WE BOUGHT A 1 EURO HOUSE IN SICILY ITALY! Ep.1

We are buying this house behind us. This is our door. These two are two balconies of our property, of our house. It was built on top of the rock. Good morning beautiful people. Welcome back to You Live Everything and Wonder. And welcome back to Sicily. I'm Luca, this is Sara and this beautiful baby girl is our daughter Luce. We have been following the one euro houses initiative since the beginning and when we came back to Italy in 2020 from Argentina we visited tons of houses, we visited tons of municipalities, villages. We are here because here they are selling houses for one euro. So stay with us because at the end of this video we will talk about the pros and the cons. But now let's talk about the present. Let's talk about the news, the surprise of this video. We are buying this house behind us. This is our door. We are so excited to share this with you guys. We are in Motta da Fermo. It's a little village, beautiful village, very quiet. We are about 10 minutes away from our olive grove. So this is the perfect location for us. We will give you more details after the tour of the house. So let's start, let's see what's inside here and then we'll talk more about everything. Welcome home guys. Let's start the tour of this beautiful house. We have only two steps and then all the apartment is on one floor. So this is amazing for us and for Luce. This is our beautiful and spacious entrance. Then we'll start from the right. The first little room that we find is the laundry room or what it was, the laundry room. And here we will place probably the washing machine or we'll make another bathroom. Then this is the kitchen, okay. Here we will have a lot to do. We will keep the tiles even if some of them are broken. The flooring is not in a good condition as you can see here especially and also the ceiling. But then with Luca we'll talk about all the job and the renovation that we will be doing. Close to the kitchen and between the kitchen and the main bedroom we have this small room. We think that it was thought to be a kid's room, something like this, because you don't have any windows in this room so it's pretty claustrophobic. But then if you open this door and you open also... Now this is closed with a panel, a wood panel, but in case we can open it again. Beautiful is the ceiling, very high. I don't know how many meters would be this ceiling, Luca, what do you think? Probably three and a half. Three and a half meters. And here the flooring is pretty okay, like the floor is not so bad. Okay, you can follow me. Now here we have our bathroom. No, there is no light. There is no light, so Luca you can go inside and I will... Okay, so this is a really small bathroom, a little small bathroom. Here in Europe, here in Italy, we use a lot a toilet, so really basic. The sink. Yes. No windows also in this bathroom. Yeah, probably we will use that to make some ventilation. And all the pipes need to be replaced because they are too old and they are broken. So we have some good ideas. This is a little detail of the tiles. I think they are nice. But now it's the best part. No, wait, wait, wait, wait. First here. So this door. Everything is super old. Yes. This is a storage room. So you can put what you need, like cleaning tools or what you need a daily basis that you don't want to see. And what's on this door? This door I can show you just a little bit. This is the door that will lead us to the second floor. It's not the second floor. It's just the cantina. It's the basement, but it's super, super big. We will show you that later. It's amazing. You can build another apartment down there. And now this is the room where we fell in love with this house. You will see now why. So the floor is amazing. It's an ancient cementine floor, Sicilian one, original one. We have to, of course, renovate a little bit, but we'll keep this. You can see the green, the red and the yellow colors with these amazing decorations. And then we love the ceiling, these vaulted ceilings. It's so spacious, so airy, vigorous, so the light is amazing. And we have also two balconies, one here in this room. This is meant to be the living room. We have two balconies with an incredible sea view. And this one is the last room of the house and it's the bedroom. The floor here is different, but the ceiling is the same. And this one is the room that is connected to the children room that is here on this side. You see this little door? Here we have also another balcony with an amazing view of the sea, of the valley and of the rest of the village. We are in the medieval neighbor of Tottafermo, this village, and noble families were living in here. So it's very unique and we will try to keep as much as possible the history of this house. So we'll keep the doors, we'll keep the floors, we'll keep, if we can, the windows and everything that is in here, apart of the pipes that are broken, that are not working anymore. We want to keep this ancient vibe. We connected electricity, so we have power right now here in the apartment. As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done on the walls to clean all this before painting. So over here, this water damage is from many years ago that the roof was leaking. Then they fixed it, but this still needs to be fixed from the inside, but outside it's already done. So we will fix this. Basically, this house has been abandoned for 20 years. So the last time people were living in here was in 2001. Since then, it was completely abandoned. You can see all this damage because the houses need to be lifted, windows need to be opened so the air can flow and the humidity can go out. Of course, we will need to replace or try to restore these doors. I mean, I would like to restore them, not to replace them. Because there are some holes here, but you can put some wood and there is no insulation. The walls are thick. They are very, very big. So this, yes. We're talking about really big walls. And this is the best insulation right now. So it's pretty cool in the summer and it's also nice in the winter. Yeah, you can see here how big they are. So basically from here to here, it's like this amount. The walls are this thick. And the electricity is working, the power is working. Yes, as you can see, the wires are external. In the future, we will be improving and making it safer. But it's still working for now. Yeah, the idea is everything that is working and everything that is not broken, not destroyed, we will keep it for now and just make what we really need to start living here. So make it livable. Luckily, this house is not falling apart. It's not destroyed. The structure is still solid. It's sturdy. So we don't have to replace that or intervene. Talking about the pipes and the water system. We have the town water arriving here, but the pipes are all rotten and broken. So we will be installing some pipes on the outside. So after these walls will be taken care of, fixed, when it will be fixed or finished and painted, we will be putting some nice pipes. Sara would love to have some copper pipes. They are a little bit more expensive, but they are beautiful to see compared to others. Especially if they are external. I think that if you need to build something external, we can make it in copper. There are many ways to make it beautiful, even if they are external. So we don't have to break the walls. As I said before, we don't have to intervene. In a major way. Yes. I just would like to say that when we put an offer, when Luca and I put an offer on this house, we didn't know if the pipes were broken, if the electricity was working. It was like kind of a blind offer. Say, this is the house. Do you want the house? Yes or no. And when we put an offer, we say, okay, we like what we see. And if it's not working, we'll fix it in the future, step by step. As always, you know that we like this project where we can give a second life to things, second life to properties, a second chance to everything. So this is, I think, a beautiful project. So basically the pipes should be from there to here and also going on that room where the laundry is. And then from here going to this side where the toilet is. So it's not so far. Everything is really close. We will be replacing only the water going to each point. But the grey water or the black water that goes to the sewer, we are not changing those pipes because they look okay. They are not made of steel, so they are not rotten. They are already like PVC or plastic, which lasts longer before breaking or getting rotten. And this one is called pila or piletta. It's cement, right, Luca? It was the old dishwasher. And washing machine. Yes. And so this is pretty common to find in Sicily or everywhere in Italy, inside and also outdoor. Like if you see a barn or a farmhouse, you have this one. And we will probably remove this and place a nice shower and a laundry machine here. First thing first, we have to start with the wall renovation and the makeover. And then once this is done, we will proceed with everything else. So we decided to hire someone for the walls. And then Luca will think about the hydraulic and electric, everything else that we would need. These two are two balconies of our property, of our house. These huge walls are the walls of the house. And here we have an external entrance to the basement. Here we have the really ancient church. So let me show you the basement. Everything needs to be cleaned. Here is where the animals used to eat. And those stairs are the stairs that we show you from inside. So you can come down here. The ceiling is super tall, about five meters. Since the ceiling is so tall and so high, you can basically build two floors over here. You can see some windows up there. You can see the rock over here. So basically the house was built on top of the rock. I don't know what was in there. And then on this side, there is another huge room with two windows. So a lot of potential over here downstairs. You can build a second apartment down here. Super, super big. It's huge. I'm curious to know the flooring, to see how everything is done. This is the house that we are buying here in Motta. You may think that we are crazy. And yes, we are. We are a little bit, you know. Yes. Right, Amora? We are a little bit crazy. But we really need a place where we can stay while working on our olive grove. Yes. A place where we can have a washing machine, a shower. A place where Lucio can stand and play and not be on the land 24 hours a day. Yes, also because the olive grove is a long-term project. This project, renovating this house, is way shorter. It's way easier and faster to do. And we need a place. We don't want to keep renting a house. So this opportunity came out and we were like, okay, let's jump. Let's do it. Like, it was not our idea to buy a house in a village. It was like, no, no, no, no. Our focus is on the olive grove. Our focus is on a property with a sea view, with a place. But still, it was 10 minutes driving from our property. Yes. And it was cheaper to buy this house than building a temporary house on our land. Yes, and I think that it's also smart for people to change ideas. Yes. So it's a work in progress. It is also an opportunity because in the future, who knows, we could rent an Airbnb or... You know, for friends or family coming to visit us, they can stay here. Luckily, now you start talking about the One Euro Houses project. This is not a ruin. This is a house where, as Luca said, it will not take too long to renovate it. And we are not obliged to renovate it. So the One Euro House initiative became very popular in Italy. It started here in Sicily, actually, a few years ago. And it was like, boom, everybody, yeah, you need to buy this house. Just one euro. It went viral because the marketing side of the One Euro House is really attractive. I mean, everyone is like, oh, wow, I can have a house for one euro, which is really close to one US dollar. Yes, but nothing is for free in life. You have always pros and cons. The pros is that you can really buy something for one euro, also two euros. Now there are two different projects. And for young people, there is the possibility to go and live by themselves. So it became independent. Yeah, this project started because many municipalities, many little villages like this started to disappear because everybody started going to the big cities and the old people who were living there started to die and to end. So these villages started to become ghost towns. Unpopulated, yes, to fight this phenomenon. And also not to have too many ruins. If you are not taking care of houses that are so old, after a few years, they eventually become ruins. And it's really dangerous. That's why also this One Euro House started. It was because so many houses were dangerous. So the roof would collapse, the balconies. So the municipality told the owners, you either put this building in a safe condition or you give it to us and we sell it with the condition that who buys this house for one euro needs to renovate or make this building safe and livable. And so that was the concept. But then there were many pros and many cons. The pros. Buying a property for a very reasonable price. Repopulating areas that are abandoned. An opportunity for young people that are looking for a house, for a home. And then also an opportunity for foreigners because it's not an initiative that's dedicated only to Italian residents. Also for foreigners. Let's talk about the cons. And this is very, very interesting because not everybody is talking about this. It's not so easy. Yeah, especially the marketing and the viral thing. They tend not to say everything because it makes more appealing to this initiative. At the end, you will never end to pay just one euro, two euros because you need to renovate the house. So you are obliged to renovate the house. And you have a limited amount of time to do it. Yes, and plus it's not something that you go there and you just buy a one euro house. They kind of choose who will buy the house because if you are planning to get your residency there and live in that town for at least five years you get more opportunity to buy the house and some municipalities even require you to go and live there and get your residency there. Sometimes you cannot even resell the house for an amount of years. So if you are thinking, okay, I will go there, I will buy this, I will renovate it and then I will sell it for a very high price. It's not the case. They give you a limited amount of time. They tell you, okay, if you buy the house, you have 12 months, you have one year to renovate it. Lucem makes like one year, right Amore? Yeah, and many of these houses you need to put at least 30 or 40 thousand euros. We saw some places where there was really no roof, nothing. No, no steps, no, just the outside walls and that's it. All these villages are in very remote and isolated locations. So it's not that you are going to buy a house in Palermo or or places that are really well known. And then there is just this, because it's so viral, sometimes you just see the news and then when you are searching and looking for it, then all the houses are already gone. So yeah, they already sold it even before, you know, putting it on the market. They are already sold, but they want to still make all this news so the little abandoned town can have some visibility. Like Lucem right now. This municipality, Smoto da Fermo, is not selling houses for one euro or for two euros, but there are so many villages, you cannot even imagine, isolated, abandoned, that are selling houses like this. You have so many possibilities. So don't just focus on the one euro houses initiative, because really just go out there and search a little bit. Like this house is so old, so ancient, was built like almost 1000 years ago. So making all these considerations at the end of the day, we have been paying less for this house than probably 99.9% of the one euro houses, because there is not much work to do on this house to make it livable straight away. So, I mean, you can really find small houses with some work to do from 3,000 to 20,000 euro. And it's beautiful, it's really romantic. These places are really quiet. You need to be a little bit crazy like Sara and I, and everything is possible. And many of you already know us, we are known for getting things that are things that are ruined or, you know, like vehicles that were ready for the junkyard and making huge projects and giving a second chance, a second life to these things. So when are we starting the works, the renovation, the makeover? Really, really soon. So in real life next week we are starting. Yes, we will film also this project. So on our channel you will see the transformation and the restoration of the olive grove with the little stone house. And in the meantime, probably this first, and the renovation, the makeover of this beautiful, incredible house. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, please share to us, smashing the thumbs up button. Hit the notification bell and please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel if you haven't done already. We love you. We appreciate you. Thank you for coming along with us. We will see you next Sunday. And remember... We will see you next Sunday. And remember... Life is beautiful and... Love always wins.