‘Americans kickstarted the resurrection’: Now Italians are snapping up $1 homes for themselves kraken зеркало

Of the many depopulated Italian towns to launch bargain home schemes in recent years, none have been more successful than Sicily’s Sambuca di Sicilia.

Sambuca’s home sell-offs have seen huge demand, with American buyers rushing to snap up discounted houses in the hillside town for a symbolic €1 in 2019 and €2 in 2021.

Previously largely unknown, even to some Italians, Sambuca has since welcomed so many Americans that it’s been nicknamed “Italy’s Little America.”

But according to the town’s mayor Giuseppe Cacioppo, this US buyer trend has changed or, at the very least, slowed down. Now it’s Italians who are snapping up the town’s abandoned homes.
“Something weird happened with this third batch of auctioned homes; we thought more Americans would apply, so we were amazed that for the first time ever it was mainly Italians from all over Italy,” Cacioppo tells CNN.

Sambuca has placed dozens of dwellings on the market over the years in a bid to revive the community, which has suffered from depopulation as residents move to bigger cities.

In both past editions, the number of requests, mostly from the US, to purchase neglected homes was so high that local authorities had to place the old abandoned properties at auction.

While some bidders opted to snap up abandoned ruins, over a hundred Americans purchased ready-to-occupy homes from locals, revitalizing the area’s dwindling real estate market.