Imagine snapping up a cosy, three-storey dwelling in one of Italy’s charming rural enclaves for less than the cost of a second-hand scooter, with balconies overlooking an ancient castle and sheep-grazing fields.
UK-based Hussain Ramzan, 31, paid just €10,500 (£9,000) to buy and renovate a little old palazzo in the historical centre of Mussomeli, a picturesque Sicilian town that is selling cheap homes to lure foreign buyers and stop depopulation.
“It was a real bargain, practically an entire building for me and my family,” the Pakistani-Portuguese businessman told i. “The house was just €4,500 (£3,900) then I spent €3,000 (£2,600) to restyle it and €3,000 for the property deed and the whole paperwork, including the notary fees. Overall, just €10,500. In London, a similar home would cost £500,000.”
The starting price for the building was €5,000 but Mr Ramzan made a slightly lower offer and – as often happens in Italy – a compromise was reached and the former owners accepted the deal.
He says he has just finished giving his building a makeover, although the house was in great shape and needed just minimal upgrades like painting the walls and fixing a few roof tiles and windows, which he says he partly did himself in his spare time when he visited with his father. The 90-square-metre building came with beautiful travertine stone floors.
Mr Ramzan – who owns a three-bedroom cottage in Watford, Hertfordshire with his Portuguese wife and three children aged 4, 5 and 7 – runs a mobile phone shop and works in London’s investing sector. He moved to the British capital from Portugal 13 years ago and wanted a holiday home but prices in the UK were outside his budget.
When he read about Mussomeli’s cheap homes in 2019, he decided to jump on a plane and fly to Sicily to take a look. But he never imagined the price could be as low as the sum he paid.
He managed to complete the paperwork in just three months, right before Covid struck, but had to press pause on the renovation during the pandemic, delaying the works.
“I have just finished redoing my home and I am so glad I bought in such a key moment,” he said.
“The pandemic and the post-pandemic period have reinforced my belief that my family needed such a house in a remote, quiet area as a means of escape, to stay away from more populated places, where we could find a healthier environment, lifestyle and a friendly place packed with welcoming locals.”
Thanks to his acquired Portuguese passport, Mr Ramzan comes and goes as he pleases and has no post-Brexit travel restrictions. “Having Portuguese nationality makes travelling very easy,” he says.
The family plan to visit Sicily every summer and often during winter. Mr Ramzan has considered the possibility of relocating to Mussomeli for good in future and enrolling the children at the local school, but says it will be a decision for later.
He says he decided on their specific stone building after seeing 15 different properties in Mussomeli, won over by the two bedrooms, the balcony with views of the ancient cliff-hanging fortress dubbed the “castle in the sky” and the mountains, the two access doors on different streets and the peacefulness of the location.
Mr Ramzan says the local estate agency helped him navigate through the purchase process, easing the paperwork load. “It can be difficult if you come from a different country, don’t know how things work and don’t speak Italian. But the agency staff were really helpful, as I needed a translator and the notary deed had to be drawn up in English for me.”
Mussomeli is packed with British second-home owners. Since 2017, when it first placed on the market one-euro and cheap homes, the village has sold 400 properties – more than 50 of them to buyers from the UK, according to deputy mayor, Toti Nigrelli.
Nathalie Milazzo, sales director at village estate agency Agenzia Immobiliare Siciliana, says Brexit did not cause a drop in UK demand – quite the contrary: “Brits remain our main clients. Since the start of this year we’ve already sold a dozen homes to people coming from all over the United Kingdom.”
