Grab your nonna and stock up on Mutti, we’ve got an Italian yarn on our hands. Remember those houses that were going for a super cheap $1.50 for the whole thing? Yeah, turns out they’re actually the work of signor Satana. To translate for you: they’re shitholes, mate.
Per the US Sun, UK man Danny McCubbin moved to the lovely scenic hills of Mussomeli, Sicily in 2020. He snagged himself a primo piece of dilapidated garbage in the town for only €1 (AU$1.47).
Imagine handing someone a gold coin and being able to call an Italian property YOURS. I don’t know, something about that just sounds too good to be true. And it is!
The house needed a lot of fkn work and was quite literally deteriorating over time.
To make matters worse, Italy is also facing a builder shortage. No, the builders aren’t all sucking snails on a vacay in France, there’s a good reason for them being scarce.
The Italian government announced in late 2020 that it would be offering to pay homeowners 110% of the costs required to either make their homes more eco-friendly or ensure they were more earthquake resistant.
Yes, there is a cap on the payout, but it was estimated to cost the government €9 billion in 2021 alone due to a massive amount of Italianos taking them up on their offer. A government taking action to support people and their needs? One can only dream of such a thing.
So yeah, all the builders are pretty fkn busy at the moment. This meant McCubbin could barely find someone to fix his house, which needed a LOT of work.
“It was very difficult to find a builder and over time the house deteriorated,” he told iNews.
“By the time I did find a building company, it was double the cost to renovate it. I decided it was not worth it for me anymore.”
This isn’t the only house in Italy that one can grab for dirt-cheap either. It’s all part of a plan to give foreigners a chance to live in Italy and help prevent population shrinkage in small towns. The obvious caveat is folks are usually sold abandoned homes that require some huge amounts of TLC.
McCubbin ultimately sold his little house and bought another renovation property in Mussomeli for €8,000 ($A 11,700). However, this one needed much less work and he was able to get it fixed up.
Now he runs a community kitchen where he makes free meals for vulnerable families.
“I’ve always wanted to live in Sicily, my parents loved the countryside. So I asked myself what was missing in Mussomeli and I came up with the idea of The Good Kitchen,” he told iNews.
God, isn’t that the most wholesome where are they now?
