I have One Euro, and I am going to buy a house

By Ahmet Abdulaziz….

Just yesterday a friend of mine told me that there are houses which are being sold for just one Euro

First I thought that it was a joke. He told me that there was a news item on the internet, mentioning that abandoned houses in the hilly village of Sumbuca (Italy) are available to be sold to foreigners for a very cheap price.

First I laughed because I thought that it must be fake news on the internet, like so many others that we come across almost daily. Here I would like to mention that a couple of times I had come across a news item on the internet that there is dearth of males in Iceland, and the government had announced to give 10,000 dollars to those foreign boys who would marry a girl in Iceland. I remember I had forwarded that news to my eldest son, who in turn had investigated and found it to be totally baseless news.

But this time I tried to investigate the news myself a bit. Interestingly at the very initial stage I found out that the news originally belonged to the international online edition of THE GUARDIAN.  With the credibility of the newspaper I did not find it necessary to investigate the issue any further.

The news is about five months old, but since I found it out just yesterday, for me it is very new. I am sure that for most of the readers too it is news.

So first of all  I am writing here a short synopsis of the news published in the The Guardian.

Sambuca is a small hilltop Sicilian town. Over a long period of time, the town has undergone depopulation as the inhabitants mostly migrated to cities.

The local municipality however has decided to repopulate the town by inviting foreigners to buy these old houses at a very cheap price, which is as less as one euro.  However the buyer is required to commit in advance to refurbish the property within three years. The cost of refurbishing is about 15,000 euros. The buyer is required to pay a deposit of 5,000 euro which would be refunded after completion of refurbishing of the house.

The newspaper quoted Giuseppe Cacioppo, Sambuca’s deputy mayor and tourist councillor, speaking to CNN as under.

“Sambuca is known as the ‘city of splendour’,” he added. “This fertile patch of land is dubbed the ‘earthly paradise’. We’re located inside a nature reserve, packed with history. Gorgeous beaches, woods and mountains surround us. It’s silent and peaceful, an idyllic retreat for a detox stay.”

When I read the above, I said to myself, “man this offer is for you,”.  Sure for a person like me who always likes to enter into a new adventure, it is a wonderful opportunity.

Secondly, I always like to live away from the crowds. So I always like living at a small, less populated place. Born and grown up in a thickly populated city, I always wanted to live in a place full of natural beauty, calm and quiet, with nobody around. I have never been a social person, and I always prefer to live a life away from people. Though it is totally impossible, yet this is what I always wanted, and still do.

And now this is the best opportunity for me. Yes, I want to go and live in the depopulated town of Sambuca. I am ready to buy a house for one euro, since it is only one euro that I can afford to pay.  For me the real problem is not to go and live in a depopulated remote village. My problem is that I do not have 5,000 euros to pay right now as deposit, and do not have 15,000 euros for refurbishing a house.

I know how serious this problem is, yet I still want to buy that house, get it refurbished, and go and live there. How? I do not know. Do you have any idea how I can do that?

Here is the link to the original  news article. from The Guardian