$1 for a house in Italy too good to be true? Yes – but I will never regret finding my dream home

Buying a $1 house in Italy may seem like a deal that’s too good to be true; and for one Chicago woman who made it her reality, it was.

But she doesn’t regret anything.

Financial advisor Meredith Tabbone was deep into researching her Italian family history in 2019 when she came across an abandoned house being auctioned off with a starting bid of €1 (about US$1.05). in the quaint Sicilian village of Sambuca di Sicilia.

Was it a coincidence that she had just tracked down her great-grandfather to the same Sicilian town where he lived before immigrating to America in 1902?

The 44-year-old told CNBC that she took it as a sign to make an offer, even though it seemed “too good to be true.”

And of course it was, as she was buying a sight unseen property.

“From the moment I submitted the offer and checked my email every day and found out I won, throughout this process, there have been 4 million moments of frustration, exhaustion and pondering how to move. forward,” she explains in a YouTube video.

A number of European villages have gone viral for offering abandoned houses for just $1.

The purpose? To get foreign investors to buy the dilapidated houses, rehabilitate them and increase the local population along with the tourist trade.

Tabbone is just one of many who have reached one of these deals.

Four and a half years and about $500,000 later, she says she doesn’t regret spending a single dime.

“I never felt like this wasn’t the right place for me and that this wasn’t the right project to work on or community to live in,” she says.

From the start, Tabbone faced an uphill battle.

To begin with, it was clear that the house would cost more than 1 euro – much more.

Bidding was meant to start ridiculously low to attract attention, with the hope that a bidding war would drive the price higher.

When the dust settled, Tabbone won the bid by about $6,200.

“The condition of this property when I first saw it was dire at best,” she says. “There was no electricity, no running water, every single room had a different floor level, it had an asbestos roof and there was probably 2 feet of pigeon droppings on the floor.”

But none of this caught Tabbone.

In fact, the house she originally bought shared a wall with the house next door, so she ended up buying that too in 2020, for about $23,000.

“The reason I did that was because the €1 house was pretty small [about 620 square feet]which I didn’t consider at first, because I thought of it simply as an apartment to visit rarely”, she explains. “But once I started to fall in love with Sambuca and knew I wanted to spend time here, I thought it might be nice to have more room.”

With two houses, her renovation budget skyrocketed.

She originally intended to spend about $40,000 to make her newly purchased home comfortable and livable, but ended up spending $446,000 and three years renovating both.

The home now has four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 2,700 square feet.

But it also made the project even more daunting.

Those who watch reality TV renovation shows will remember the huge challenges Dave and Jenny Marrs faced when renovating an Italian villa on Fixer to Fabulous Italiano.

“I had never done a renovation like this in my life, and I didn’t do any of the renovation work myself,” she says. “I hired a renovation team to do 100% of the renovation. The only thing I spent a lot of time on was the design.â€

Tabbone says she was inspired by her father, who was an architect and died when she was 15.

She now calls the house Casa dell’Architetto in his honor.

She also made many trips between Chicago and Sambuca during the three years it took to renovate.

“It can be expensive to fly back and forth,” she says. “It was definitely the second biggest expense I had. My contractor was the most expensive thing.â€

And because the renovation was done during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a number of delays, but that turned out to be beneficial.

“I was lucky I didn’t have to draw on my savings,” she says.

Some of the most complicated and memorable renovations involved leveling all the floors.

The combined houses have two floors and 18 rooms, and each floor was at a different height.

Adding electrical and plumbing was also complicated, as was adding more windows and French doors to bring in more natural light.

For the extraordinary kitchen, the renovation team was able to keep one of the original arches and combine two rooms into one.

To do this, steel beams were added to protect against earthquakes.

Tabbone says her favorite room is a bedroom that was once the master bedroom in one of the houses.

Not only is there an original stone wall with the imprint of the front door, but part of the floor is transparent and you can look down into the dry heat sauna that was added.

The library is one of her favorite rooms.

Centered between the two houses, a wall was partially removed to combine the two houses into one.

Tabbone also bought the garage next door – to create a guesthouse for the families – as well as the house across the street, which she renovated to use as a gallery.

Now that all those renovations are complete, Tabbone is so in love with the house and the city that she wants to try to spend four months of the year there.

“If I could do the buying or renovating process over again, I think I would have learned to be more patient in the beginning,” she says. “I wanted everything to be done very quickly and I think I didn’t enjoy the process enough in the beginning.”