Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I turn them into server farms?
I would be impressed if you could get the power company to give you more than 100A at any single residential address in those zips
Can I daisy chain a few of them together at least?
The Italian towns selling houses for €1
61–70 of 131 posts
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#62I 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…
And that's why they should have put the "must renovate" clause!
With a bond that can be returned with proof of renovation.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I turn them into server farms?
I don’t think it is designed for that. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/how-to-buy-baltimore-city-1-d... > "All vacant sales must be redeveloped for residential or mixed-use. That includes residential or green space. So, this program is not for commercial properties. It's only for residential properties at this point in time," Department of Housing and Community Development official Kate Edwards said. Maybe if you want…
Yeah, we could dual-use the server farms, I am open to this. We could maybe do a sustainable living co-op with free heating and solar panels to sell back energy to the grid. We could transform Baltimore into the city of the future
I will look into this
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#64Italian 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.
Even 5k for a house and some land seems like a pretty decent deal. What are the strings attached? Is there local mob extorting you if you move there?
The catch is that the entire area is in decline and there's little to do for social activities or employment.
Declining cities in the US have tried this, and they are not places people generally want to live. This is the same scenario, just in a location that is romanticized by most of the western world instead of Baltimore, MD.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#65I found the author's commentary on their goals the most interesting part of the article: "We’d spent our careers working in schools and nonprofits with young immigrants, and, ..., we had no intention of leaving a life of service behind. Above all, though, what we wanted was an environment in which we could spend a lot of time writing and afford to do it. But Ben had another non-negotiable of his own: proximity to sur…
I don’t think writing is a particularly luxurious profession anymore. Most of us in tech make maybe 5x what a typical writer would make from writing.
It is ironic/interesting that they spent so much time helping immigrants before becoming immigrants though.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might still be appealing to young people, especially those who do not like the noise/pollution of big cities and can't afford them?
Do you have any idea of the thermal inertia of a castle? How are you going to heat it to an acceptable living temperature?
If you spend 700k eur on heating instead of on the purchase price you can stay warm for quite a while
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#67I 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…
Sounds like there were many strings attached actually.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
Indeed, with five seasons of The Wire, no city has had it's decline so eloquently illustrated.
Or at least it's continued decline. Great show. All the pieces matter.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even 5k for a house and some land seems like a pretty decent deal. What are the strings attached? Is there local mob extorting you if you move there?
The catch is that the entire area is in decline and there's little to do for social activities or employment. Declining cities in the US have tried this, and they are not places people generally want to live. This is the same scenario, just in a location that is romanticized by most of the western world instead of Baltimore, MD.
And also not a good idea to think as a retirement place. Probably no big hospital near.
There is a reason why people do bot want to live there.
Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1
#70(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 b…
> We bought a $1 house in Italy. Here’s what happened next (CNN Travel article)
> the last link is also a lie
I was wondering if “lie” was too strong a word, but no, CNN is straight up lying in article’s title. Deep into the article they admit it:
“I’ll be honest, we didn’t buy a €1 house,” he says. “We were shown something like 25 old buildings, some badly in need of repair, so at the end we opted for a three-room decent building for €10,000 and I invested more money in the renovation.”