This sure puts the “sweet” in “home sweet home.”
A California woman, taking advantage of an ever-increasing opportunity in Europe, bought three crumbling homes in a small Italian town in 2019 for $3.30 combined — and is now fixing them up.
Insider reports that Rubia Daniels, a 49-year-old Brazilian expat who works in the solar industry, had heard of Italy offering up dirt-cheap homes to repopulate abandoned towns in far-flung areas — and felt a spark.
“I was so amazed. It was one of those things where you have to see it to make sure it’s true,” the San Francisco resident told the outlet. “I did my research, and within three days I had my plane ticket, a rental car, the hotel, and I left.”
The town she left for: Mussomeli, a town of some 10,000 inhabitants near the center of Sicily, an island right off the toe of mainland Italy.
Mussomeli is just one locale in Italy offering up properties for unheard-of prices to combat dwindling populations, which is a trend that pre-dates the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, for instance, the Sicilian town of Sambuca di Sicilia — in a revitalization effort — rose to fame for selling off abandoned homes for as low as roughly $1. Two years later, another batch of homes there came up for sale asking just more than $2, or twice the price.
Similarly, the southern Italian town of Laurenzana in 2021 offered up its own abandoned homes for about a buck each. Still, as low as the prices were, the properties required anywhere between $24,000 to $90,000 to restore — and owners had three years to complete the work.
(That said, certain owners of such properties realized they were in for way more than what they bargained for, with major renovations needed that came at a price.)
More recently, the southeastern Italian town of Presicce offered up to $30,000 for interested residents to purchase unclaimed homes. Similar efforts have also taken place in Greece and Spain.
Back in Mussomeli, Daniels has different plans for each structure she owns. One will be where she stays whenever she’s in town — and, in an effort to give back to the community, she’ll convert another into an art gallery and the other into a wellness center. That third will be her biggest renovation.
After her purchase in July 2019, Daniels began her restoration process later that year. For now, the exterior of two properties are completed with the last one yet to begin, but 2020 threw a wrench in the initial progress.
“COVID-19 happened and we weren’t allowed to go back, so I just started renovations again last year,” she told the outlet.
For Daniels, the town of Mussomeli — where she can spend at least a month each visit — reminded her of her hometown near the Brazilian capital of Brasilia. Beyond a pocket-change purchase of property, she also got warm neighbors.
“People were super welcoming and everyone wanted to have a coffee with me,” she told Insider. “The realtors embraced me like a sister — they were with me every single day through the time I was there.”