I bought six holiday homes for my family for £5 on a popular European island that hits 33C in summer

Scottish Sun

06-05-2025

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A WOMAN has revealed how she bought six Italian homes for just a fiver in a quaint Italian village - and it's less than an hour from the seaside.
Rubia Daniels bought the six houses for €1 (£0.85) each in the quaint town of Mussomeli in Sicily for herself, her daughter and her aunts.
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Rubia bought six house in Italy for just €1 each
Credit: SWNS
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She then set out to renovate each of them - with three of the properties for herself, one for her daughter and two for her aunts
Credit: SWNS
Mussomeli is a historic hill town, located only 40 minutes from the sea, hitting temperatures of 33C in the summer and boasts multiple restaurants and bars where you can eat for less than €10 (£8.51).
The town is also home to a medieval castle - the Castello Manfredonico.
The castle was designed to protect the town from invading forces and was used as a residence for noble families.
In recent years, the castle has undergone extensive restoration works allowing visitors to tour the walls, towers and courtyards.
The 51-year-old purchased the houses in the historic destination, as part of a council scheme which encourages people to renovate abandoned homes.
After admin costs, agency fees and the deeds, the cost of each property to was around €4,000 (£3,400) and for all six, she spent a total of a total of €24,000 (£20,500).
Some of the buildings Rubia bought had fully collapsed roofs and infrastructural issues, such as no water or electricity.
However, as a planning consultant by trade for 16 years, Rubia set out to break down the walls and renovate all six of the properties.
The six homes are now nearly completed and she hopes her friends and family will move to Mussomeli area to work and retire.
The houses are surrounded by the hills of the Sicilian countryside, with the Scivolandia waterpark a short drive away.
I visited the tiny island that is Italy's best kept secret and you can avoid the summer crowds
The park features two lagoons with six swimming pools, a large lawn, restaurants and bars, an amphitheatre, beach volleyball court, six water slides for adults, six water slides for children and a children's pool.
Her two aunts, Marilu Ferreira, 70, and Marua Fatima, 82, plan to move into their homes in Mussomeli permanently for the rest of their retirement.
Rubia - who is originally from Brazil but has lived in San Francisco since 1996 - said: "We bought all six in April 2019. In June, I did all the paperwork and then got the deeds later that summer.
"I packed six suitcases of all my tools and a generator, and then me, my husband and my brother-in-law, who was in Brazil, flew out to get the keys.
"The house was fully collapsed, but now it's fully renovated and has a beautiful marble bedroom."
She continued to explain that once the roof was fixed and water tight, the rest of the works fell into place.
She added: "It's been my passion and I just have so much feeling for these houses and the community as a whole."
Rubia believes her job made her adept to converting derelict properties, as she is "comfortable with the idea of transforming things and break walls".
She said: "For example, my husband panics when he sees me eyeing up projects like this, but for me it's just a combination of excitement and joy.
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She purchased the houses back in 2019 but since the scheme has become more popular
Credit: SWNS
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She is hoping to convert one of the properties into a wellness centre
Credit: SWNS
"But you have to see beyond the way a place looks at the start, and imagine how it's going to be in the end."
In total, Rubia spent €60,000 (£51,036.60) renovating her first purchase in Mussomeli, with the intention that she will not have to do any more work to it "for 50 years".
However, she hopes that she can renovate the other properties for under this budget.
She said: "I want to convert one of them into a wellness centre, where people can come and do yoga and meditation and the like - it would be nice to give back to the community this way.
"My daughter's one is almost done, we did a full remodel. I have a few changes still to make to mine, but it's my aunts which are the ones we're trying to move along the most now."
The 51-year-old added that she was particularly happy that she bought the properties quite quick after reading an article about the project.
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Her two aunts will move into a home each for their retirement
Credit: SWNS
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Her first property cost just over £50,000 to renovate
Credit: SWNS
She explained how now, at least 30 people are looking at one home and the scheme has grown in popularity.
She continued: "When I first told my friends and family about it, they couldn't believe it. They thought I was kidding when I said I was going to buy six.
"It can be intimidating, but you're getting the house basically for free and you can turn that into whatever you desire and it's just a really fun project - especially when your husband and entire family help out with the manual labour."
Rubia sourced all the furniture locally - including the kitchen, flooring, mirrors, bath and sink.
"We wanted to do it with the community in mind. We love it here - it's much nicer than California," she added.
"People actually mean it when they ask you how you are, and it's this social aspect which really attracted me to the area.
"Nobody is rushing around, everything is affordable. You can eat really well with very little money - a coffee and a croissant costs €1.50 (£1.28).
"In California, it's a very stressful environment and everything is so superficial."
A Brit also recently bought a house for 85p and turned it into a holiday home.
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Rubia is renovating the properties using furniture only from the local community
Credit: SWNS