties in Germany (where there are actually jobs) that would require less than €200k

Do you have any examples? I could never find anything larger than a matchbox in a village for under $200k in Germany.

Anything decent I found in the outskirts of any big city was over 500k.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Heck, there are a lot of properties in Germany (where there are actually jobs) that would require less than €200k. 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…

Hey, are you up for chatting more about Berlin houses? I'm Dutch and my German is ... not too great. But I am mildly interested in it. So if you're up for it, my email is in my profile.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#35
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Heck, there are a lot of properties in Germany (where there are actually jobs) that would require less than €200k. 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…

Germany is a good choice. Very low cost of living relative to job opportunities.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#36
post #10
post #5

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…

This is the problem with a lack of land and property taxation. Elderly people will hold onto assets forever, until death essentially, whilst the building and society collapses around them. Meanwhile they demand a huge amount of welfare and healthcare services without paying into the system. At least the land tax system in the USA encourages downsizing and efficient allocation of this resource.

Most of the USA doesn't have a land tax. Instead, there is a property tax, which is determined by what's sitting on the land.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#37

don't fall for it. The market says these aren't worth buying. Don't go against the market.

It really depends on the price. At 150k€ they're not worth buying, at 1€ plus taxes, deposits and various renovation works... Maybe.

One might get a nice vacation house for cheap.

One of such houses (not those shown in the video) was actually near the places where I grew up. Such place is nowadays decently connected (still sub-optimal, but decent). If somebody was forward-looking enough could have bought property for extremely cheap and would be working from there now.

In my opinion, one of the big factors in evaluating a house is the nearby infrastructure, mainly connectivity and railroads / public transport in general. You'll need those anyway. If they're either not present or subpar then you should value the property less imho.

Edit: decently connected means a fttc (fiber to the cabinet, copper on last mile) connection, max speeds being 1gbps down / 100 mbps up, for 25-35 €/month -- you'll never reach such speeds of course, but even one tenth of that would still be usable for most things.

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#39
post #28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transcript? Rather not watch a talking head.

There's some listing of the expenses being done at https://youtu.be/nP2vtDLTAgM?t=412 Listing $1 Taxes $400 Deposit $5,600 Renovations $60,000 Flights $10,000 Earlier they talk about taxes + fees totalling about $3,000. A few seconds after listing the expenses they cite a Forbes article, where one residents expects to spend $124,000 to renovate their place. They talk about some of these homes requiring at least $17,0…

Thank you kind sir or madam or alien!

Re: 1-Euro Houses

#40
Most of those 1-Euro houses are in Sicily, Italy. This is connected to the fact, that "la famiglia" ("the family", mafia) is controlling everything in society. They will even give you presents worth more than 1 Euro, because they know they will get every cent back from you. If you stay long enough there, they will give you orders (like "you need to make this and this") and if you refuse to do it, they will - and I am not kidding or making it up - just kill your children (if you have them). So - no - I would not buy this 1-Euro house in Sicily, Italy. It is cheaper to go to the hotel there than to own anything... People are relocating from Sicily because of this problem...
Post reply on HN