Dear Reader,
In this week’s Your Overseas Dream Home Digest…
- VIDEO: Sicily’s Coast or Its Historic Hill Towns?
- What Happened After They Bought a €1 Home?
- WATCH: What Your Money Buys in Sicily
- A Traditional Japanese Home for $60,000
- Your Questions Answered on Buying in Sicily
Greetings from Savannah, Georgia,
I’m here to speak at the Oxford Club Private Wealth Seminar, where I’ll be until Tuesday.
I’m looking forward to meeting members of my Real Estate Trend Alert (RETA) group who will be attending the event. After the event, over the next two weeks, I’ll be scouting Panama City and then Uruguay. And I’ll have updates to share from the road. Stay tuned for those.
This week, though, I’ve been poring over the discoveries my scout Ciaran Madden brought back from his recent trip to Sicily…
Sicily is on my beat because it’s beautiful, historic, and offers some of the best bang for your buck in global real estate.
But you need to know where to buy…
A cheap house is easy to find on the island. The harder part is finding the right town.
Some places are still losing people. Others are attracting foreign buyers, new businesses, and investment. Yet, even in the places that are seeing investment, prices remain remarkably affordable.
That’s why I believe the opportunity in Sicily is better today than when I first started scouting it in 2013.
And it’s why I asked Ciaran to continue his scouting of the island.
In this week’s digest, I’ll share some of his findings. We’ll also head to Japan, where $60,000 buys a traditional home with its own Japanese garden.
But let’s start in Sicily…
VIDEO: Sicily’s Coast or Its Historic Hill Towns?
Ciaran had two missions on his latest trip…
Investigate the incredible bargains in Sicily’s Mediterranean beach towns. And find the historic hill towns where foreign buyers are breathing new life into once-declining communities.
He spent more than a week scouting the south and west of the island. And he came back with some fascinating discoveries.
Homes near beautiful Mediterranean beaches for under €100,000…properties in UNESCO-listed Baroque towns for as little as €17,000…and spectacular renovated historic homes for a fraction of what you’d pay elsewhere in Europe.
I sat down with Ciaran to go over what he saw on the ground…and answer the big question: Where should you buy in Sicily today—on the coast or in its historic hill towns?
In this video, Ciaran and I discuss his recent scouting trip to Sicily, the opportunities he uncovered, and his biggest takeaways from the road. Click to watch…
What Happened After They Bought a €1 Home?
Of course, Sicily is most famous in real estate terms for its €1 home scheme.
Back in 2013, I traveled to Sicily to investigate one of the first of these schemes offering abandoned homes for pocket change.
It was a brilliant marketing idea…
And pretty quickly, it caught on. Buyers came. Lots of €1 homes were sold. But what happened to these properties and the people who bought them?
While in Sicily, Ciaran met a couple who took the plunge on one of these properties.
British couple Sarah and Andrew Bentley bought a €1 home in Sambuca di Sicilia in 2019. Ciaran visited the finished home to see how things turned out.
WATCH: What Your Money Buys in Sicily
You don’t have to take on a €1 home renovation to own affordably in Sicily.
In a new episode of The Ronan McMahon Report, I compare three properties at three very different price points.
From a village renovation project overlooking the sea…to a move-in-ready home in a UNESCO World Heritage town…to a spacious property with valley views.
But as I shared above, finding a cheap house is only part of the story. The house matters. The town matters more.
In the video, I explain the four essential things I look for in a Sicilian town—and how I would approach buying there today.
What does it cost to own in Sicily? From a village renovation project to a spacious home with valley views, I compare properties at three different price points. Click to watch…
A Traditional Japanese Home for $60,000
Sicily isn’t the only place where population decline has left behind an extraordinary supply of affordable homes.
I’ve already visited Japan once this year, and I plan to return in the coming months.
This is one of the most advanced countries on earth. Yet its demographics—an aging population and a shrinking number of people—have helped make real estate in parts of Japan shockingly affordable.
The property I shared yesterday is a case in point.
In Wakayama City, south of Osaka, approximately $60,000 buys a traditional single-story home with seven rooms plus a dining/kitchen area, about 1,440 square feet of living space, and a Japanese garden.
Take a closer look at the property here.
Your Questions Answered
Have a comment for me or my team? A question about owning overseas? Share it here. I’d love to hear from you. Here’s a question I got from a reader recently…
Michael J. asks: Does buying one of these homes help you get a visa to Italy?
Ronan says: This question follows on from my discussion with Ciaran about what he found on his recent scouting trip to Sicily.
While you don’t need to be a resident to own a property, the purchase itself doesn’t automatically grant you the right to live in Italy full-time; that would require a separate visa application.
There’s another thing to bear in mind. Before you get too far into the buying process, you’ll need a codice fiscale, an Italian tax identification number. It’s required for the property purchase paperwork, registering the deed and paying property taxes.
It’s free, and getting one doesn’t make you an Italian tax resident.
If you’re interested in real estate in Sicily—or in Italy more broadly—you’ll find lots of helpful information in my Guide to Buying Italy Real Estate.
Wishing you a good real estate investing,
P.S. If you have a question about buying real estate overseas or have suggestions for destinations my team and I should put on our scouting list, drop me a line here.
