Four Aussie mates swap local house prices for a $1.60 property

Four Australians who became fed up with the nation’s skyrocketing house prices have packed in their jobs and sold their belongings to become homeowners overseas.

Best mates Miles, Ricky, Jack and Riley have quit Australia for a regional town in Italy, where they have purchased a house for €1 ($1.63).

“We are four best mates from Australia who got fed up with house prices. We thought there must be a better way,” the friends shared in a viral Instagram post.

“We jumped on a plane to Italy to find out if you could really get a house for €1.”

After renting a car, the foursome inspected houses across Sicily and the mainland.

Many of the properties were in dire straits – featuring cavernous holes in the floors, significant structural damage and no electricity or water connection.

“The roof is completely collapsed in. There are dead pigeons and a lot of shit,” Ricky said during one property inspection.

“The oven looks pretty good though … This is bad.”

Many of the abandoned houses available under the €1 scheme are unwanted inheritances. In Italy, steep property holding taxes apply to multihome owners, leading many families to sell their ancestral properties rather than shoulder the ongoing tax burden.

Local councils hope the initiative will breathe life back into the dwindling towns by drawing in a fresh wave of foreign residents.

When the friends reached Salemi in Sicily, they eventually found their new house.

“Some of us are tradies, some are not … We might be crazy. But we are going to have some fun,” they said in the video viewed more than 2 million times.

The group has already caused a stir on social media, with more than 11 million views across 16 Instagram videos and building a follower base of nearly 300,000 followers since starting the account late last month.

The adventure has not been without setbacks. The delivery truck they hired was unable to fit through the town’s narrow streets and one tonne of the wrong sand was accidentally ordered, leaving the friends to handle much of the heavy lifting themselves.

The group has set themselves a three-month deadline to renovate the property while documenting their progress online.

They are not the first Australians to make the leap, with the allure of dirt-cheap homes attracting a growing wave of hopeful buyers.

Brisbane couple Sophie Bouali and her tradie husband, Adam, made headlines earlier this year when they bought an Italian home for less than the price of a ute.

The couple secured a three-level property near Tuscany for €55,000 ($90,000) in late 2023 and now plan to offload their Queensland residence.

Unlike many budget overseas listings, their move-in-ready property did not require immediate structural work, boasting traditional features such as terrazzo floors and exposed timber beams.

The couple calculated that living costs in regional Italian towns can be about 30 per cent lower than in Australia, making a mortgage-free lifestyle achievable.

However, the buying process involved hidden expenses.

“There are also additional costs buyers need to factor in, such as purchase taxes, notary fees, property inspections and agent fees,” Bouali said.  

“In our case, those costs were about €11,000, approximately $18,000. Although this can vary depending on the property’s value.”

As travel creator Ben Morris discovered, the bargain prices are only a starting point.

Many councils sell properties through competitive bidding rather than on a first-come, first-served basis.

“So there’s the catch in Sambuca,” Morris told his YouTube viewers. “Although houses do go on the market for €1 ($1.64), they usually get bid on for up to €5000 ($8191).”

The four Australian friends have yet to reveal the full total spend on their renovation project beyond their initial €1 purchase price.