Buy Your Own Little Summer House in Italy for Just 1 Euro

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – We will soon be saying goodbye to the season formerly known as summer, but in Sicily it will be summer for a while. With this in mind, imagine having access to your own sunny, lovely Italian casa for just 1Euro.

The catch? It is a fixer-upper. The good news? You have four years to renovate (one to present the project, three to complete it).

Catch #2. You have to hire local hands to help you renovate which could run up to up 22k euros, or about 27,000 Swiss francs. Good news #2? Closing fees are around 6,500 euros or about CHF8,000… when all is counted you couldn’t even buy a room in Switzerland for less than 40k.

Gangi is a medieval town founded in the 1300s, surrounded by a nature park in the Sicilian hinterland. It makes part of a selected group of townships known as “Italy’s most beautiful towns” . The picturesque town has a population of a little more than 7000 people and is located in the province of Palermo at an altitude of around 1,000 metres.

Al Jazeera English recently featured the story in its nightly news. The town’s mayor Giuseppe Ferrarello said in the news report that most of these homes were left behind by families who emigrated or by people who died and left no heirs.

In addition, with an aging population the town is dire need for some new, tax-paying residents and the renovation project will provide some needed work for some of the able hands still in the area.