The town of Cinquefrondi, in the southern region of Calabria, has joined several other Italian towns in putting old and abandoned houses up for sale for the symbolic price of €1 in an effort to “favor the valorization, recovery and repopulation of the historic center” of the town.

 

 The town sits right between two seas and is in one of the regions with the fewest number of COVID-19 cases in the whole country.

 

Cinquefrondi is located in in the middle of the Aspromonte National Park and not too far away from the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas, both less than half an hour away by car. The whole area used to be Magna Graecia, and it still carries several traces of its ancient Greek past. Overall, not a bad place to settle down.

 

Everyone can put forward a request for one of the houses, whether they are Italian or not, but of course, there are some conditions that must be met. The house costs a symbolic €1, but buyers have to guarantee they’re going to start renovation works on their new homes within three months (and have them completed in the following three years). They must also have insurance on their house, and cover the fees of any bureaucratic paperwork needed to complete the transfer of property.