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The Truth Behind Italy's $1 Homes - YouTube
Channel: Business Insider
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these are italy's famous dollar homes
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this but here i'm not going to talk
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because there is a pigeon
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living in this bat and that's jillian
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a new homeowner in sambuca sicily a
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picturesque town in italy's countryside
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in danger of dying out that is until the
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government started selling abandoned
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homes here
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practically for free people from around
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the world came running
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hoping to get in on the deal and while
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the pandemic may have delayed some of
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these plans it hasn't deterred
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buyers even though the true cost of
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these homes is a lot more than a dollar
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holy moly over 20 towns across
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italy have started selling abandoned
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homes for a single euro
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or about a dollar and 10 cents for the
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sake of this video we'll call them
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dollar homes
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the towns selling these dollar homes are
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small and most of them are far out in
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the countryside
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and they've been suffering from rapid
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depopulation for decades
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in 1968 a massive earthquake hit sicily
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it caused so much damage that for some
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homeowners it was cheaper to cash in on
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insurance and move somewhere else
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completely
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the exodus continued from there across
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italy younger people left for the cities
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many moved to escape the poor job
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markets in their rural hometowns in
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sambuca
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the population has decreased by 30
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percent since the 1950s
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there's not much work here right now so
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the only work is instruction
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and according to the wall street journal
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it's been especially bad in the last 15
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years
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the town was small we used to be 8 000
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people now we only 5 000 people
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and sambuca isn't alone tally up all
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those towns losing residents
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and that makes more than a million
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people in the last 20 years who have
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moved away from italy's rural regions
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and closer to the urban cities a lot of
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people went to uk to
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north italy and other parts of the world
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to
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have a job so here we have a lot of
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houses
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without people inside what's left are
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beautiful towns with abandoned homes
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an aging population and economies on the
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verge of collapse
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so we decided to repopulate these parts
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of the town
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now you can buy hanom with only one euro
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some towns like sambuca set up websites
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where prospective buyers could scroll
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through the homes for sale
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in the mountainous town of melise where
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they've lost 9 000 residents since 2014
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town officials made the deal sweeter
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they would pay newcomers almost 800
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a month to move here for three years and
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start a small business
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it didn't take long for publications to
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pick up the story and it blew up
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globally
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in some parts of sicily you can buy your
[149]
own home for just
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one euro the headline kind of writes
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itself it's a beautiful home in rural
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italy for a dollar
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i mean who isn't going to click on that
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once the story got out
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people from all over came running the
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very beginning started on facebook
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i saw my mum had shared an article
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and when i saw it i thought i wanted to
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buy a house for a euro
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all the other stories sounded pretty
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similar we saw the cnn article right
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and an article in the belgian newspaper
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most of the newcomers came from the us
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and northern europe i'm happy for the
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the people who
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arrive in sambuca i'm enthusiastic for
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this
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big big revolution that's giuseppe he's
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the guy who launched the program
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in sambuca a town of nearly 6 000.
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sambuca got the widest media coverage
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after geosepi put 16 homes up for sale
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in early 2019.
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i arrive at the interesting people a
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journalist
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singer and actor
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everything you know it's important
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arrive young
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people young women and young men for
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stay in sambuca
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even though the towns are small and
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rural foreigners have flocked here
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looking to find vacation homes open
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airbnbs or even move here full time
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what sambuca has that i haven't
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experienced elsewhere
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is really the history of it i love how
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you can just see the
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stucco peeling off and the old stone
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just popping out right behind it it's
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like a little piece of history you
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literally could take a photo anywhere
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around about you so you could actually
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put them on the wall you know
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it's like a disney movie plus everyone
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we spoke to
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said the locals here were welcoming to
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the new faces and energy
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my neighbor i'm gonna make lasagna and
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she invited my wife to make it with her
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that's the best lasagna i ever
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tasted so landing a dollar home in these
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idyllic towns may sound
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perfect but there's a catch actually
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multiple catches
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you have to spend money to make the
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contract
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for the taxes and other 400
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for a real estate company that could
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bring up the total to about 3
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000 in some towns like sambuca the homes
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were actually sold at auction
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which meant they started at a dollar but
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ended up selling to the highest bidder
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more than a hundred thousand people sent
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in requests for 16 houses
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so competition was steep i looked at my
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emails one day and i saw this email
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and i went that's jillian she's from
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scotland and was one of the lucky
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auction winners in sambuca
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i'm at the house and this is the first
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time that we've seen it
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she ended up paying 1 100 for her new
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home so i picked up the phone to my long
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suffering husband
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and i said danny see when i say this
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i'm not joking but we've got lot number
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seven
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on that auction and he was like oh
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only one home in sambuca actually sold
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for the dollar listing price
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most of them ended up going for a few
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thousand but the most expensive home
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went for 28 000 then there's the
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security deposit
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we bought the house for the thousand
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euros at the same time we had to send
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a 5 000 euro deposit the deposit amount
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ranges from twenty three hundred to
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fifty six hundred dollars depending on
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the town
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homeowners will get it back if they
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start renovations within a year and
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agree to finish within three years of
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getting designs approved
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it's a safeguard for them to make sure
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that they don't almost give away these
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properties and then they sit vacant
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again because they want people to be in
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and using them and since most of the
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homes were in pretty rough shape they
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sometimes come with a requirement to
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spend at least 17
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000 on renovations houses or
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really destroyed really so you have to
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do a lot of work
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that's bert and his wife nina they're
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from belgium and we're two of the first
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people to purchase dollar homes in
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musameli they purchased four dollar
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properties
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and have finished renovations on one of
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them if you buy a house at one
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guru you can expect it will be
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beautiful impossible plus when these new
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buyers still live abroad
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renovations take a while it's far so
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we're gonna have to hire somebody
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and also they don't have large hardware
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stores so i can't just like run down and
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grab lumber so what does a dollar home
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really cost
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let's do the math a dollar listing four
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hundred dollars in taxes
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a fifty six hundred dollar deposit say
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sixty thousand dollars in renovations
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plus flights back and forth for years
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add it all up and you're looking at
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seventy six thousand and one
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dollars still nothing compared to the
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hundred twenty four thousand dollars
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that forbes reported
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one sambuca resident expects to spend
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renovating and that's for a home that
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was supposed to cost a dollar
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so it might seem like a rip-off but if
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you buy
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those houses in belgium it's a million
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the fact that we
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will have a holiday home for for life
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for
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a fraction of the price that we would
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spend elsewhere you know what i would do
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again
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in a heartbeat and i haven't even
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finished it yet and so far the program
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has been a success
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in musamelli more than a hundred of the
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houses have been sold in the past year
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in sembucha all 16 of the original euro
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homes went in a matter of months
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today they've sold a total of about 60
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and some people who didn't win a dollar
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home at auction
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stuck around to buy a normal listing
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like gary and tamara
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a couple from arizona who bought their
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home from a private seller for 20
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thousand dollars
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now this home needs still needs quite a
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bit of work yeah it the roof
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is in it's got sheets but it's gonna be
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beautiful when it's done the dollar home
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sales stopped across
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italy due to the coronavirus italy was
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kind of seen as
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europe's ground zero for coronavirus
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cases with the majority in the much more
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densely populated north this means that
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there are a lot less
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cases in the south but the south is
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actually worse affected economically
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because it's a lot poorer
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gary and tamara haven't been able to
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travel to sambuca since
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it gave us some more time for the
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planning phase so we've been able to
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work with our architect to
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to sort of nail down all the odds and
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ends that we wanted to do as of july
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2020 the program has started up again in
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sambuca and it's called
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casa for two euro so they are starting
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it back up
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despite the pandemic there's hope that
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all these newcomers will bring about
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change in these rural towns
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it started a light like a small economy
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here
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engineers architects designers that
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make plans make projects of the house
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the building companies
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can have a job also along with new
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businesses restaurants and airbnbs in
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sambuca and musameli
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tamra said you'll also see postings for
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english classes and i also think it's
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helped tourism because
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the last couple times i've been there
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i've been seeing more and more tour
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buses coming through
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so i really think it's put sambuca on
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the map of course more people in one
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sleepy towns will create some friction
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in mussomeli one of the local newspapers
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had
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launched something of a smear campaign
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against the new belgian inhabitants
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after one of them was arrested for being
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drunk and disorderly
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so there are some cultural differences
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that will need to be worked out
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and in sambuca people come out of town
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to eat food in here they love this place
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i mean it's beautiful
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and we go there too i love that too but
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the problem is
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it's too pre-piece i couldn't go there i
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don't like to eat
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as for whether all this new energy will
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really save these shrinking towns
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only time will tell in my time reporting
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in sicily
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the reaction to myself and the newcomers
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in town
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was really really positive i think they
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were just excited to see some fresh
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faces
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you see it now already all the houses
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are renovated there will be a new
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breath and breakfast at piazza roma
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beautiful
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in my street there's a new home and
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everybody is working on it
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and i think let me say 10 years it would
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be a beautiful city
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[Music]
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