Engineer Dominic Cropper, 61, and his wife Juliet, 60, a teacher, bought their home in the Sicilian village of Sambuca di Sicilia for just €40,000 (£33,600).
A year later, they returned and bought a four-bedroom house located just outside the town centre.
The pair were looking for a house which was big enough to accommodate their family, especially their three children and three grandchildren.
The pair fell in love with the town when they discovered itIn 2019, Sambuca di Sicilia was among Italian towns to launch a scheme to sell homes for just €1 to counter a swathe of young professionals leaving remote areas for cities.
A €5,000 deposit, the fact that old homes required a lot of work and the three-year time constraints on renovating “meant you might lose everything – particularly when you consider the uncertainty of obtaining permissions for a historic property”, Mr Cropper said.
Although in love with the area they don’t plan to apply for a visaTo them the house is still a good deal. In the UK buying a smaller house, even a simple flat, in a remote town would cost at least double, they say.
Although they are glad that the town is thriving thanks to inward investment, they want this to happen “without seeing it lose its character because we are there!”.
The pair are, however, fearful of an influx of ex-pats descending on the areaTo mingle best with locals, they are learning Italian and have met “several generations living in our street”. They are also relieved that an increasing number of incomers are from elsewhere in Italy, which enables Sambuca to still be “a healthy community and still a long way from being saturated by outsiders.”
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But as a picturesque ruin, he added, the historic centre does little for the town, where there is an efficient waste disposal system alongside clean streets.
“My hope is that inward investors – if they are respectful of it – can help to maintain that authentic character, rather than destroy it – even if the price means deploying the Saraceni neighborhood to attract them.”
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