Inferred Results from Italy's 1€ Housing Plan
Continuing my dive on mobility and housing this week, found a few interesting long reads by folks who legged it over to Italy in search of 1€ homes. It's pretty well-established by now that this is mostly a PR campaign organized by different localities, so aggregated governmental data around housing and community revitalization from this program is likely to be sparse if it arrives at all.
Anecdotal evidence seems like there hasn't been too much to write home about. The biggest highlight I could find was Mussomeli, Sicily, which apparently has sold 125 homes under the 1€ scheme, bringing 7MM to the local economy. That's roughly 15 houses a year and 1MM/year in economic contributions.
Another town, Mussomeli, reports 400 homes have been sold.
For towns of 10-15,000 these are not bad results, though there's even less data on whether locals appreciate the influx of hundreds of outsiders, local traditions have eroded, etc.
Wikipedia (obligatory take with a grain of salt) notes that there are 15,000 Americans living in Italy as of 2023, which is close to the historical average over the past decade. Similar numbers for the Netherlands, Spain, China, etc -- all the countries with citizens I'd expect to be buying and renovating houses in Italy.
Inferring housing program success from population changes is tenuous at best, but I'd be shocked if we saw aggregate statistics above 30k permanent relocations as a part of this scheme. Meanwhile, Italy is projected to decline by 5MM in population by 2050, one of the steepest drop-off rates in all of Europe.