Buy a $1 house in Italy, and the first question often is, “Did it really cost just $1?” followed quickly by, “When can I come and visit you?”
The answer to the first is, no. The answer to the second depends if you have a friend like Meredith Tabbone, a Chicago financial adviser who has spent the last three years or so rehabbing a 17th century home in the Sicilian town of Sambuca.
“The house isn’t even done, and [almost] every trip I’ve gone on, a friend has gone with me,” Tabbone, 44, said in a recent interview.
But when she heads to Sambuca in July — her 13th or 14th trip there, she thinks — Tabbone will stay in her home for the first time.
She’s been gently urging her team in Italy — which includes three men all named Giuseppe — to please have everything done by the time she arrives. She does so mostly using Google Translate because her Italian still needs some work.
Italian towns, mostly in the south of the country, have been advertising houses for $1 as a way to revive withering communities. But there’s typically a catch: The buyer must agree to spend, within a certain amount of time, a minimum amount to repair the property.
Tabbone estimates she’s spent about $285,000 to date for the two-story home, which includes buying a neighboring property, giving her about 2,700 square feet in total. She initially paid about $6,000. Her home, like that belonging to any self-respecting Italian, has a bidet — as well as three “bum guns,” hand-held devices that clip onto the wall next to an ordinary toilet.
“It’s for the benefit of sanitation, I guess,” she said.
So many accounts of Americans ditching the rat race for Italy’s bucolic splendor involve stories of maddening bureaucracy and renovations completed at glacial speed.
But Tabbone said she’s dealt with relatively few frustrations.
The local people, almost without exception, have been lovely, she said.
“They are very friendly, they are very happy, and their goal in life is having the highest quality of life possible,” Tabbone said.
She can see rolling vineyards from her terrace, the sun setting. Sea breezes waft in.
“Also, the sound of the church bells, the sound of people talking loudly in their kitchen while there are pots banging around,” she said.
