‘You wouldn’t even get a shed in London for that’: Why I bought a €1 house in Sicily

About to turn 30 and looking to get onto the property ladder, UK-born George Laing found himself facing decades-long mortgages on little more than shoebox-sized flats in London. 

A little internet research showed him that in some places in Europe, instead, he could become the owner of a multi-bed property in a picturesque location. 

After mulling Bulgaria too, Laing stumbled on one of Italy’s first €1 house sales. 

Laing, who runs online auctions and buys and sells antiques, is now renovating his first house in Sicily, and on the lookout for more bargains. 

“I was living in London with more than 30 per cent of my paycheck going on rent so when I decided I wanted to invest in property, I had no way of saving for the deposit,” Laing says. 

“If I wanted to buy a house, my credit rating wouldn’t have been high enough to get a mortgage.”

With a budget of around €5,000 (“It was all I had in my account at that point”), Laing abandoned the idea of London and narrowed down his options to Italy’s €1 house scheme. 

“I have no real connection to Sicily. I went there on a school trip when I was about 14 and don’t really remember any of it,” he says. 

“I just really wanted to own my own house and there aren’t many places in the world where you can do that for just a few grand.”

He says the community of Mussomeli seemed “on the up not down” with a lot of improvements to community spaces - so he decided to pick out a property there. 

Italy’s €1 house schemes have boomed in popularity since the first sales and many municipalities now put photos and descriptions of the properties online in advance. 

However, when Laing was investing, he arrived to view the structures in Mussomeli with zero prior information. 

“There wasn’t a huge amount of thought