€1 homes, bonuses and illusions: what really happened (and what didn’t)
What the recent Tuscany investigation reveals about €1 homes, bonuses and misplaced expectations
Read the original article in Italian here 👇
In recent days, Il Tirreno reported on a judicial investigation that once again brought Italy’s €1 homes scheme into the spotlight. According to Italy’s financial police, a group of professionals and entrepreneurs allegedly promised renovation works that were never carried out, while at the same time generating and monetising millions of euros in tax credits. The buyers involved were reportedly mostly foreign nationals, attracted by the idea of purchasing abandoned properties and refurbishing them through state incentives at little or no real cost.
One point should be made clear from the outset: based on currently available information, the municipality and the mayor are not implicated in this investigation. The inquiry concerns specific professionals and entrepreneurs and does not involve the local administration.
These are serious allegations and it is right that they are assessed by the courts. The problem arises when a specific investigation is quickly turned into a blanket conclusion: €1 homes are a scam, or Italian villages don’t work. This leap is misleading and ultimately unhelpful.
The €1 homes initiative was never conceived as a real estate product. From the outset, it was an administrative tool — imperfect and sometimes naïve — adopted by small municipalities attempting to reactivate abandoned housing stock and counter long-term depopulation. It never promised easy profits, fast returns or turnkey renovations. What it implicitly promised was complexity.
Over time, however, a very different narrative took hold. Internationally, Italy was increasingly portrayed as a cheap alternative: a place where one could buy a house for almost nothing, renovate it thanks to incentives and start a new life with minimal effort. This narrative was amplified by influencers and content creators with only a superficial relationship to these places, and by self-styled consultants selling the idea of a “great deal” rather than the reality of living in fragile territories.
The final distortion came with building bonuses. Incentives designed for different contexts were applied to marginal areas without adequate technical structures, without robust local supply chains and without real systems of guidance. In between, as often happens, were those who exploited regulatory loopholes, turning regeneration into financial engineering detached from real construction and real communities.
The outcome was a toxic combination: romantic and inexperienced foreign buyers convinced they were making a simple investment; digital storytellers searching for uplifting narratives; and opportunistic operators promising “free” renovations. In all of this, villages became a backdrop rather than the subject.
It must be said clearly: the fact that regeneration projects in villages are slow, complex or temporarily stalled is not an anomaly — it is almost the norm. Anyone genuinely working in Italy’s inner areas knows this. In historic, fragile and bureaucratically complex contexts, it would be surprising if things were quick and straightforward.
But this normal complexity has nothing to do with what emerges from the investigation. Here, the issue is not difficult projects or long timelines, but works that were promised and never started, and value extracted without creating any tangible benefit for the territory. Confusing operational risk with deliberate deception is the most serious mistake that can be made today.
Such confusion risks damaging precisely those who invest time, capital and real presence in these places. It also risks unfairly discrediting local administrations that, often with limited resources, have tried to experiment with new tools to attract people and projects.
If there is a lesson to be drawn, it is this: regeneration does not fail because it is hard. It fails when it is sold as easy. When it starts from property rather than from life. When shortcuts are promised instead of pathways.
What is increasingly clear is what is truly missing: not more bonuses, but structured operators able to work alongside municipalities and communities, offering guidance before any investment is made. Medium- to long-term living solutions that are not touristic. Practical support on bureaucracy, residency, taxation, work and integration. Time to understand whether — and where — one truly belongs.
The house comes later. And it almost always does.
Fraud must be prosecuted without ambiguity. But using these cases to dismiss the entire idea of village regeneration would be a serious mistake. The problem is not Italy’s villages. The problem is that, for too long, they have been marketed as something they never were: an easy deal.