PROPERTY: How Italy's cheap homes frenzy is changing rural villages
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Loading... - Fleur Braam
- 21 Mar 2022
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As towns across Italy are putting up for sale old houses, often triggering property stampedes, those rushing to buy them are mainly foreigners.
Lured by the Italian idyll of great food, peacefulness, and the sense of authenticity that only rural spots still preserve, people in search of a second home don’t often realize immediately that what they want is exactly what other foreigners crave as well.
If everybody is chasing after the same dream there’s a risk, in the long term, that it all shatters. What were once quiet places could turn out to be pretty crowded.
Speaking to second-home foreign owners in the towns known for selling off cheap properties, I discovered some are now worried that they could end up bumping into too many other foreigners.
After previously being the only outsiders rubbing shoulders with locals, they say such a scenario would destroy the Italian ‘village experience’ for them.
American Frank Cohen recently purchased several cheap dwellings in the historical center of Latronico, a picturesque and previously unknown village in the southern region of Basilicata, which has seen an influx of American and European buyers.
“The last thing I want is to hang out with Americans, or that my next door neighbor speaks English,” Cohen says.
“I want to live among locals, go to the barber to take the pulse of everyday life and gossip, talk to the elders, dine with villagers out on the streets during the summer as is customary here,” he saya. “I want to live like a local.”
Cohen, who owns two adjoining properties on the same street, one with “three balconies and a panoramic terrace”, says he found out about Latronico’s bargain property offers “in the press”.
Alongside Latronico, the villages of Biccari in Puglia, Troina in Sicily, Zungoli in Campania and Ollolai in Sardinia have also recently launched successful housing schemes luring many foreign families, who have renovated properties to use as holiday homes and B&Bs.
In Sambuca, Sicily, local authorities started selling cheap homes in 2019. German resident Susan Henson, who had already bought a home there years before, expressed concern that the village might no longer be a “hidden, secret retreat for few foreigners”.
“My house, which was in a good state when I bought it, is tucked away in the ancient Saracen district with a great view of the green rolling hills,” says Henson, a professional from Düsseldorf who discovered Sambuca during one of her many trips to Sicily.
