‘We bid £800 and won an abandoned home we’d never seen before in Sicily’

A British couple who bid £800 ended up winning an abandoned house in Sicily they had never seen before.

Gillian and Daniel Payne, from Falkirk, had heard about the small town of Sambuca di Sicilia, where local authorities have been holding auctions of homes abandoned after an earthquake struck in 1968.

The town, in the west of the island, held its first auction in 2019, with bids starting at a symbolic €1, as part of efforts to revitalise the community. Two more property auctions were held in 2021 and 2024.

So far, the scheme has breathed new life into the old town, bringing new bars, restaurants and boutiques.

When Ms Payne who works for Scotland’s health sector, first spotted an online advert about the town selling properties for rock-bottom prices, the couple assumed it was a scam.

Only after doing some research did they realise that the cheap homes really were available for purchase.

The Paynes, who have one adult daughter, were among the first foreign “pioneers” to take part in the project in 2019, bidding €1,000 (£833) on four homes to increase their chances of securing one.

“You’ve got to be in it to win. If it happens, it happens. Then I remember getting a phone call saying, we got in. We couldn’t believe it”, Mr Payne, who works for a shipping agency, tells The i Paper.

“It was an opportunity. You always have that hope that you win. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t think you’d be successful.”

Although they had visited Italy before, they had never been to Sicily, and bought the house, which had not been lived in for 50 years, unseen.

It was only two weeks after they won the house that Mrs Payne, who is in her forties, first landed in Sambuca to see the house, that they realised they could make it work.

“It’s lovely. And it’s a great area. Just to drive from the airport there’s no industry, just vineyards” everywhere, says Mr Payne, who is in his fifties. Plus, the warm Sicilian weather as opposed to the “wet, windy and dull” Scottish climate is a major plus point, he adds.

Under the auction rules, buyers must finish renovations of the property within three years of purchase or lose their house. However, because delays tied to the Covid-19 pandemic set them back, the town hall granted them more time to complete them.

“Covid pretty much put us back three years. We started restyling only last year and there’s going to be three phases”, says Mr Payne. “We did the first phase last year, we’re in contact [with the local authorities] in relation to phase two, to complete at some stage this year. We’ll get that done with a view of the final phase next year”.

Phase one entailed placing a new roof on, concreting the floor upstairs and taking out the bedroom, building new stairs and stripping back the walls.

Now the Paynes are tackling phase two, adding electricity, plumbing, more windows and a new bathroom.

“In phase three there will be more of the aesthetics in relation to the plastering of the walls and the decorating,” adds Mr Payne, who works for a shipping agency.

The couple expect to spend roughly €40,000 (£33,295) renovating the three-floor building and hope to start using it as a holiday home next year. Once the property is done it will have two bedrooms and a panoramic terrace. They believe a similar property back in the UK would cost them more than double.

“Miserly, you can’t get less than that in the UK, even in the relatively cheaper areas, for less than £70,000-£80,000,” says Mr Payne.

The couple say they are grateful to have hired a “great team” of architects and builders, the latter part of one single family, which has allowed them to keep costs limited as they did a “few things above and beyond that they didn’t charge for”.

The Paynes intend to use the home as a holiday retreat and share it with friends and family, though in the long term they say they may permanently move there.

However they use it, they agree it was one of the best chances they could have taken.

“The more we look back probably we would have been disappointed if we didn’t get the house, I think just because of the adventure side of it… and it sort of came our way and went brilliantly,” says Mr Payne.