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Jayla never thought she’d buy a house pretty much sight unseen, much less one off the coast of Italy. The 25-year-old Florida native, who asked to use only her first name, had first come across an offer for a “1 euro house” in Europe in November 2024, shortly after Donald Trump won reelection. She was naturally skeptical, but sent some emails anyway. At first, it didn’t go anywhere: “I kind of forgot about it because no one responded,” she told me.
But when a rental company in Mussomeli, Sicily, responded to her in April 2025, saying that a property was available, she couldn’t help but be intrigued. She tried emailing back. Once again, no response. So she decided to book a ticket and show up at the agency and check it out for herself—a bold move, she admitted: “It was,” she said, “an excuse to go to Italy.”
But after just two days in Mussomeli, she fell in love with the town and the little bit of the available house she was allowed to see. A protective barrier prevented her from entering, and the deteriorating balconies made it look a bit unsafe, but peeking through the windows, she was entranced by the yellow kitchen. “Yellow is my favorite color, so it felt like a sign,” she said.
Jayla’s self-admitted lark into imagining herself as a young Sicilian homeowner has been abetted by many corners of the media and American culture over the years; there’s undeniable appeal to escaping the United States and moving into a fixer-upper for the price of a cup of coffee. The idea of a 1 euro house has become fodder for reality television, Netflix romantic comedies, and renovation series. And as many Americans start longing for “escape options,” it might seem like a worthy leap to some.
“What we’ve seen not only with this past election, but the one before, and even the one before that, is an increase in contact and an increase in people wanting to move to Italy,” said Joanna Zotti, a public relationships specialist who has worked with a law firm specializing in buying property in Italy. She would know: 80 to 90 percent of their clientele is from the United States.
Agenzia Immobiliare Siciliana, a company in charge of rental properties in Mussomeli, has also seen an uptick in Americans. “A lot of people in America are trying to get properties here in case something happens,” the group told me. Marco Permunian, founder of Italian Citizenship Assistance, an Italy-based agency that specializes in Italian citizenship law and immigration matters, is also seeing an increase in younger Americans—20-to-30-year-olds—exploring and pursuing moves to Italy.
As a young American Gen Zer living in Europe after college myself, I admit the scheme also caught my eye. It seemed like a dream as returning home had less and less appeal. It also seemed like a potentially misguided fantasy. After speaking with buyers, almost-buyers, lawyers, real estate agents, and other experts, my skepticism proved warranted.
The “1 euro house” idea can be traced back to about 2008 in Salemi, Sicily, as a way to encourage repopulation there. Salemi, like many other Sicilian towns, had experienced a major exodus after World War II, as inhabitants abandoned their homes and migrated to larger cities. It’s these homes that are often the starting points for the 1 euro house scheme. Mussomeli is one of the major players in this market. Since announcing a 1 euro house campaign in 2017, the town has seen more than 125 houses sold, bringing 7 million euros (a little more than $8 million) to the local economy, according to the town’s mayor.
Of course, it’s not that simple. “Buying a house means buying a little piece of the puzzle,” said Maurizio Berti, who runs the conveniently named 1eurohouses.com, a website that tracks the various homes across the country. He’s seen how the program’s popularity has skyrocketed, especially because of extensive media coverage: He said his website now sees nearly 50,000 visitors a day.
Social media has naturally played a role in the popularity. Kiki Leigh, a Canadian who bought a 17-room mansion in Mussomeli, documented renovations on her TikTok account. Others have also gone viral for posting their renovation journeys online. Amanda Dunbar has also built a following of about 130,000 on TikTok, where she posts videos of her experiences in Sicily, and helps others make the move—and buy houses—themselves.
“Some of these small towns are represented in several reels and Instagrams about Italy, and [people] discovered that there’s an opportunity through this,” said Teresa Graziano, a Sicily-based professor who co-authored a paper on the initiative.
Then comes reality. Even though I found that these programs are, surprisingly, real, the product they’re selling is usually, for lack of a better word, broken. These houses require a ton of work, and there are all sorts of strings attached. Buyers must renovate the house, and within a certain time frame. “It’s interesting to discover that you can buy a house for one euro, but actually, it’s not just a euro,” Graziano said.
“Many of these towns aren’t actually offering 1 euro houses,” said Zotti, of Italian Real Estate Lawyers. Some of the towns mentioned online in news articles and posts also don’t go beyond the launch phase: They’re unable to sell the abandoned and often irreparably ruined houses. “Programs are given superficial overexposure.”
Jayla, from Florida, can tell you all about it: “Whatever you think you’re going to pay, double it just in case.”
First there are the fees. She rattled off a few recent expenses: notarizing documents for 4,300 euros, double normal, because her house is actually two properties. There’s also an 80 euro “plan recovery certificate,” 200 euro payment for signing a deed, an energy consumption certificate for 1,000 euros, and then payment to a technician. In all, that added up to at least 6,500 U.S. dollars, without travel costs and before any renovation.
And there is all sorts of bureaucracy involved. “It really doesn’t look like the American process,” Jayla said. Originally planning to get her papers notarized in the fall to finalize the sale, she watched her plan drag out. It’s a slowness she’d never had to confront, in a language she doesn’t speak.
“Sometimes, you’re dealing with a notary person who only works on Wednesdays, and takes all of August off,” she said. “Especially being an American, they think you have the money and the time and the resources to show up next week.”
It’s because of all this that most Americans jump ship. Zotti said 90 percent of the people who have contacted them about 1 euro homes do not move forward. And those who do move forward take a “fast-track” option: Houses that are tens of thousands of dollars but are move-in ready.
Dunbar went for one of these in Salemi. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she’s been living in Asia and Europe for the past 12 years. After visiting Salemi in 2023, also enchanted by the idea of a 1 euro home, she paid 24,000 euros (plus 4,000 euros in closing) for a house that needed significantly less work. The renovations cost 28,000 euros, but only because Dunbar decided to move the bathroom. (In total, it comes out to about $65,000 in U.S. currency.)
According to Agenzia Immobiliare Siciliana, it is mostly Europeans who buy the 1 euro houses. Americans, like Dunbar, tend to opt for these more premium homes.
It makes sense that Americans would want to buy a house that would allow them to actually move to Italy and live there. While Europeans with an E.U. passport can live in Italy pretty easily, Americans often need to obtain a visa or citizenship. Dunbar is on an elective residency visa, which forbids her from working while she’s there, so she has to rely on passive income. There’s a newly minted “digital nomad” visa—but it’s not like buying the house is a fast track to living in Europe forever.
For her part, a bit after we chatted, Jayla texted me to let me know she pulled out of finalizing the sale on her Sicilian dream.
“Everything needs to be paid by January, and it’s just not feasible for me right now,” she wrote in November. “But the journey is NOT over.”
Still, the agency fee—500 times the house’s supposed price—was nonrefundable.
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