buying a 1 euro House in Italy - is it a scam?

0:02 You've probably heard of the viral€1 house scheme in Italy.

0:05 Can you lend me a euro?

0:06 You can buy your own home.

0:08 The just €1.

0:09 They are practically giving houses away.

0:12 Small dying villages in rural Italy putting up houses for sale for only €1.

0:17 Sounds absurd, right?

0:18 This house here is €1.

0:20 Yes.

0:21 Wait.

0:21 Oh, it's huge.

0:22 Yes.

0:22 But what's the catch?

0:23 You can go up the staircase, but don't walk into the room.

0:27 No floors cuz it's not stable.

0:28 And is this all just a scam?

0:30 I'm not sure what I expected, but this is what you get for a euro.

0:33 After all these years of hearing about these houses,

0:36 did anyone actually buy one?

0:37 Well, we've decided to finally get to the bottom

0:40 of this and even see if we could actually purchase one.

0:43 But we aren't going alone.

0:45 To truly have an impartial investigation of these houses,

0:47 we chose to bring a hater of one

0:50 of these one-year house projects with us on this trip.

0:53 To find one, we scanned dozens of these viral Instagram

0:56 posts looking for a skeptic of these projects in the comments.

0:59 And after DMing hundreds of them, one man answered,

1:02 and we were about to call him to see

1:05 if he'd actually want to join us on this trip.

1:08 We understand you were not so positive about this.

1:11 Maybe it's a nightmare.

1:12 There's no one here.

1:13 There's nothing to do.

1:14 We were thinking that it would be fun to go together.

1:18 Okay, let me think about it.

1:19 Okay, sounds good.

1:20 I think the goal of this video should be to have him say one positive thing.

1:26 With our perfect skeptic on the team,

1:29 we're ready for this trip at the depth of Sicily in search of a myth or a scam.

1:39 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sicily.

1:41 We are at the arrival gates waiting for our beloved skeptic.

1:45 My goal is to change his mind in this trip.

1:47 Tommy and I, we like small Italian towns.

1:49 We're We're all on board.

1:50 Well, the question is I don't know if the one

1:52 year a house thing is a good idea or not.

1:54 That part I guess we'll still find out with these things.

1:56 I'm like, is this just a marketing thing or are people actually doing this?

1:59 I don't know.

2:00 Tommy has not joined us on an adventure for a while.

2:02 And every time I bring you on a trip,

2:04 I feel like I bring you to the most uncomfortable ones.

2:08 What's the flashback of that?

2:11 My god.

2:12 Trying to stay calm, but I'll be honest, it's kind of hard.

2:16 Sorry about that.

2:17 So this time I'm bringing you on a nice one.

2:19 I know it's going to be a nice one.

2:21 I don't know how Stfan is going to be in real life.

2:23 We usually vet for positivity.

2:25 Now we vetted for skepticism,

2:26 which is a complete opposite of how we usually do things,

2:30 but he's also like a pretty well-known professional chef in Finland.

2:34 He's got multiple restaurants in Finland.

2:36 Cool.

2:36 Pretty cool, actually.

2:37 Um he should be arriving here any minute.

2:39 And then our road trip is going to begin.

2:41 We're going to have to drive quite far

2:42 into parts of Sicily that the usual tourists,

2:45 none of these people are going there.

2:47 I also like that Stefan, like our Stefan isn't here,

2:49 but we got chosen a guy with the exact same

2:51 name to come and we're like, we always need one.

2:53 Yeah, Stefan is not joining us on this trip,

2:55 but we are bringing another Stefan to make up for the miss.

2:58 Oh, there he is.

2:59 See you, man.

3:00 How you doing?

3:01 Good to see you.

3:02 Good to see you.

3:02 Nice to meet you.

3:03 Nice to meet you.

3:04 Good to see you.

3:05 What's up, Stefan?

3:05 Oh, man.

3:06 I'm excited.

3:06 This is our first time in Sicily, so we're happy to do it with you.

3:11 Really?

3:11 Yeah.

3:11 Yeah.

3:12 Awesome.

3:12 Yeah.

3:12 It's going to be cool.

3:14 I was on tour, too.

3:16 You're an entourage on two on two seasons and four episodes.

3:20 I've been television for years and he wasn't kidding.

3:22 Stfan is a Finnish chef who's competed on Top Chef

3:25 and now owns nine of the nicest steakouses in Finland.

3:28 But despite the resume, he lives by one principle above everything else,

3:33 the classic Finnish directness,

3:35 which made him the perfect travel partner for this trip.

3:38 Well, let's get to our rental car.

3:40 This is going to be an interesting road trip begins.

3:42 And on the way out of the airport,

3:44 we ran into a Sicilian subscriber who was a huge fan of the one-year-old homes.

3:48 And you think it's a good idea?

3:50 No.

3:50 Why not?

3:51 Because it's pointless.

3:52 It's just the times is cycles.

3:55 It's sad, but it's life.

3:57 So, I see.

3:59 All right, let's go.

4:00 Ready for a road trip to the best towns on earth?

4:03 I am.

4:04 I want to buy a house for euro.

4:06 Oh, you did?

4:07 You're supposed to be the skeptic, Stefan.

4:10 I know.

4:11 I'm just skeptical, but I brought 400 bucks in cash.

4:14 Okay, so maybe I make a decision today.

4:16 With 400 bucks, I think you can buy a whole town.

4:24 Maybe two.

4:26 Maybe two.

4:28 It's It's a lot of work to get here.

4:30 That That's what I'm saying.

4:30 And that's why people don't fall for the one year bull.

4:33 I think it is.

4:34 Now we're talking.

4:35 Think about it.

4:36 Takes you about a day or a day and a half to get here.

4:42 Yeah.

4:43 It's a long long run for a week's vacation in a hold in Italy.

4:49 Italy has roughly 80 different towns

4:51 that have launched the 1-year housing scheme.

4:53 And on this trip, we would be exploring two of them,

4:56 but not just to make this video.

4:58 After having experienced remote slow-paced communities all around the world

5:01 and the benefits that a short disconnect from technology can have,

5:04 we've been exploring the idea of opening Yes Theory digital

5:07 detox retreats that you guys can actually come and stay at.

5:10 A couple of months ago, we were looking at rural Japan as a potential location.

5:14 And today we're doing the same in Italy.

5:16 To reach our first destination,

5:17 we had to take about an hour road trip from the airport in Palmo

5:21 and almost immediately began to feel the isolation of where we were heading.

5:25 We are driving to the villages right now

5:27 and we haven't seen another car in how long?

5:29 The last 15 minutes maybe.

5:31 Yeah, this is basically as far as you can get on this island.

5:35 It's a bit creepy when you think about it.

5:37 I I'm going with three strangers.

5:38 I don't know what the you guys doing here.

5:40 I was invited by three strangers going on a trip to some remote town.

5:44 It never was a one house.

5:46 Stefan, we continue driving into the night until we reached our accommodation

5:50 run by a local family and prepared to visit this forgotten town.

6:00 The next morning.

6:02 Morning.

6:02 We are going to explore the first town of One Homes in Sardinia, Sicily.

6:07 That's a different island.

6:09 It's still early.

6:10 It's okay.

6:11 Yeah.

6:12 Sorry.

6:12 I have no idea what to expect.

6:14 Yeah, me neither.

6:15 Is it fully abandoned or are people actually living there?

6:17 Yeah.

6:18 I don't know.

6:19 This is awesome.

6:20 I like it.

6:21 So, you're going to move here?

6:24 Move here?

6:26 Yes, I already uh called my bank to wire the money like€1.

6:38 We are like really close to it's it's this place up here.

6:42 Now the question is what's happening there?

6:44 Is there restaurants?

6:45 Is there bars?

6:46 Nightclubs?

6:47 Nightclub?

6:47 I I'm I'm not sure.

6:49 The road is is newly paved.

6:50 This town is is uh is bigger than I thought it was going to be.

6:54 I thought it was going to be like super small and rural.

7:01 There's actually like buildings here.

7:04 Perched on a hillside in the heart of Sicily,

7:07 Sambuka de Sicilia looks almost frozen in time.

7:10 And from a distance,

7:11 it feels like the kind of Italian town you'd expect to be full of life.

7:15 But over the last few decades,

7:17 the life in this town and many others like it slowly began to disappear.

7:21 This is for a few common reasons.

7:24 One being that for generations,

7:26 communities like this were built around farming and local industry.

7:30 But as agriculture became increasingly

7:32 mechanized and many traditional industries declined,

7:34 the jobs that had sustained these towns began to disappear.

7:39 Younger generations left in search of opportunity elsewhere.

7:42 Then in 1968, a devastating earthquake struck western Sicily,

7:47 devastating many nearby towns.

7:48 One by one, buildings were eventually abandoned completely

7:52 until entire sections of these towns sat empty.

7:56 It's beautiful, but there's nobody here.

8:00 You can see cars, so clearly there are people, but it's empty.

8:07 It is.

8:08 Yeah.

8:08 People are looking at us like, "What the hell are these guys doing?" We're like

8:14 driving around super slow with cameras staring at people.

8:17 Okay.

8:18 Uh there's nothing happening.

8:20 Think about it.

8:21 Today's Saturday is Saturday.

8:23 Today Saturday.

8:24 Yeah.

8:24 Nothing.

8:25 It's freaky.

8:26 It's an eerie feeling.

8:27 I've almost like pressure in my chest.

8:30 Like it's weird.

8:31 Why?

8:31 I don't know.

8:32 It's just It's like pushing down.

8:34 It's weird.

8:35 Is he saying good things?

8:37 No.

8:37 He's kind of freaking out.

8:39 Should we walk around and explore a bit?

8:42 After a while, many of these towns abandoned

8:45 properties fell into the hands of the local municipality,

8:48 which presented an unusual opportunity.

8:50 Beginning in 2008, towns across Italy

8:52 started launching one euro housing schemes,

8:55 offering neglected homes to buyers willing to restore them.

8:58 The initiative quickly captured headlines around the world,

9:01 turning these quiet Sicilian towns into a viral international phenomenon.

9:05 So, our plan was to explore Sambuka,

9:08 hoping to speak to some locals and find someone

9:12 who had taken part in this one housing scheme.

9:17 You speak English?

9:18 No.

9:19 No.

9:19 We intentionally did not bring a translator

9:22 on this trip just to uh for the immersion, just to go on hard mode.

9:28 Look at this group of legends here.

9:35 Good morning.

9:36 Good morning.

9:37 Fine.

9:37 Thank you.

9:38 How are you?

9:40 Good.

9:40 You speak English?

9:42 Oh, fantastic.

9:43 Oh, okay.

9:44 Okay.

9:44 Okay.

9:45 Okay.

9:45 Come.

9:46 Okay.

9:46 Great.

9:47 That was easy.

9:48 But I don't know what just happened.

9:50 Stefan, you talked to someone and he said we're going to go here.

9:53 Yeah.

9:54 I told him I What started at one of your houses?

9:59 My English is so bad.

10:00 No, my English no good.

10:01 Your English is good.

10:02 And we have the same haircut.

10:03 First time in Samuka.

10:04 Are they looking in a mirror?

10:07 First time in Samoka.

10:08 First time the channel called Yes Theory.

10:10 And they want to look at houses for for ina.

10:13 Okay.

10:14 What is the story?

10:15 I can help you.

10:16 I can help you.

10:17 I know I can help.

10:18 I I told him.

10:19 What are we doing here?

10:20 We can just have the fun.

10:22 Come on.

10:23 Maybe you can talk with people is Italian bio.

10:27 You have the best hair ever.

10:29 Thank you.

10:30 Thank you.

10:31 Gary Bayas here from United States.

10:34 Me and Madre um Villa Milicha and then grandparents are from Czechaloop.

10:39 Yeah, this town's amazing.

10:40 What about this town specifically drew you?

10:42 So it's reminds me a lot of Pittsburgh because

10:45 you know I've traveled all over Europe for work

10:47 and when you say hi good morning to strangers

10:49 they look at you like you're an alien.

10:51 But here, if you don't say good morning, they'll look at you.

10:52 Well, Bjorn, what the[ __] is going on?

10:54 It's very friendly.

10:55 And then I found out it was very well planned.

10:57 Wow.

10:58 And it's become an international mountain village with but still has the same.

11:02 We don't want to change it.

11:04 We want to integrate.

11:05 That's incredible.

11:05 You know, we've read about it on the internet,

11:08 the one house thing, and we don't know if it's actually real.

11:10 Is it like a clickbait thing, you know,

11:12 and like obviously you have to renovate the house.

11:14 I came here with my girlfriend 2 years ago,

11:17 and we found this three fabulous houses.

11:20 We have been buying for less than €30,000.

11:24 The question is, is there infrastructure?

11:27 Is there restaurants?

11:28 Is there bars?

11:29 Is there stuff?

11:30 Uh, no, not so much.

11:32 And when I came in January, there were so many houses that were

11:35 dilapidated that weren't one, just abandoned.

11:37 And Main Street was at least half for sale or for rent.

11:40 And now you don't see that anymore.

11:42 They've redone all the sidewalks.

11:43 You see many houses under renovation.

11:45 I'm like, I want to be here.

11:46 Like, I've traveled all over the world.

11:47 I've been in the biggest cities in the world

11:49 working for General Motors and a water treatment company.

11:51 I love this.

11:52 I love being right next to my neighbors and everybody's friendly.

11:54 You meet new people all the time, you know,

11:57 and you It's the Italian saying, the joy of doing nothing.

11:59 Yeah, of course.

12:00 No, I I get that.

12:01 Hey, I I want I see the wheels turning.

12:05 It's my wheels are spinning.

12:07 I'm telling you, it's a good moment to invest in a little bit.

12:11 At least he has to buy no less than two houses.

12:14 Yeah, that's the point.

12:15 I said that I perfect.

12:17 This was one of Italy's 15,000 dying villages.

12:21 It's not anymore.

12:21 Really?

12:22 It's not considered a dying village anymore.

12:23 Do you mind if we checked out your house?

12:26 I could see Stefan is he's gone from skeptic to asking for information.

12:31 We found this man in a hate comment on a post

12:35 about these houses and now he's here investigating this with us.

12:38 Our life is absurd.

12:39 Why are we here?

12:41 Honestly, it's amazing though.

12:42 Like the fact that it has new life.

12:44 Yeah.

12:45 I went to a one-year-old house project

12:47 in Florence four years ago and it was bad.

12:50 Like the houses I saw were bad and there was nobody in these towns.

12:54 Like they literally I didn't see a single human in the places that I went.

12:58 Here it's like there's people that have pulled

13:00 the trigger and are doing it, you know?

13:02 So it's like there's movement and it's no longer a dying town.

13:06 That's pretty sure you go explore this guy's renovated house.

13:19 The deal was you had to spend $15,000 on renovations in 3 years.

13:24 Okay.

13:25 The actual truth was €175 to €200,000 cuz

13:27 a lot of them were just piles of rubble.

13:29 Just as we were about to get our first real look into this house,

13:33 Stefan started acting a little unusual.

13:35 And can can I can I get my blood pressure?

13:38 Put the dot right on the What is he doing?

13:41 Stefan, what are you doing?

13:43 Your blood pressure.

13:45 Check my blood pressure.

13:46 Just for fun.

13:48 So, we ended up turning it into Sorry, this is this is very distracting.

13:52 I want to know my blood pressure now.

13:54 You on medication?

13:55 Nope.

13:55 Okay.

13:56 What's a little high?

13:57 Uh, that's high, but that's high.

13:59 What's wrong over here?

14:00 Are you okay?

14:02 Do you want some water?

14:03 Holy.

14:04 Are you okay?

14:05 I don't know.

14:07 You feeling a little lightheaded?

14:11 Just sit down for a sec.

14:12 We'll get you some some water.

14:13 It's just the heat and the humidity.

14:14 I don't know.

14:15 Should be 80.

14:16 Should be 80.

14:17 Yeah, it's 25.

14:17 It's high.

14:18 Not quite knowing what to do.

14:20 For the time being, we decided to continue with the tour.

14:22 Do you mind if we get a tour of the rest of the place?

14:25 Yeah.

14:25 Slow, steady, breathing.

14:27 So, again, because this space here,

14:31 we were able to do the put in a master bath, which we never had.

14:37 This was a closet.

14:38 Wow.

14:39 Nice second bedroom.

14:39 So each bedroom has an on suite bath.

14:43 How long have you been working on this?

14:47 November 24th.

14:48 Again, the full bath with the W.

14:51 Everything is brand new here.

14:53 Yeah, we've got the total covered.

14:54 Kind of amazing.

14:55 This is a lot of bedrooms.

14:56 This is how many houses?

14:58 It was five per house.

15:01 Was there five houses?

15:03 35 houses.

15:04 Yeah.

15:08 The view is incredible.

15:13 It's 184 123.

15:14 The price is not really the appeal, right?

15:18 Cuz you still have to spend and yeah, depend like the house across the street.

15:21 That was a clean move in.

15:23 And how much was that house?

15:24 Do you know?

15:25 25.

15:25 25,000.

15:26 This was 35.

15:27 It's actually incredibly beautiful.

15:28 Have these vineyards and olive trees everywhere.

15:31 However, it does seem like no house was sold for a euro.

15:34 So, does that make it does that make it a scam?

15:37 I don't know.

15:39 It's still very very cheap.

15:41 When it seems too good to be true, it usually is.

15:46 Yeah.

15:46 You think so?

15:50 All of a sudden, we were racing to the nearest medical

15:53 center to confirm Stfan wasn't having some kind of a health emergency.

15:57 Are we leaving the town right now?

16:00 I think we are.

16:06 Well, we're taking Stefan to the hospital here.

16:08 He had his heart checked 2 days ago and it was fine,

16:11 but he has high blood pressure right now,

16:15 so he's very concerned, which is fair enough.

16:18 So, the local medical system seems to be working well.

16:21 Not quite how I expected today to go.

16:24 Better safe than sorry.

16:25 Better safe than sorry.

16:26 I'm telling you that's Tommy was saying you

16:28 thought the one your house deal was too good

16:30 so your heart is can't handle it can't it's too good to be true wow he's going

16:46 full on okay over the next several hours

16:50 we waited at the hospital with Stfan to be

16:52 sure it wasn't anything serious and eventually we were

16:55 told by the doctors that his health was stable.

16:58 Ladies and gentlemen, we have some good news and we have some bad news.

17:01 Good news is his blood results came back and apparently he's perfectly fine.

17:05 His blood pressure is back down to normal levels.

17:08 But they won't let him go until they do a second test to be really sure.

17:12 Which means if we wait cuz we've been waiting for the last 7 hours actually.

17:16 So if we don't go back now, we're going to miss the rest of the day.

17:20 So we're heading back.

17:20 We're going to explore it now for the next couple hours before the sunset.

17:24 Once he gets hopefully the all clear,

17:26 he's going to taxi the 35 minutes over to the town and join us.

17:35 The thing is it is a very beautiful town.

17:37 The problem is no one has ever bought a house for €1.

17:40 So the whole thing is just one giant clickbait.

17:43 Most people end up spending pretty significant amount of money to renovate.

17:46 It really ends up being a question of like is it worth it

17:51 to do it here if you can just do it somewhere less remote.

17:57 This is where all the guys were sitting right here by the pharmacy.

18:00 That's where our boys were.

18:01 They've just moved side of the street.

18:02 These guys have been sitting here all day.

18:04 That was like they were in the same spot 7 hours ago.

18:06 I could see you becoming one of these guys.

18:08 Honestly, it's the dream.

18:09 Like wouldn't you want to just hang out all day?

18:18 We have a group of local legends here.

18:19 This is one of the aspects about Italy that I find the most iconic.

18:22 Groups of older men with white hair sitting in a circle in plastic

18:25 chairs just sitting in talking[ __] They spent all day sitting there chatting.

18:30 They have not left.

18:32 This is a nice group here.

18:36 You you do this often every day.

18:40 See club.

18:55 Oh, yeah.

18:57 This is the club.

19:01 Yeah.

19:02 H.

19:03 You coming with us?

19:06 Okay.

19:07 Okay.

19:08 Social cultural club.

19:12 Oh wow.

19:23 Wow.

19:28 Wow.

19:29 Wow.

19:30 Very very nice.

19:32 Very nice.

19:36 Facebook.

19:40 Even though these one-year villages have been dying,

19:42 not all of those who lived here are gone,

19:45 some are still keeping this village alive.

19:47 And the social ties and customs of those who

19:50 stayed seem almost reminiscent of a time from the past.

19:54 Nice to see you again.

19:56 It's amazing to have like a club to gather.

19:58 I I feel like I I I don't think I've seen

20:00 that before really in anywhere where like here's the photo of the members.

20:08 It's like the most amount of guys this age altogether hanging I've ever seen.

20:14 People wonder why does Italy have so many people that live

20:16 until very old age and this is like a prime example.

20:19 All these guys probably come here every day, hang out, play cards.

20:23 It's beautiful.

20:23 I mean, we've been to so many blue zones and the one like common

20:28 thread is community and friendship and doing

20:37 something outside your home with other people.

20:54 Man, we're playing cards while you're playing right now.

20:56 I would have thought that locals would not have liked this because

21:00 it would change the town in a way that maybe they don't like,

21:03 but they're saying everyone is actually very respectful

21:05 of like the heritage of the place and is

21:08 just bringing more activity to a town that they

21:10 all probably saw during their lifetime deteriorate pretty rapidly.

21:15 They're moving sides of the street.

21:18 This is This is There's a migration.

21:21 Great migration.

21:22 Hush.

21:24 Don't scare them.

21:29 Don't Thank you very much.

21:31 Thank you.

21:32 Thank you.

21:32 We spent the rest of the evening wandering around this pictures town,

21:36 taking in the sights and started to discover that it

21:38 was a lot more lively than we'd initially thought.

21:41 Oh, wait.

21:41 That's freaking How's it going, Gary?

21:43 This is your life, huh?

21:45 The joy of doing nothing.

21:46 Although it's been quite quite a day for doing nothing.

21:49 And what is this place here?

21:50 This is This is what This is the newest bar cafe.

21:52 A lot of these like these spots popping up as more people come in.

21:56 Yeah, that was Stefan's main skeptical argument

21:58 against it was there's nothing to do.

22:00 There's no bars.

22:01 There's no restaurant.

22:10 This village is truly so charming.

22:12 This is the side of Italy that I've grown to enjoy the most.

22:16 I've been to the crowded touristy areas in Italy,

22:19 and my favorite has by far been the little villages.

22:22 Yes, you don't have a million restaurants and things to do,

22:26 but it's the calmness of the life.

22:27 It's every person is waving and saying hello.

22:30 And then you turn around a little corner and oh my god, look at this.

22:49 Wow.

22:50 This restaurant is full.

22:51 I know.

22:51 People were telling us there's nothing nowhere to eat here.

22:54 There's no restaurants.

22:55 There's no bars.

22:56 There's nothing to do.

22:57 I thought the one year thing would like always be in abandoned towns.

23:01 This is like a super lively town.

23:03 The village where my grandparents are from in France, that's dead.

23:06 Like there are zero people there.

23:08 Here it's like you buy something, you actually get a life.

23:10 Like to have young people in an old village, that's like unheard of.

23:14 Where did your meter of like from 1 to 10?

23:17 Where did it start and where is it now?

23:19 Like when you before you started?

23:21 Realistically, it was probably at like a five and then definitely went down

23:24 to like a three and now I'm like up to a seven or eight.

23:27 Wow.

23:27 Yeah.

23:27 Gary said as well that if you just wanted to renovate it kind of basically,

23:31 you could have done it for 70 80,000 which

23:34 is not terrible for like the space that he has.

23:36 And if you have that like spot just in the mountains and you can go to Palmo,

23:40 you can go to the beach,

23:41 you can hang around here and just have a relaxing time with your friends.

23:45 Not too bad.

23:45 Not too bad.

23:47 As the day came to a close,

23:49 it was hard to consider how convinced we were of this scheme.

23:53 The people we'd met in the houses we'd seen were lovely,

23:55 but most of them turned out to be

23:56 tens of thousands of euros to buy and renovate.

23:59 And we get to meet anyone who had actually bought a house for €1.

24:02 So, we were keen to see how the next

24:05 time we'd be exploring would compare to this one.

24:07 Stfan had to remain in the hospital overnight just as precaution.

24:09 So, he would meet up with us again the next day.

24:12 But before exploring this town, there was a quick side quest we had to take.

24:20 Whenever we go on these really remote yesterday trips,

24:22 we rarely get to enjoy the main attractions,

24:25 the coastlines, the beauty of the places we get to.

24:28 But today, thanks to the sponsor of today's video,

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25:22 Now, back to the one village.

25:25 He made it.

25:27 Oh my god, dude.

25:28 You have no idea.

25:30 How's that?

25:30 How are you?

25:32 I'm good.

25:32 Amazing.

25:33 Nothing wrong.

25:33 Nothing wrong.

25:34 Okay, we're all back together now.

25:37 Let's go.

25:37 Are you excited to potentially buy a home today?

25:40 We'll see.

25:41 We'll take a tally at the end of the day.

25:44 Thomas, are you buying a home?

25:45 I don't know.

25:46 We'll see.

25:46 We had a great time yesterday, actually.

25:48 Um, so we'll see how this town goes.

25:51 It's hard to say.

25:52 I I think that the price thing is a bit of a clickbait.

25:57 Now that we had our skeptical recruits back in the mix,

25:59 we still felt that we had a lot of work to do

26:04 to convince them to see the positives of reviving these towns.

26:09 We have just entered the town Musameli.

26:12 The view here, holy crap, that is insane.

26:15 Look at those views.

26:16 That is beautiful.

26:17 We got Stefan to say a nice thing.

26:19 From 1 to 10 here, we all have a meter on like how sold we are.

26:23 Where are you right now?

26:25 Uh I'm still at a 2 and 1/2.

26:27 Oh, wow.

26:27 That's I thought we had made better progress.

26:30 I guess this is what we should have expected bringing a pessimist.

26:52 I think the most surprising part about these one

26:54 towns for me is how beautiful they are.

26:56 I really thought they were going to be completely abandoned,

27:00 decrepit ghost towns.

27:01 It's too bad that our current system isn't allowing

27:03 for young people to kind of thrive in these places.

27:06 The last town seems to have been quite happy with the one-year house project.

27:10 So, let's see what this one thinks.

27:16 Let's go in and explore town number two.

27:24 Real estate for sale.

27:26 18,000 19,000 15,000.

27:28 It's actually very little.

27:31 Especially for like American standards.

27:33 I know.

27:33 Zero.

27:34 You could nothing for that.

27:35 So, Stefan, you're liking this place.

27:37 It looks great.

27:37 I'm telling you, I love the ideas of it.

27:39 I would consider thinking about it.

27:44 You would consider thinking about it.

27:50 I think we're making progress.

27:55 We have a couple of goals today.

27:57 The first being to see if there's actually ever a house that was bought for €1.

28:02 And the last town, as far as we know, no house was ever bought for a euro.

28:05 The second goal will be to see if we can tour any of the 1uro costing houses.

28:11 We've been exploring the idea of opening digital detox homes around

28:15 the world to help revitalize these very remote and oftent times struggling towns

28:19 to step away from the madness that might be going on in your life

28:23 and come to a beautiful town like this and disconnect completely.

28:26 Let's see if we can uh make some progress.

28:30 Thomas, everyone just says hello in these little towns.

28:37 Good morning.

28:38 Oh, you a little bit.

28:39 Little bit.

28:40 Nice to meet you, Thomas.

28:41 Frank.

28:42 Uh, yeah.

28:42 What do you do in this village here?

28:44 I am part of the kitchen.

28:46 The good kitchen.

28:47 You see charity.

28:47 Charity.

28:48 Okay.

28:48 We're doing everything for the old people.

28:51 You can join us.

28:53 Actually, today we cook for the foreigners.

28:57 Oh, for free.

28:58 See about lucky.

29:00 Yay.

29:01 Come on.

29:02 Thomas, nice to meet you.

29:03 Nice to meet you.

29:04 You too.

29:04 So, you're a chef here?

29:05 No, I'm not a I never studied to be a chef.

29:09 I worked with Jamie Oliver in London for 17 years,

29:12 but I worked on all his community food programs.

29:14 No way.

29:15 So, you live here in this I live here 3 days a week when I run the kitchen.

29:19 Come to volunteer in the kitchen and the rest

29:21 of the time I live in a place called Tora Salsa.

29:24 That's amazing.

29:24 Yeah.

29:25 I have a nice life.

29:26 Yeah, a really nice life.

29:28 All made from the rescued produce.

29:32 None of the food that's produced in the world is wasted.

29:40 We feel there's a strong sense of community.

29:43 It seems like everyone says hi.

29:44 Yeah.

29:44 Yeah.

29:45 Sicilians are very friendly.

29:46 They know what it's like to do without and so then when somebody is in trouble,

29:51 they're the first to help.

29:52 It's a great sense of community.

29:53 As we were waiting to try the food from this kitchen,

29:56 we were approached by a friendly local.

29:59 Thomas Summer.

30:00 Summer.

30:00 That's cool.

30:01 Yeah.

30:01 Are you from Yes.

30:03 Theory?

30:03 Yeah.

30:04 Yeah.

30:04 Where are you from?

30:05 Australia originally.

30:06 My dad's from from here.

30:08 You You live here?

30:09 I do.

30:09 Yeah.

30:09 I've been here for about 4 years, man.

30:11 No way.

30:12 Yeah.

30:12 That's so cool.

30:13 Did a one concept to combine four homes?

30:15 Yeah.

30:15 Yeah.

30:16 Do you mind if we check out your place?

30:18 It's something.

30:18 Yeah.

30:18 Yeah, of course you can.

30:20 That's so cool.

30:20 It seems like most people like the starting bid is €1,

30:23 but did you actually buy them for €1 or or No.

30:26 So, you buy them for like a euro and then you um pay

30:30 a notaria fee which is about 2,500 and then you have to renovate it.

30:35 So, I have a like a €1 and then I

30:38 have more premium priced homes which are not that expensive.

30:42 I think I paid €8,000 completely.

30:44 But the actual official sale price was was €1.

30:47 Yeah.

30:48 Are you serious?

30:49 You're the first one.

30:50 Yeah, it's real.

30:51 There's a few.

30:52 No, no, there's there's a bunch of people here that have bought like one houses.

30:58 So, you drive when you fly out, you drive to Palemo.

31:01 You can get the train directly to the uh airport.

31:04 How fast is the train?

31:06 It's about an hour and a half to the airport.

31:09 Yeah, it's not bad.

31:10 Not bad.

31:11 Not bad.

31:12 It's too It's 2 hours drive.

31:14 We're getting in slowly.

31:16 Nice.

31:16 Can't wait to see your Yeah, no worries.

31:19 Wow, this is incredible.

31:21 This is um small today.

31:23 Usually, it's uh quite big.

31:25 I mean, if you're here at nighttime, this place is uh full of tables.

31:29 The town's lit.

31:30 There's live music everywhere.

31:32 Our new friend, Summer,

31:33 invited us to see his renovated home later that afternoon.

31:36 But first, we had an appointment with a local real estate agent who was

31:40 finally going to show us some real one houses that were actually up for sale.

31:45 Now, I'm excited.

31:46 I want to see if it's worth to buy really a€1 house

31:51 or you buy already one redone for 30, 40, 50, 100 grand.

31:56 Huh?

31:57 That's cute though.

31:57 This house here is 1.

31:59 Yes, you can go up the staircase, but don't walk into the room.

32:02 Okay.

32:02 Look at it from the staircase.

32:04 It's concerning that the two of you are waiting out here.

32:06 All right, Stefan.

32:07 This could be your new home.

32:09 All right, we'll leave you here.

32:11 It's a threele Italian uh summer house.

32:14 I'm really worried about these stairs.

32:16 There's some Yeah, a little paint roof could use some work probably.

32:21 Oh.

32:21 Oh, I'm getting like a headache from I

32:24 don't know the mold and probably asbestous.

32:26 This is what you get for a euro.

32:29 My enthusiasm has definitely gone down.

32:31 I guess in my mind the idea seemed much simpler.

32:34 Like, oh, just gut it, renovate it.

32:36 It's fine.

32:37 Standing in the space, I'm like,

32:39 I think the whole thing, everything completely needs to be redone.

32:43 Okay, you'll keep looking around.

32:45 This is where we would put Stefan if we were to buy this house.

32:52 And here's the rope.

32:54 Keep your hands up with afterwards.

32:57 The more houses we tore, the less I believe this.

33:00 This is a lot of work.

33:01 I was probably the biggest optimist and no way.

33:05 This is gross.

33:06 It feels like it's been dead and stuck there for a long time.

33:11 And then a weird thing started happening.

33:13 This is absolutely stunning.

33:14 The color pastel pastel color.

33:15 What do you think about this house?

33:17 The doors are amazing.

33:18 The staircase railing is amazing.

33:20 The floors are great if you clean them up and pimp them out.

33:23 Stfan seemed to prefer the destroyed one-year-old houses

33:27 over the highly renovated ones we were shown after.

33:33 I just like the floor.

33:36 I hate the floor.

33:38 All right.

33:39 Okay.

33:39 Plastic.

33:40 Too modern.

33:41 blah.

33:41 That's a total blah.

33:42 I don't like the title.

33:44 I tell you why.

33:46 Cuz it's fake.

33:47 But that's personal taste.

33:48 It is personal taste.

33:50 You're absolutely right.

33:51 It's personal taste.

33:51 There's like a staircase at the top and stuff.

33:53 I was like, "It's just horrendous.

33:54 It's horrible to her." And she's like, "Yeah, yeah,

33:57 I would never buy this." It made me very uncomfortable, so I had to leave.

34:01 I wouldn't take it for free.

34:03 The staircase is horrendous.

34:04 The the the color keep is horrendous.

34:07 The tile is horrendous.

34:08 I think I like the one your house better than the hole.

34:11 I don't understand you.

34:12 If I if I come here and move to Sicily in the middle of nowhere, I want history.

34:17 I want to breathe and smell and lift the history of this town.

34:22 Otherwise, I stay in freaking I go move to Stockholm.

34:26 Come here.

34:27 Come here.

34:29 Come here, my friend.

34:31 It was true that we were all starting to side with Stfan's point of view.

34:35 The cost and effort of trying to revive these dilapitated homes and what

34:38 you ended up with were not seeming like something we could get excited about.

34:42 But when we met back up with Summer,

34:44 he was determined to show us the beauty that he saw in this town.

34:56 I like that every town has this.

34:57 I did not know this was a thing in Italy.

34:59 Three of them in this street.

35:01 They're gambling for beers.

35:02 And you know my weakness.

35:05 Gambling and beers.

35:07 Gambling and beers.

35:09 That's my weakness.

35:12 This square here just got €2 million.

35:14 Turn it to a little digital nomad place.

35:17 Why?

35:17 It's got the fastest internet I've ever had in my life.

35:20 Up to 2GB download per second.

35:22 What?

35:22 There's a beautiful hospital down the street there.

35:24 And they're turning it into kind of like a Roman bar.

35:29 Holy crap, man.

35:33 All of these houses, are these inhabited?

35:36 Cuz Yes.

35:36 This is a French couple here.

35:38 This is an Irish couple here.

35:40 The craziest thing is Summer and Stefan, you guys are the same age.

35:44 No, he's older than me.

35:45 You're older.

35:45 He's older.

35:46 He's older.

35:46 What the hell?

35:48 This is my place from here.

35:50 Okay.

35:51 All the way down.

35:52 Wait.

35:53 Oh, it's huge.

35:54 Yes.

35:55 And all of this down to the tree.

35:58 You're joking.

35:59 No, because it's so huge.

36:01 There's like 18 rooms in all the places.

36:05 I've had to combine them into one house.

36:10 Um, so this is like all a work in progress.

36:13 So he's bought combined four houses together and he's got

36:17 like a prime view spot over a church in the valley.

36:23 It's pretty incredible.

36:32 dining area.

36:33 Oh, wow.

36:34 I do the renovation myself, so I just needed to make it habitable.

36:40 What What was the house like when you first got here?

36:44 Yeah, there was like dead rats, a dead cat, there were dead pigeons.

36:49 Um, just a lot of stuff.

36:51 Are you convinced?

36:52 I'm around 60.

36:54 I think it's 57 years no one had lived here.

36:57 Wow.

36:57 So it was a long time.

36:59 This view is You got a great view, too.

37:01 I've got an amazing view.

37:03 Wait, so this area here is yours, too?

37:05 Yeah.

37:05 Down to the tree.

37:06 This is yours?

37:08 This whole thing here?

37:09 Yeah.

37:10 I'm going to build um community gardens here.

37:13 This whole area here of his house.

37:16 It's crazy.

37:17 This is incredible.

37:18 A lot of land.

37:19 This You got a lot of space.

37:21 This was four houses next to each other that you bought.

37:25 Yeah.

37:25 Yeah.

37:25 So, this house, the bottom part of it was built

37:29 in 1580 and uh it's been within the same family,

37:33 the Favata family, uh the entire time.

37:36 Amazingly, I went down to the basement when I

37:39 first got here and found photographs from 100 years ago.

37:42 People used to inscribe on the photographs dates and who was who and that.

37:47 And then I found the family and I returned it to them.

37:50 So were these houses like houses that you bought that were like amongst

37:54 the ones that are like 2030,000 or was this a 1 house initially?

37:57 No, the house next door was €1,

37:59 the house downstairs was €1 and the others were uh about 34,000.

38:04 All up it cost around €8,000.

38:09 You're joking total.

38:11 Yeah.

38:12 That's insane.

38:14 It's pretty insane, right?

38:16 And it wasn't like I came here to buy a house for €1.

38:20 I didn't even mean to come to this town.

38:23 I got stuck here because of a train strike.

38:25 Are you serious?

38:26 Yeah.

38:27 The painter that was renovating the house was like,

38:29 "What are you doing in this town?" I was like,

38:31 "Oh, it's a coincidence." He's like,

38:32 "There's no coincidences here." And then he goes,

38:34 "Okay, I'm going to drive you to the train station now,

38:37 but first I want to show you a house and that's this house." No way.

38:41 I found a house situation in Europe.

38:43 Jesus Christ.

38:44 But this entire street, like I said, there's 2,000 foreigners that live here.

38:49 2,000?

38:49 Yeah.

38:49 So, there's a lot.

38:51 It's a huge It's like 25% of the population.

38:54 2,000 people moved here.

38:55 That's way more than I thought.

38:57 I thought we were talking about 100 people max.

39:00 I think I know 100 of them.

39:04 This is actually a genius project.

39:07 I was not expecting this to be honest before coming here.

39:10 Yeah.

39:10 I thought, okay, it's like a question of do

39:13 you want to have a cheap house in the middle?

39:18 nowhere like but actually there's stuff going on.

39:22 It's hard not to admit that we had a really confusing trip.

39:26 Our enthusiasm started out high only to crash down

39:29 to absolute bottom getting somewhat saved by Samir's success story.

39:33 But still none of us left feeling really inspired.

39:36 I'm not too sure what we were expecting for €1.

39:39 If you want a cheap house,

39:40 you have to take on the hard work of rebuilding it from near ruins.

39:44 In our search for the perfect place to open a yes oasis,

39:47 this didn't quite have what we were looking for.

39:50 Right now, we're probably searching for more nature and more space.

39:53 But the one house project is real and it has worked.

39:57 Bringing life back to villages

39:59 that were heading straight towards rapid extinction.

40:01 The spirit of these villages is being kept alive by the locals who

40:05 chose to stay and the newcomers who chose to call this place their home.

40:09 Sambuka and Musli were such charming villages and we're

40:12 curious to see if making rural houses absurdly affordable

40:15 in other parts of the world will lead

40:18 to more young people and families to consider another lifestyle.

40:21 For now, our search continues.

40:23 I'll be honest, guys, I'm pretty bummed out.

40:25 I came here like really optimistic and I

40:28 think my morale has been completely shattered.

40:30 I started high also on my out of 10.

40:33 I was like I was a seven and then I feel like now I'm down to a zero.

40:38 What Yeah, we will.