The Italian towns selling houses for €1
89 comments
·July 16, 2025TrackerFF
larsiusprime
Maintenance of old crumbling European castles in inconvenient locations are also often famously bad deals for the owner.
akudha
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?
bee_rider
I could see the appeal of a shack, but I suspect a castle would be quite a maintainence burden.
I guess nowadays one would not need to employ as large a retinue… but you don’t get to tax the local villages anymore. Seems like a wash.
thefz
Do you have any idea of the thermal inertia of a castle? How are you going to heat it to an acceptable living temperature?
ASalazarMX
"I couldn't afford to live in the city, so I bought a castle".
umeshunni
Ha, yes. I found dozens of articles about castle renovations gone awry
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/no-way-back-1-15m-120000548....
tough
so how do you make it right, just bull doze it?
guywithahat
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 completely impossible to do business in or live in, and the city collapsed. They also sold $1 row houses, which should have been a dream come true, except in practice the issue was never the house, it was the city government.
Cities offering $1 houses just means the government has ignored the actual issues for decades and is probably incompetent.
al_borland
> was once referred to as the Paris of America
Interesting. I heard that Detroit was known as the Paris of the West. Looking it up, it seems this was a fairly common phrase applied to many cities over the years. [0]
Detroit also has had $1 homes, but as with everywhere else, that isn’t the end of the story.
jonstewart
The history of Baltimore is a far more complex story than "regulation and unions" results in "and the city collapsed."
guywithahat
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. Cheaper labor may have been an incentive but it fundamentally started with companies who were forced to move production, and US regulation which prevented them from benefiting from local supply chains once they became unionized.
CaptWillard
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.
mastax
Sounds like there were many strings attached actually.
tshaddox
Apparently not very strongly attached.
8n4vidtmkvmk
And that's why they should have put the "must renovate" clause!
RandomBacon
With a bond that can be returned with proof of renovation.
dang
(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 for new blood sell Italy homes for $1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29058053 - Oct 2021 (124 comments)
1-Euro Houses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24195000 - Aug 2020 (190 comments)
We bought a $1 house in Italy. Here's what happened next - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552701 - Nov 2019 (3 comments)
tensor
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.
computator
> 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.”
coredog64
This looks like a follow-up to the initial flurry of interest. Have seen a few YT videos of this process, and my recollection is that the overall cost was pretty hefty once you factored in required renovation.
gilleain
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812671
"one euro" was my query
Popeyes
It's been a very common thing to see over the years, the COVID outbreak was particularly bad in Italy so I guess that took away more of the elderly population while the younger population seek more security and middle class jobs in towns and cities.
Ekaros
The scheme started before covid. The migration from these areas to bigger cities have long been going on.
lormayna
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.
bombcar
I saw a video on these and that was basically the takeaway - fun if you have money to burn, but anyone who is thinking about it and familiar with the place will do other things instead.
amarant
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.
foobarian
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?
bpt3
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.
f1shy
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.
BobaFloutist
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 town. How much cash investment does it realistically take to make land appreciate even just enough to make it worth it?
And I'm not talking Baltimore, which has a population of 600k and just a lot more baked in problems, I'm talking declining European "villages".
tossandthrow
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.
m8rl
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.
larsiusprime
There are indeed many places where the land value is effectively zero and the building is also worthless. But offers like these often have other obligations so the 1 euro cost is not the all in price.
technothrasher
Most dramatic example of this I've seen is the US Navy selling off their decommissioned aircraft carriers for $0.01. But, as you say, the purchase price is not the real expense of buying one. For these ships, it's the millions of dollars it takes to tow it to your scrap yard and tear it apart.
Ekaros
Or even negative. If there is some entity that can force the buildings to be demolished by the owner.
arcticfox
It's interesting as a thought experiment. You can easily make any house $1 with the "right" tax code. So I'm definitely curious about the situation here.
HPsquared
Reminds me of the negative oil prices during lockdown.
yieldcrv
> Imagine the following...you pay $500 today and commit to receiving an escort at your house in 15 days. Cos your wife is traveling. This is called a futures contract.
> Unfortunately, lockdown came and your wife will be home for the next 60 days.
> You do not want this woman to show up at your house at all and try to pass this futures contract to someone else.
> Only you cannot sell this commitment because nobody can receive the escort at home anymore. Everyone is in full storage with wife.
> To make matters worse, not even the pimp (Chicago Mercantile exchange) has more room to receive girls because his house is crowded with girls.
> So you will pay anyone just to take the girl off your hands.
2020 copypasta, because its more relatable than futures and of course, "sex work is work" an inclusive phrase for the workers that choose that trade, immunizing us from criticism for making the analogy at all, hurray!
ridgewell
>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.
This reminds me of an incident in Vancouver, where the city sought to expropriate single room occupancy (SRO) hotels (read: slums). They felt that each property was worth negative value, but they estimated the value as $1 because:
> We are unaware of any instances of property being transferred with a negative value. Therefore, a value of $1.00 is concluded for the subject property with the knowledge that a purchaser would be required to assume the financial obligations with either holding or demolishing and redeveloping the property.
[1] https://council.vancouver.ca/20191106/documents/cfsc2.pdf
riedel
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 than selling for the lowest possible price that all stupid booking systems accept and that dictate what we may do.
mattlutze
If geography is a factor in the value of an asset, being able to move that asset allows you the ability to effect change in the value of it. I.e., my car might sell for x in one city, but only 0.7x in another.
As an immovable asset's value cannot be changed in the same ways as a movable one's, perhaps there are different ways to tax it that are still fair, or encourage positive social effects.
mlinhares
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.
riedel
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.
asplake
As they say here in the UK: Location, location, location. Or there’s Mark Twain: Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
chirau
Baltimore, MD has $1 houses as well. They expect you to a certain number of upgrades on it within a specific time. Some say it is actually more expensive in the overall analysis than buying a regular house.
arthurcolle
Can I turn them into server farms?
jboggan
Sure, if you can design a server farm with no copper wiring in it
chupasaurus
Golden wires in $1 house sounds about right.
bee_rider
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 wanted to live with your servers? Would a server farm on the first floor, and an apartment on the second count, I wonder? Free radiant floor heating, if so…
arthurcolle
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
neutronicus
Almost certainly not, $1 houses in Baltimore at this point (there were some good deals decades ago) are often ones requiring significant work just to be weather-tight, structurally sound, etc.
And of course it becomes clear that no one is there and they are full of valuable hardware some problems may result, as the other commenter points out.
Lastly, our electricity rates are almost certainly not cost-effective for this purpose.
monster_truck
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
arthurcolle
Can I daisy chain a few of them together at least?
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.
khazhoux
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.
frereubu
Great sales pitch, but this is a key excerpt:
> What was the catch? It seemed most municipalities required you to renovate the house within a couple of years of its purchase, and due to high levels of interest, the houses often went to auction, ultimately selling for much more than a single euro.
edu
How much is "much more than a single euro"? 5000€ is much more than 1€, but still very cheap.
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.
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.
Ekaros
Oldest mention I found was from 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7596341.stm
After that it seems there has been quite lot of uptake. But idea was always the same price is token payment, and there is requirement to repair these very old and very dilatated houses.
hoppp
They been doing it for 10+ years
Gys
An additional benefit might be that many of these small villages have a tax advantage, created also for attracting foreigners. It is a flat fee of 7%. I cannot remember the name of this rule, but this is a link for example that I found: https://magictowns.it/the-definitive-2025-list-of-italy-7-ta...
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 houses. Mostly shacks built right after ww2, some not having been lived in for 10-15-20 years. Complete renovation projects.
What would happen is that some people from out of town would buy a house, plan to renovate it, but then mostly do nothing. Then many would forget to pay the municipality fees, often times for years. Eventually the unpaid bills would be sent to collection agency, and then a forced sale on behalf of the creditors. But now the houses were in even worse shape, so no one would purchase them at all.
Eventually they'd be torn down.