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The Italian towns selling houses for €1

theguardian.com

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Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#41

Post by amarant »

lormayna wrote: post #29

Italian here. This is mostly a marketing initiative. If you buy those houses, you need to completely renew them using local companies and with a lot of regulation. You will probably spend 100k doing that. If you buy another house, in the same village, maybe you will pay 5k but you have more freedom in the renewal process and you will end spending less.

I looked into some of these a few years back, when the initiative was new. I remember one house in particular that I found very interesting, an old monastery, iirc somewhere near Parma?

I couldn't afford the renovations needed, but it came with several acres of land and generally seemed like a pretty decent deal!

Then there were a bunch of huts in some abandoned Sicilian village that seemed less attractive, if probably cheaper to renovate then the 5 story 14th century monastery.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#42

Post by brabel »

It was also possible to buy land in Sweden for 1 krona (less than 20 cents) some time ago. This article tells what happened (in Swedish): https://www.livetiskaraborg.se/berattelser/tomter-for-1-kron...

Summary, they only sold 6 and 20 remain unsold. Most people are not serious about it because they learn they have to build a house and live in it within 2 years of the purchase (if I remember correctly).

I believe Australia also has done this for ages to try and avoid country towns dying, with mixed success.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#43

Post by jonstewart »

guywithahat wrote: post #35
TrackerFF wrote: post #19

I 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 hou…

There's an irony in that there is often a regulatory issue with the local government, not just some "shortage of humans". The same thing happened in one of the most populated regions in the US. The area between Boston/NYC and DC, containing Baltimore, was once a city of a million people. It contains an underground subway and was once referred to as the Paris of America, however through regulation and unions it became…

The history of Baltimore is a far more complex story than "regulation and unions" results in "and the city collapsed."

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#44

Post by mlinhares »

riedel wrote: post #23
tossandthrow wrote: post #7

A 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.

Why should immovable property differ from moveable property. How many things are sold for 1 EUR, just because everything else would be too difficult. Often those things have value that is only specific to the buyer and have negative value for the seller. The process for declaring something actually worthless and paying for waste removal is so much, but also gifting something to someone is often so much more difficult…

In this specific case the 1 EUR home is a blight in the community that makes the whole place less attractive, so it makes sense you'd have to "pay" someone to take it and fix it because it creates negative value for the rest of the place.

That is likely to lead to moral hazard issues though so i doubt it would work in the real world.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#45

Post by m8rl »

tossandthrow wrote: post #7

A 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.

Yes, exactly. In Germany a house is to start with rather a negative value, only the ground counts. You pay for the ground minus the costs for demolishing the house, or bring it a a current standard, or up to your taste.

Of course you will be able to still an get a positive value for an (old) house if it's somehow an enthusiast's object, who wants exactly this: An old Italian small village house or a German architect's house from the 70ies.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#46

Post by tensor »

dang wrote: post #2

(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…

The article headline on the $446k renovation cost is very misleading. They did not spend that much on the $1 (which they actually payed 6,000 euro for). They ALSO bought the property next door for 22k euro and combine the two into a literal mansion with four bedrooms, two terraces, sauna, library etc etc etc. $446k for all that is super cheap.

edit: the last link is also a lie. They did not buy a 1 euro house, they bought a 10k euro house (presumably not part of the 1 euro program) and renovated it themselves.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#47

Post by riedel »

mlinhares wrote: post #44
riedel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should immovable property differ from moveable property. How many things are sold for 1 EUR, just because everything else would be too difficult. Often those things have value that is only specific to the buyer and have negative value for the seller. The process for declaring something actually worthless and paying for waste removal is so much, but also gifting something to someone is often so much more difficult…

In this specific case the 1 EUR home is a blight in the community that makes the whole place less attractive, so it makes sense you'd have to "pay" someone to take it and fix it because it creates negative value for the rest of the place. That is likely to lead to moral hazard issues though so i doubt it would work in the real world.

All I am saying is that while this makes sense, there is probably some stupid IT system or regulation wording, rather some moral constraints that resets things to 1 EUR.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#48

Post by munificent »

There's a subtext here that I think is telling.

A lot of people feel a deep-seated unsease in their life. We're a couple of generations in to advertising and consumerism taking over the world and when people are presented with a problem, they often can't imagine any way to solve it except to buy a thing.

Modern society has trained people to limit their sense of agency down to only purchasing decisions. Then people are surprised when yanking the "buy" lever over and over doesn't make them happy.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#50

Post by tough »

umeshunni wrote: post #28
larsiusprime wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintenance of old crumbling European castles in inconvenient locations are also often famously bad deals for the owner.

Ha, yes. I found dozens of articles about castle renovations gone awry https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/no-way-back-1-15m-120000548.... https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/1212/12121.html

so how do you make it right, just bull doze it?
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