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The Future. After Mussomeli, a small town in Sicily, Italy, offered people the chance to buy homes for a single euro, foreigners came running. The experiment has been a major economic win for Mussomeli and may lead to more expat communities in small towns all over Europe as remote work becomes normalized.
Population investment
Want to get people’s attention? Make housing cheap… like really cheap. That’s what Mussomeli did after its population shrunk to about 10,000 people after World War II, leaving 40,000 homes vacant.
- In a Hail Mary to revitalize the town, the mayor’s office launched a website to attract foreigners by offering some homes for literally one euro.
- And people responded in droves — within five years, 300 homes were sold, which is about 95% of the homes that were available.
- Also, tourism surged tenfold, reports Insider, and digital nomads flocked to the area, leading the city to open a co-working space.
All of those stats have put the little Sicilian city back on the map — both the EU and Italian government have invested tens of millions of euros into Mussomeli, which the city plans on using for new roads and refurbishing its Old Town’s central square.
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