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Comment by gandalfian | Hacker News Reader

I liked the quote from elsewhere in which an American pointed out that after the required taxes, bank charges and payments for buying the house in Italy her 1 euro house cost her about €2000 just to buy. Good marketing though.

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> her 1 euro house cost her about €2000

…and then 100k more to bring it to normal living condition

A €102,000 house in Italy doesn't sound like the worst deal in the world.

You can get a pretty decent house in some rural economically depressed parts of the USA for $100k, if you look. Use zillow, set price ceiling to 100k or 110k, 2BD and 1BA or 1.5BA, start browsing map to random small towns in the midwest and prairie states.

You can get a house in economically healthy cities and suburbs for $100k...

... as long your definition of economically healthy doesn't mean "top-tier school district in a trendy metro area", and your definition of house isn't "4bd/2ba recent construction"

Hastily searched example:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14021-Lakota-Ave-Clevelan...

Sure, but my suspicion is that the main driver for someone doing this is the allure of moving to a different country, especially one with such a reputation of having beautiful scenery and culture.

You still can get a house for that much in Detroit, however you'll potentially be living in a dangerous neighborhood. Safe Detroit neighborhoods have actually soared in cost even if they aren't in the downtown area, believe it or not.

If I were to do something like that for habitable, ready to move in house under $100k in some post-industrial economically depressed city, it sure wouldn't be Detroit with all the big city problems that come with that... Somewhere much smaller like Oswego, NY or Elmira, NY.

a somewhat randomly chosen example in 45 seconds of searching: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/51-E-5th-St-Oswego-NY-131...

Missouri just doesn't have the allure of the Italian countryside.

Neither does Rochester New York, where you can get a pretty decent house for $80k.

How bad is the living condition? What if you want to take a trip to Italy and just want to buy a place to crash for a week? Bring a sleeping bag?

I recall these buildings being unlivable with no amenities or facilities. At least that was my impression when this made the rounds last time.

Add to that the $2k closing costs and it’s not a viable solution for a week’s worth of camping.

Does it have walls at least?

I think one of the conditions for the "1€ economic treatment" is that you actually will live there where you bought, for years.

And 2000E is not a good deal? It might not be but it sounds pretty ok even though not $1 or E1. There is not much that looks like a house in the EU for 2k, east or south, let alone north/west.

> And 2000E is not a good deal?

It depends?

That's what I said... It might not be but it seems hard to make it a bad deal in the EU as house prices are.

House prices have never been high in small, remote, depopulated villages, which is where these 1€ houses tend to be.

I have lived for 20 years in villages like that: house prices are high. Portugal and Spain, not Italy so maybe it is worse there?

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