The newspaper headline says one euro. The first bank transfer you sign says something else: cauzione (security deposit), fideiussione (bank guarantee), minimum taxes, and a renovation to be finished within three years. Here you will find the real figures, the comuni (local councils) still running the scheme, and an honest comparison with a house that is already habitable.
Ever since Mussomeli made it onto CNN, "1 euro house" has become one of the most searched things about Sicily on the internet. The stories are true: hundreds of houses really have been sold, and quite a few really have been renovated. What almost no article tells you is what happens after you sign.
This guide lines up the actual documents — municipal bandi (public calls for applications), regulations, guides from the Agenzia delle Entrate (Italian tax office) — and the figures that come out of them. Then it does something a guide written by an estate agency usually doesn't: it tells you when it is worth it and when it isn't.
Under the same label sit two legal mechanisms that have almost nothing in common.
The brokering model. The Comune owns nothing: it collects expressions of interest from private owners who want to get rid of a ruin and puts them in the shop window. You negotiate with the private owner; the Comune provides the shop window and acts as guarantor of the obligations. This is how Mussomeli, Gangi and the Caltanissetta platform work.
The public auction. The property belongs to the Comune, which sells it through a genuine ascending auction: sealed bids, an adjudicating panel, a formal award record. This is how Sambuca di Sicilia worked.
The difference matters: in the first case there is no competitive bidding at all and often only the order in which applications arrive counts; in the second, the price is set by competition, and it goes up.
The lists doing the rounds online count around thirty Sicilian comuni taking part. But if you look at what is actually available to buy, the list gets a great deal shorter. This is the position as verified on the official websites at the beginning of August 2026:
Active, with properties available. Troina (Enna) keeps an up-to-date shop window on the project portal. Cammarata (Agrigento) still has four of its six houses free. Gangi (Palermo) has the notice and the property sheets available to download, and allocates in order of arrival. Mussomeli (Caltanissetta) is the Italian comune that has transferred the most properties under this scheme: around 450 since 2017, about a hundred and fifty of them at exactly one euro and the rest at prices that were still very low. A practical warning: the official project portal has not been responding for some weeks, so the up-to-date list has to be requested directly from the council office.
Closed or stalled. In Sambuca di Sicilia the last bando (the "3 euro houses" one) expired on 7 October 2024 and no new one has been issued. Salemi, which invented the idea back in 2008, has its auctions on hold. Racalmuto, Regalbuto and Bivona are still at the stage of asking owners whether they want to sell: no list, no sales. In Delia the regulation dates from 2021 and no bando ever followed. In Sutera the "1 euro houses" are not a council scheme at all: they are private negotiations handled by a local agency.
Where there is competitive bidding, the euro is only the starting point. In Sambuca the bando set a starting price of 3 euros per lot: one lot was awarded at €5,323, to a family who came over from London. That is not an anomaly, it is how an ascending auction with sealed bids normally works.
In the comuni that act as brokers, on the other hand, the token price holds up more often, because there is no competition: in Gangi, for example, applications are selected in chronological order of arrival at the council registry. There the variable is not the price, it is speed.
This is where the difference between the newspaper headline and your bank account lies.
The cauzione. Where there is an auction, it has to be lodged together with the bid, on pain of exclusion: in Sambuca it was €5,000, non-interest-bearing, of which €25 is retained in any case for processing. If you do not win you get it back; if you win and then fail to complete the obligations, you lose it. In Troina the deposit is also €5,000, must be paid within three months of the allocation and is returned in full once the works are finished; in the 2021 Salemi bando it was €3,000.
The fideiussione. In the comuni that act as brokers there is no cauzione, but you need a policy in favour of the Comune guaranteeing that the works will be carried out: in Mussomeli the regulation requires €5,000 of cover valid for three years. In other regulations the guarantee can be called in on a simple written demand, without the Comune having to pursue you first.
Add it up: before you have even touched a brick, deposit and policy together typically tie up €5,000.
This is the point that catches almost everyone out. When you buy from a private seller, the imposta di registro (transfer tax) is proportional — 9%, or 2% with prima casa (main home) relief — but the law sets a minimum of €1,000. You cannot go below that threshold, not even if the house costs one euro. On top come €50 of imposta ipotecaria (mortgage registry tax) and €50 of cadastral tax.
There is also a rule worth knowing: under the prezzo-valore (price-value) system the taxable base is not the agreed price but the cadastral value — the rendita catastale (rateable value) × 1.05 × 120, or × 110 with prima casa. It is not automatic: you have to ask the notaio for it expressly in the deed. On a ruin with a very low rendita it almost always lands on the €1,000 minimum anyway.
Finally, in every bando we have read the clause is identical: notaio, registration, transfer of title, cadastral registration and any subdivision of the property are entirely at the buyer's expense.
Buying for one euro means signing up to a timetable. The deadlines change from comune to comune, but the pattern repeats: the deed within two months of the allocation, the design within six months or a year, works starting within two months of the permit, works finished within three years (four in some regulations). But it is not a fixed rule, and the difference matters: in Troina the design has to be filed within one year, works must start within two and be finished within five; in Mussomeli the three years run from the start of the works, not from the purchase.
If the timetable slips, you lose the cauzione or the policy is called in, and the allocation is revoked. In Sambuca there was an even tighter constraint: you only become the owner once the works have been certified, which means that for up to thirty-six months the house is not yours and you cannot resell it.
A practical tip: the documents published by the Comuni do not always agree with one another — in Mussomeli the regulation and the application form give different deadlines. Get it confirmed in writing which deadlines apply before you sign anything.
There is no official price list that says "a renovation in Sicily costs X per square metre": the regional price list quotes individual items of work, and to get a figure out of it you need a full bill of quantities. What does exist are the documented cases and the builders' estimates.
The cases reported in the press in Sicily's small towns almost all fall between €30,000 and €100,000, with plenty of examples around €50,000 — in Sambuca as well as in Mussomeli. Estimates from Sicilian builders for the full restoration of a ruin (roof, floor structures, services, windows and doors) start at €600-900 per square metre and rise appreciably where there is structural work or a constraint from the Soprintendenza (heritage authority), which in historic centres requires traditional materials.
Then there are the technical fees, that is design and site supervision: on average 10% of the value of the works, more where there is a heritage constraint. And the timescale: for a ruin you are looking at 9-18 months in total, a third of which is paperwork alone — the standard landscape authorisation can take up to 105 days.
Two reality checks. In historic centres the narrow streets, the ZTL (restricted traffic zones) and the permits to occupy public land for scaffolding push up the cost of moving materials. And builders can pick and choose: two in three say they cannot find qualified staff, and small, awkward sites are the first to be put off.
In 2026 the renovation tax relief is worth 50% only for your main home and 36% for all other properties, on a ceiling of €96,000 per unit, recovered in ten annual instalments. Anyone buying a ruin as a second home or a holiday home is in the 36% band. From 2027 the rates drop again, to 36% and 30%.
The Superbonus is over (it survives only in the earthquake zones of central Italy and Abruzzo, not in Sicily) and the facade bonus has not existed since 2022: rendering falls under the ordinary relief, within the same ceiling.
Two things that do remain and do help: the reduced 10% VAT on restoration and renovation contracts (on €120,000 of works that is a difference of €12,000-14,000: check that the builder classifies the work correctly in the contract) and, in some of the comuni in the scheme, council grants of up to €15,000 — to be confirmed in the bando, because they vary from town to town.
It is worth it, and very much so, if you recognise yourself here: you have €50,000-80,000 in cash to put into the works without depending on a mortgage; you have the time and the nerves for three years of building work at a distance; you like the idea of redoing a house your way, from the roof down; and the value you are after is not resale but use — a second home in a small town, a small guesthouse, a life project.
It is not worth it if what you need is a house to sleep in this year, if you cannot oversee the site yourself and have nobody on the ground to do it for you, if the budget is already entirely in the purchase price, or if you are thinking of reselling quickly: in many small towns the second-hand market is thin and the exit price is not guaranteed.
Let us put the two routes side by side. On one side a one euro house: €1 of price, around €1,100 of taxes, €5,000 between cauzione and policy, roughly €50,000 of works, technical fees of around 10%, three years of obligations. Realistic total: €60,000-70,000 and three years, with the unknown of the surprises a ruin always has in store.
On the other, our own catalogue, updated every day from our management system. Today there are 13 homes under €60,000, and nine of them are declared to be in good or excellent condition: you buy them and you use them. The average for that bracket is 98 sq m at €36,400, that is €370 per square metre — against an average of €629/sq m for a flat in Caltanissetta.
This is not a rigged contest: the one euro house gives you an intact historic centre, a community waiting for you and a house designed around you. Our second-hand stock gives you keys, hot water and no contract with the Comune. They are two different projects, and it is worth choosing with the figures for both in front of you.
Foreigners can take part: the bandi say so explicitly, with no citizenship or residence requirement, and there is no obligation to move here — Sambuca's FAQs say it in black and white. For non-EU citizens who are not lawfully resident in Italy the reciprocity condition still applies as a filter: the check is carried out by the notaio, and it is better to have it done before you lodge a cauzione.
The rest — codice fiscale (Italian tax number), an Italian bank account, a power of attorney so you do not have to fly over for every signature — works as it does for any other purchase: we have explained it step by step in the guide for people buying from abroad.
On one euro houses we take no commission and we do not act as intermediaries: those bandi are handled directly with the Comune. What we can do is tell you, without beating about the bush, whether the plan you have in mind stands up, what it really costs to put a property back in order in this area, and which already-habitable alternatives there are on the same budget.
We work in Caltanissetta and its province, which is where those small towns are. Write and tell us what you are looking for and how much you want to spend — works included — and we will answer you with figures, not with enthusiasm.
The information on this page is taken from the published bandi and municipal regulations, from the Agenzia delle Entrate guides and from the data in our management system. Bandi and tax rates change: before committing yourself, every figure should be re-checked against the document issued by the Comune concerned. Updated August 2026.
A guide by the team at Danesi Immobiliare — FIAIP-certified estate agents, in Caltanissetta since 2008.