George Lang, a British man about to turn 30 and keen to finally buy his first property, discovered that to buy anything bigger than a shoebox in London he would have to pay off a mortgage for decades, Delfi Dom&Sad reports. However, a little internet research showed him that in some places in Europe he could own a multi-room property in a picturesque location. The young man was seriously considering Bulgaria when he came across one of the first €1 house sales in Italy, Euronews reports. Now Lang, who runs online auctions and buys and sells antiques, is renovating his first home in Sicily and is on the lookout for new bargains. “I was living in London and over 30 per cent of my salary was going on rent, so when I decided I wanted to invest in property I had no way of saving for a deposit,” says Lang. “If I wanted to buy a house, my credit score wouldn’t be high enough to get a mortgage.” With a budget of around €5,000 (“That was all I had in my account at the time”), Lang abandoned London and narrowed his options to Italy’s €1 house scheme. “I have no real connection to Sicily. I went there on a school trip when I was about 14 and I don’t really remember anything,” he says. “I just really wanted to have my own home, and there aren’t many places in the world where you can do that for just a few thousand.” He says the community of Mussomeli seemed “on the up, not down,” with lots of public space improvements, so he decided to choose a home there. Since the first €1 house sales in Italy, their popularity has grown, with many municipalities now posting photos and descriptions of properties online in advance. But when Lang was considering buying, he arrived to view properties in Mussomeli with no prior information. “I didn’t have to think long about my decision because you don’t see any of the properties beforehand,” he says. “When you show up on the day, you have 10 other people and a woman who drives you around town with a bunch of over 100 keys and just picks and chooses which houses she wants to show you.” The house Lang settled on was selling for €1 and was in relatively good condition. “The roof wasn’t falling in and everything looked pretty solid,” he says. “Plus, my lucky number is 11, which was the number of the house.” “When you’re paying around €5,000 [including notary fees] for a house, you can’t be too picky.” He also looked at houses with an American who had already bought three and was planning to buy more. “I pulled him aside and asked him to let me just take this one,” says Lang. “It took a bit of persuasion.” Under the terms of the scheme, George cannot sell the house for three years after buying it. But after that, he can do whatever he wants with the property. In the end, the Mussomeli house cost Lang €5,000 – after agency fees, a lawyer and an energy certificate. “You can’t even buy a shed for that in London,” he says. “I was paying over €1,000 in rent, so this house only cost me five months’ rent.” Lang’s scheme required him to repair the roof and renew the exterior of the house within three years. “If you don’t do it, you can get a €5,000 fine, but the municipalities are lenient [due to the disruptions that have occurred during the COVID pandemic],” he says. Lang had a lot of work to do. The house had beautiful marble staircases, original light fixtures and mahogany beds, but there were also broken doors, crumbling walls and cracks. “I could pay a surveyor to tell me there was a huge crack in the house, but I already know that and the house hasn’t moved for two or three hundred years, so I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon,” he says. “But the most shocking thing was that the house contained a lifetime’s worth of belongings because the owner had died unexpectedly.” Lang had spent his first few trips to Sicily clearing out cupboards and chests, but now he was determined to install the bathroom himself. “I’ve never done it before, but you can find anything on YouTube. “Plus it doesn’t have to be perfect,” he says. The water and electricity still need to be connected, but that doesn’t stop Lang from staying in the house while he works on it. “I sleep in the house for a couple of days. Then I get really greedy for a shower, so I go to a local hotel for the night,” he says. “Also, I only used hand tools to renovate the house, so it will be great when I can finally use power tools.” George has created a guide to help those looking to buy a property in Italy. In addition to the €5,000 purchase price, Lang says he has spent around €300 on materials so far and is saving money by doing as much of the work himself as possible. “I’m doing it all on a budget,” he says. His biggest expense was travel and accommodation, which came to around €1,500. At the end of the renovation, which will include installing two new bathrooms and a kitchen, as well as converting the basement into a self-contained apartment, he estimates it will have cost him less than €15,000. Lang says he is already looking to buy another property in the area and hopes to have 10 properties across Italy by the time he is 35. “I would strongly recommend this ‘journey’ to anyone who wants to do so,” he says. “People sometimes think you need hundreds of thousands to buy your first property, but that’s not the case here. Nothing should stop you. And even I have a better chance of affording a flat in London now that I have renovated this house.”
