Was Italy’s $1 Home Scheme Worth It? | True Cost | Insider News

The $1 property scheme attracted people from all over the world to buy old homes in dying Italian towns. But did it work — and how much did they really spend? We spoke to Tam and Gary Holm (https://www.youtube.com/@TamandGaryHolm) and Danny McCubbin (https://instagram.com/dannyforgood) to find out.

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00:00 – Intro
01:02 – Meet Tam And Gary
02:00 – Their Home In Sambuca
03:28 – The Transformation
03:49 – The History Of The 1 Euro Home Scheme
05:54 – Meet Danny In Mussomeli
07:10 – Look Around Danny’s House
08:14 – The Deputy Mayor
09:06 – Did The 1 Euro Scheme Work?
09:44 – Danny’s Good Kitchen
10:55 – Tam And Gary At The Winery
12:33 – Top Tips For Potential Buyers
12:36 – How Much Did They Spend?
13:31 – Credits

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Was Italy’s $1 Home Scheme Worth It? | True Cost | Insider News

Imagine paying as little as €1 for a home like this that’s what happened in Italy a few years ago in parts of Italy they are practically giving houses away the plan was to inject life and money back into dying towns but for many foreign buyers it wasn’t smooth

Sailing we met Tamara and Gary Holm in 2019 when they had just bought their home in Sicily words are failing me the couple had their work cut out for them it seemed the house had gone untouched since the 1960s oh this place is a lot we went back to Sicily to see the

Transformation and find out exactly how much they spent on it okay let’s talk money because that’s what everybody wants to know how much did this really cost so did the Euro home scheme work so a lot of my friends were saying to me look it seems like a scam and it’s it’s

Probably too good to be true and Beyond the1 price how much did buyers actually end up Spending okay we here via Delino we made it we got the keys this was Tamara and Gary Holm in 2019 the Lock Works they began their search for a sicilian home like many others after seeing the media hype surrounding the scheme we heard about it through the uh

CNN article so I think we definitely had some doubts of like are they really Selling Houses for a dollar the couple narrowed their search to the town of sambuka in central Sicily like hundreds of towns across Italy its population had been shrinking for decades as younger Generations left the

Countryside for bigger cities in search of work originally the local government put up 16 homes in sambuka on sale for € Euro most sold for that amount but some in better condition went to auction that’s what happened in Tam and Gary’s case yeah Mei they bid €5,000 for a house and lost

What they ended up buying was this I kind of knew that what we ended up buying was the one just in my gut a more than 600-year old townhouse with two bedrooms and a roof Terrace with views over the town WoW instead of1 it cost them 19,000 at first the couple thought

They’d just Spruce it up it’s simple I think and have a place livable in a few months we went in thinking we’re just going to paint it nice yeah just some new new Furniture some new appliances bada bing but they soon realized they’d have to spend a lot more money than

Planned yeah cuz it needed Plumbing it needed some electrical work there was definitely work that needed to be done on things like repairing a leaking roof that had cause mold throughout the house and moving walls to create a more modern living space on top of the €1 19,000 for the

House they paid €4,000 for the agent fee then a one-bedroom house next door came up for sale at €8,000 so then we had to buy that of course which added another €4,000 agenty to join the two properties they needed to tear down a 3ft stone wall the central staircase needed re-engineering

So then we have to go from from that lower point below here up into this room and up into this room and they put new support beams in place you got to make sure the place doesn’t fall down it’s been there forever you know and so that restructuring definitely was a bigger

Expense than we had anticipated after 4 years this this is how it’s been transformed refinished walls new tile in the bathrooms and a refurbished rooftop Terrace that will eventually hold an outdoor kitchen as for the total cost of the renovation we’ll let Tam and Gary do the math

Later it wasn’t just young people moving into the cities that emptied out towns Like sambuka An Earthquake shook Sicily in 1968 reducing thousands of properties to Rubble in leaving many more too unsafe to live in Devastation in Sicily where earthquakes have obliterated whole towns and Villages south of palmo the capital

Now more deaths and injuries have brought about a mass Exodus to the Italian Mainland some homes remained untouched for years new settlements were built outside but the Old Town centers were neglected Italy was also hit hard by the global economic crisis in 2008 many residents left the country

Altogether we need to improve our town so the more people come the better we have there not much work here right now Italy’s first one- year home scheme started in sememi a town in Western Sicily in 2008 the town had around 4,000 old crumbling Homes at the time many owners

Couldn’t afford the cost of Renovations or the tax they had to pay on a second property so they simply handed them over to the city to sell the scheme spread across Sicily to the mainland and by 2019 headlines were attracting buyers from around the world but as quickly as news spread

About the one Euro homes so did reports that the scheme might be too good to be true on top of the purchase price home buyers face added costs like legal expenses and agent fees that can range from 2,000 to 5,000 to make sure buyers actually stick around and invest in the property some

Schemes also ask for a deposit of several thousand which will be returned if the renovation work on the facade is completed within 3 years but there was also the state of these homes while some homes could be restored and made livable for between 15,000 and €30,000 some buyers spent as much as

€100,000 fixing them Up Danny mccubbin bought a one year-old house in the Sicilian town of muselli in January 2020 I wanted to live somewhere that was quiet and tranquil I guess the antithesis of London cuz I’d been there for 23 years Danny spent several months looking at more than two dozen homes before

Settling on this one which he bought for €1 but then the pandemic struck Danny was stuck in London and the property suffered and then when I returned to muselli there was a lot of extra damage that had been done to the house a leaky roof in the house next door caused a

Massive amount of water damage in Danny’s home the cost to renovate it went were doubled so this was the original 1 house that I bought you can see though because it hasn’t been looked after it’s just continuing to crumble Danny sold the house back to the

Agency for €1 so even though you might find one that’s a1o you’ve got to be really careful to look at you know what are the houses next door what conditions are they in this would be a money pit for Sure what he eventually found was this house I got this house for under 10 grand it’s in good condition you know I still need to do quite a bit of work on it the bathroom needs to be totally renovated it’s a really old bathroom the house was also furnished which is

Amazing and then we go up another level the main things for me and what you need to look out for is are the foundations good is the roof good the houses next door are they in good condition are there people living in the houses next door and this house to me um

It seemed to be fine and perhaps the best part of the house the stunning view over the Sicilian Countryside before buyers like Danny started snatching up homes in muselli the population had fallen to about 10,000 but if you counted all the empty homes there was enough space for

40,000 this is tati nelli the deputy mayor of muselli up he helped set up the one Euro scheme here in 2017 Gall town was um Hy so we want to repopulate that part of the town the plan was a success from the start in the first 5 years the town sold

300 houses now we can see a lot of people from all parts of the world and speak English speak French speak Spanish unlike sambuka muselli doesn’t sell Homes at auction their Euro homes all sell for the 1o ticket price but what are called premium homes can be bought anywhere from 5,000 to

€60,000 consider that at one Euro we have sold maybe 95% houses the influx of foreign buyers has brought a boost for local shops And Trades people the deputy mayor says 10 times more tourists are visiting them before the scheme started the Boost from new buyers on top of the money from the

EU and Italian government is allowing them to invest €70 million into the town plans include New Roads and a more than 1 million EUR remodeling of the Town Central Square Pata Umberto we want to invest in the old town of mus because we want to give more services to foreign

People that invest here we want to give more energy to this part of the Town Danny is already bringing energy back to muselli he opened the good Kitchen in July 2021 with the mission to provide free meals for the town’s most vulnerable populations like the elderly and the

Poor I wanted to start a project which would give me the inroads into life in this town he rents what was an abandoned store in the town’s made Square for only €1 150 a month it’s grown into this beautiful Hub in the town where we have cooking classes for

Kids we do a Sunday lunch where sometimes we have up to 50 people come and eat and sit down and share a meal together Danny collects surplus food from the surrounding area and delivers meals and produce to families and every week my friend there Angelo I meet with

Him every Thursday he collects a lot of surplus produce from that market when we visited Danny the good kitchen was celebrating two years of serving the community feels like the first year lots of people here lots of pasta everyone here with a good intention And back in sambuka Tam and Gary are slowly making [Applause] friends the couple lives in Los Angeles most of the time but they try to visit a couple times a year what this today they’re visiting their local Winery not only is the town beautiful they say the people are equally warm and

Inviting I think one of the things that I really fell in love with in sambuka was the people everyone has been super welcoming thanks to the one Euro scheme the town is home to a large International Community people that already lived here for generations and generations are so nice and so cool with

That and ready to like make friends with people from around the world I think they see the value in Outsiders coming in to sort of re the economy and and tourism and I think it’s definitely a boom for the town but the H say potential buyers need to do their

Homework before taking the plunge and they should visit as many times as possible most 1o schemes will only allow people to invest if they’re there to collect the keys in person make the adventure you got to hit the road and see if you connect with a town you

Don’t just want to buy and not even know anything or no feel for the town you got to got to get up in there it’s not an experience for everyone learning the language which is key especially when dealing with contractors and local bureaucracy which can be a lengthy and costly process for

Danny you spent about €10,000 for a home that was moving ready as for Tam and Gary our whole Renta budget was around1 120,000 so 30 for the houses 120 8,000 in fees so around1 160,000 all in is what it looks like and I think we’re

Pretty close to that um I have some math to do but I think we’re there after Renovations the couple was left with a four bed 4 and a half bath house the average price for a home this size in their native La would be over a million

Dollar but it brought us here it brought over a hundred people apparently into this town to see what you can get for not a lot of money and just get this sort of dream you know who doesn’t want to have a house in Italy