Lately there have been stories about towns in Italy that are offering to sell anyone a house for 1 Euro if you promise to fix it up and live there. Apparently, this is getting a lot of traction in the media and from what I have read, a lot of people are applying. As an investor, I was curious if investors are being welcomed to buy and renovate these homes, or do the municipalities offering these deals prefer families that can move in and live there permanently.
I think an investor would be able to offer many skills that these towns might be interested in, such as a proven ability to get renovations completed, an ability to effectively market the property and get a family or couple moved in. Maybe the home could become a platform for increased tourism through short term rentals. An investor can work with the city leaders on these and other ideas. And everyone can benefit.
I guess there is only one way to find out. I’ll choose a few towns, fill out some of the required applications and see what they say. If it looks promising, I will go visit the towns and see what kinds of properties are available and see what condition they are in. Hopefully, I can come up with some numbers on what it would take to renovate the house, and then what it could sell for or what sort of rent it could generate. I also will compare total renovation costs with the sale prices of properties in good condition already on the market for sale.
These are just some of the towns having a 1 euro buyer program. I am going to focus on these towns as they are more centrally located.
- Patrica (one and half hours from Rome)
- Zungoli (near Naples)
- Carrega Ligure (North Italy)
- Montieri (near Florence)
- Cantiano (near San Marino)
- Lecce Nei Marsi (near Rome)
I found a website casea1euro.it. It’s in Italian, but at the top, click the second link for CASE A 1 EURO. Click that heading and on the new page, scroll down until you see the list of towns on the right. Each has a link for the specific information for that town. I clicked on the one for Patrica and got a page with a large link for specific information for forms and email addresses of the people involved in the Patrica program.
For Patrica, there are 4 forms providing information and an application. It’s all in Italian, so I am going to send an email first and see if they have any interest in helping me with the forms. If I need to, I can translate them and fill them out. They don’t look too bad.
Here’s what I emailed, translated with Google translate into Italian. Note: I wasn’t even sure how to start and end a formal email in Italian, so I searched and found a good website that provided information on even this simple topic. This is a little trickier than I thought. Should be interesting.
For the attention of the office of the commune of Patrica,
I am a real estate investor from the U.S. and am interested in your offer to sell homes in your town for 1 euro. For the right property, I believe I can renovate the property and then get a family or retired couple to move into the property full time.
Would you be interested in working with investors such as myself? If so, can you tell me what forms I should complete and who I should email them to?
Yours Sincerely
William Reynolds
May 26 Update:
No response from my email to Patrica on May 9. So, I will try sending a similar email to my other choices. I’m doing an email first because some municipalities don’t have any forms, some have just one property, and others have multiple forms that I don’t want to fill out unless I know they are OK with an investor buying their properties.
May 29 Update:
Got a response from Cantiano! Here is the link to their informative website on their program. Cantiano 1 euro property program It was in Italian, of course, but I copied and pasted the text into a translation website and basically read that they do indeed have a program and it is just getting started. They offer a guideline pdf in English too. They are still finalizing the documents and forms that an investor would need to fill out. But, it sounds like they mean business, and it seems this town might be a pretty cool place to check out. So, I will wait for the forms. I am most interested in seeing a listing of the properties so I can do some further investigations. At this point though, I will plan to visit this city and do an inspection of some of the properties. I hope to be able to provide a good estimate of the costs and potential financial return for some of these properties, And also get a better idea of the overall process.
