Buying a $1 house in Italy may seem like a deal too good to be true; And for a Chicago woman who made that a reality, it was.
But she doesn't regret anything.
Financial advisor Meredith Taboni was digging deep into her Italian family history in 2019, when she found an abandoned house being auctioned off with a starting bid of €1 (about $1.05 US), in the quaint Sicilian village of Sambuca di Sicilia.
Was it a coincidence that she had traced her great-grandfather to the same Sicilian city where he had lived before immigrating to America in 1902?
The 44-year-old told CNBC she took it as a cue to propose, even though it sounded “too good to be true.”
And of course it was, because she was buying a property without anyone seeing it.
“From the moment I sent in the offer, checked my email every day, and found out I won, throughout this process, there were 4 million moments of frustration and exhaustion and thinking about how to move forward,” she explains in a YouTube video.
A number of European villages have gone viral offering abandoned homes for less than a dollar.
the goal? Persuading foreign investors to buy dilapidated houses, rehabilitate them, and increase the number of local residents along with the tourism trade.
Tabbone is just one of many who landed one of these deals.
After four and a half years and about $500,000, she says she doesn't regret spending a dime.
“I never felt like this wasn't the right place for me, that this wasn't the right project for me to work in or the right community to live in,” she says.
From the beginning, Taboon faced an uphill battle.
For starters, it was clear that the house would cost more than one euro – which is a lot more.
The bid was supposed to start at a very low price to attract attention, with the hope that a bidding war would drive the price higher.
When the dust settled, Tabone won the auction for about $6,200.
“The condition of this property when I first saw it was dismal at best,” she reveals. “There was no electricity, there was no running water, each room had a different level of flooring, there was an asbestos ceiling, and there was probably two feet of pigeon droppings on the floor.”
But none of that bothered Taboni.
In fact, the house she originally bought shared a wall with the house next door, so she ended up buying that as well in 2020, for about $23,000.
“The reason I did this is because the €1 house was too small [about 620 square feet]“Which I didn't mind at first, because I thought of it as just an apartment that I didn't visit very often,” she explained. “But once I started falling in love with Sambuca and realized I wanted to spend time here, I thought it might be nice to have more space.”
With two homes, 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 renovating them for three years.
The house now has four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 2,700 square feet.
But it made the project more difficult.
Those who watch reality TV renovation shows will likely remember the daunting challenges Dave and Jenny Mars faced when renovating an Italian villa on Fixer to Fabulous Italiano.
“I've never done a renovation like this in my life and I've never done any of the renovation work on my own,” she says. “I hired a renovation team to do 100% of the renovation. The one thing I spent a lot of time on was the design.
Tabon says she was inspired by her father, who was an architect and died when she was fifteen years old.
She now calls the house Casa dell'Architetto in his honor.
It also made several trips between Chicago and Sambuca during the three years it took to renovate.
“Flying back and forth can be expensive,” she says. “It was definitely the second largest cost I had. My contractor was the most expensive.”
Because the renovation took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a number of delays, but it turned out to be beneficial.
“I was lucky because I didn't have to withdraw from my savings,” she says.
Some of the most complex and memorable renovations involved leveling all the floors.
The compact houses had two floors and 18 rooms, and each floor was at a different height.
Adding electricity and plumbing was also complicated, as was adding more windows and French doors to bring in more natural light.
For the impressive 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.
Tabone says her favorite room is the bedroom, which was once the main room in a house.
Not only does it have the original stone wall with the imprint of the front door, but part of the floor is transparent, and you can look directly into the dry heat sauna that was added.
The library is one of her favorite rooms.
Centrally located between the two houses, a wall was partially removed to combine the two houses into one.
Tabone also bought the garage next door — to create a guest house for the families — as well as the house across the street, which she renovated for use as a gallery.
Now that all these renovations are complete, Tabbone is so in love with the house and the town that she wants to try spending four months of the year there.
“If I could do anything over the buying or renovating process, I think I would learn to be more patient in the beginning,” she says. “I wanted everything to happen very quickly, and I think I didn't enjoy the process enough at first.”
