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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

#81

Post by toyg »

evanelias wrote: post #76

> The €1 house project seems to have been the brainchild of Vittorio Sgarbi, the Italian art critic and TV personality turned mayor of the small, rapidly depopulating town of Salemi, Sicily. Not coincidentally, that's the same guy and same town that acquired the massive film collection from legendary NYC chain Kim's Video [1], ostensibly to create a cultural hub in Salemi, but instead they let the collection rot. The…

Vittorio Sgarbi is a... character. A young university professor in history of the arts, he earned his initial fame with expletive-laden TV monologues in which he'd talk about classic paintings, or rather used them as an excuse to say whatever he wanted to say about the world and politics. Then proceeded to use his fame to kickstart a long political career among Italian right-wing parties, serving as a minister at national level before running for mayor in a few different places. In-between, he dated pornstars, partied hard, verbally abused a lot of people, and generally lived a dissolute life.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#82

Post by yobbo »

thefz wrote: post #53
akudha wrote: post #30

Earlier 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?

1. Accept lower temperature in the stonework/bricks/concrete

2. Use heatpumps, wood furnaces, accumulator tanks

3. Only heat the rooms you use when you use them.

It's very doable, especially in Italy.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#83

Post by bpt3 »

db48x wrote: post #80
bpt3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far from a union sympathizer, but you've already moved from your initial, absurdly simplistic description of the issue to a major symptom (decades of ineffective government, ranging from benign incompetence to intentional malice). Also, the rents in nearby areas to the north are far from outrageous (hint: there are no major cities for a couple hours), and the Baltimore metro area continues to grow because the are…

He did say that the city is badly regulated…

It's poorly managed, but not due to over-regulation IMO as the other commenter implied (not to say that there aren't some areas where deregulation could improve things).

The core issue today is that the population of Baltimore consumes significantly more resources than they produce because the city managed to drive away a significant portion of the middle class and the government is so inefficent, leaving too many people who are unable to move, are actively part of the problem, or are one of the few that is so wealthy that they are largely unaffected by the happenings around them.

How it got there is a much more complex story than "regulation and unions" but is to some extent irrelevant if they want to look forward to solve the major systemic issues that exist.

If they want the city to recover, they need to provide the basic social services that most people want: clean streets, physical safety, acceptable schools, and minimal interference in everyday life. That has not been a priority of any city government for decades, though I think the current mayor is trying.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#84

Post by BobaFloutist »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #79
BobaFloutist wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think a well placed billionaire (or even a "mere" 10s-100s millionaire) could do something interesting there. Buy up 10-20 vacant houses, renovate them, finance a couple of "fun" local entertainment businesses (idk craft breweries or barcades or minigolf or climbing gyms or escape rooms or whatever would be enough of a draw), fund a local arts/music program, and start a small tech/finance/consulting business in…

Why, when you can just buy the entire island of Lanai?

I dunno, just seems like a more interesting, fun project.

I dunno, I'm sure it's confirmation/reporting bias, but it feels like all of the very wealthy aren't interested in projects that don't give them some huge amount of control or dominance. Like, middle class people will invest and collaborate in public parks, small businesses, a boat, a shared vacation rental. Musicians and athletes are often invested in giving back and revitalizing their home town, or they'll start lifestyle brands or support or invest in upcoming talent or community space. Sure you have plenty of philanthropy and foundations, but I feel like you never see self-interested personal projects that are interesting or fun these days. It's all boring rule-the-world garbage. The whole tech-city in Sonoma county is a good example, why not take over a town in the Valley or in the Sierras and put in fiber and a subsidized grocery store and try to create a small proof of concept first? But no, it always has to be the biggest shiniest bullshit.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#85

Post by devilbunny »

thefz wrote: post #53
akudha wrote: post #30

Earlier 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?

One very interesting idea I read about long ago was the use of low-power microwave emitters to make rooms feel much warmer - the author of the piece described the feeling as "like stepping into sunlight" when the emitters turned on.

Makes the 2.4 GHz spectrum pretty unusable, though.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#86

Post by dougdonohoe »

guywithahat wrote: post #51
jonstewart wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would argue it really isn't. Massachusetts still has some of the strongest union protections, is one of the most unionized states, and Baltimore has worked hard to maintain an incompetent government for decades. Given the outrageous rents in nearby states and cities Baltimore should have kept growing but has instead shrunk to a half million. The rust belt as a whole was primarily just companies escaping unions. Che…

Baltimore is in Maryland.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#87

Post by Scramblejams »

A long time ago I did some IT work for a real estate agent in the US that dealt in international properties. I was stoked on a listing he had up for a beautiful French chateau for $40k. He told me to forget it. “It’ll need completely new electrical, all new plumbing. And that might not sound so bad, but just wait till you actually try to get the work done by locals on time and on budget. It won’t happen.”

I took his advice.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#88

Post by khazhoux »

munificent wrote: post #48

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 a…

I think you started on right track but reached a very wrong conclusion.

* Deep-seated unease: Yes

* No way to solve it except "buy a thing": No

Living in an Italian town is obviously a romantic escapist fantasy. No more Teams meetings. Instead you just pick up your daily loaf of bread from the baker down the twisty walkway. All your mundane troubles are gone.

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#89

Post by SURA »

devilbunny wrote: post #85
thefz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea of the thermal inertia of a castle? How are you going to heat it to an acceptable living temperature?

One very interesting idea I read about long ago was the use of low-power microwave emitters to make rooms feel much warmer - the author of the piece described the feeling as "like stepping into sunlight" when the emitters turned on. Makes the 2.4 GHz spectrum pretty unusable, though.

Warmth from the inside out, to be honest I'm a little scared

Re: The Italian towns selling houses for €1

#90

Post by rtpg »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #77
bpt3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd think a well placed billionaire (or even a "mere" 10s-100s millionaire) could do something interesting there. Buy up 10-20 vacant houses, renovate them, finance a couple of "fun" local entertainment businesses (idk craft breweries or barcades or minigolf or climbing gyms or escape rooms or whatever would be enough of a draw), fund a local arts/music program, and start a small tech/finance/consulting business in…

> finance a couple of "fun" local entertainment businesses (idk craft breweries or barcades or minigolf or climbing gyms or escape rooms or whatever would be enough of a draw), fund a local arts/music program, and start a small tech/finance/consulting business in town

People who do this kind of stuff without much personal involvement get surrounded by consultants who do lowest common denominator nonsense with everyone taking their 30% extra on top of costs (because the person paying isn't paying attention!), and you end up with a bunch of stupid gastropubs that aren't profitable, and your IT company doesn't have any local talent.

Almost every restaurant and business that people actually like survives by having some owner put a bunch of energy into it. I don't think there are that many people who would be willing do that... and if you pay people to do it for you the economics really stop working extremely quickly.

At one point the billionaire will be tired of dropping $5 million a year for their pubs that nobody actually cares about

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