Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English‘We fell in love with it immediately. We looked each other in the eyes and said “this is our house”.’Sara Bertagnolli and Luca Sguazzini are talking about the moment they set eyes on their dream home for the first time.Their beautiful three-bedroom home with gorgeous sea views in the picturesque Sicilian village of Motta D’Affermo was everything they’d been looking for.And the best part? It only cost them one euro (84p).But they didn’t buy it using Italy’s popular One Euro House scheme. While the tempting scheme has attracted plenty of foreign buyers, Sara and Luca say there are plenty of hidden costs and explain to MailOnline Travel how they actually paid less to secure their dream property.Luca tells MailOnline Travel: ‘The condition of some of the one euro houses is really bad. The money that you need to invest was way over our budget. And even with a one euro house, you need to pay for all the documentation and the notary.’While the scheme varies depending on the village, buyers will usually have to commit to spending a certain amount renovating their one euro property, which can stretch to hundreds of thousands of pounds.Luca says: ‘We have seen projects where people have had to pay €250,000/£208,890 to renovate their one euro home. They even had to rebuild the ceilings.’ Italian couple Sara Bertagnolli and Luca Sguazzini bought their dream house for one euro The pair own a beautiful three-bedroom home in the Sicilian village of Motta D’Affermo The view from the couple’s homeAnd aside from the renovations, buyers might even end up paying more than the advertised one euro to secure the property, says Luca.He explains: ‘The scheme is so popular. People bid and make a higher offer. They say the house is one euro but then you get an American, or an English or a German guy who comes and says they will pay €5,000 – €10,000/£4,178 -£8,356. So the price is already more than you expected.’So how did Luca and Sara manage to score their dream property without using the scheme?The pair, who have previously spent time travelling and living in a campervan, say they always had a dream of buying an olive grove with sea views.They found the land just outside of Motta D’Affermo and then spent a month living in the village in their van to look for a permanent home.Sara says: ‘The village is really small, so everybody knew about us. One lady stopped us while we were just walking with our daughter in the stroller.’The woman told them her relatives were looking to get rid of their property. Sara explains: ‘If you own a house in Italy, you pay property taxes every year. And they didn’t want to pay this tax anymore.’Luca and Sara agreed to go and look at the house. Sara reveals: ‘This place had huge potential. It had been abandoned for 20 years. So the windows were broken. There was damage from water and birds and mice. The house was a mess. But you know what they say, you enter a place and you can feel it’s yours. No matter what, this was our house.’ The couple have undertaken renovations and done a lot of the work themselves The bathroom before (left) and after renovations Sara and Luca say that the ‘quiet and peace’ in their new village is something they were ‘looking for’While the original owners were just looking to get rid of the house, the sale still took a lot of time as the property had shared owners who were living all over the world.As part of the deal, Luca and Sara agreed to fly in the owners and to pay the notary fees. But they say they’ve spent less than €15,000/£12,500 altogether renovating the property.Homes under the one euro scheme often require much more extensive renovations, says Luca, who explains he had to ‘fix a few small leaks in the roof’ of the couple’s home rather than ‘tear down the roof and rebuild it’. They were also under no pressure to renovate their property whereas one euro scheme buyers often have a set timeline they’re required to meet.Sara adds: ‘There are so many villages in Sicily that are offering houses like ours, even if they’re not part of the official one euro scheme.’But the couple explain that the process isn’t for everyone.Sara says: ‘You need to fall in love with the house because if you’re paying so low, it’s because there is a reason. In these villages, most of the time everyone is leaving because there aren’t jobs.’ Despite this, Sara says the couple’s journey, which they share on YouTube, has inspired many new families to move to the area. Luca says that prospective buyers will also need to be happy to live in a remote location. The living room before and after the renovations He adds: ‘We’re lucky because we can get a car to our house. In many of these villages, the roads were built before cars existed, they were used for donkeys. The roads are really narrow.’Buying outside of the one euro scheme also requires a certain level of trust. Sara says: ‘We said to the owners that we would buy the house but we didn’t know when we’d be able to do the deeds because all the relatives [that owned it] were all around the world.‘And so we started renovating the house before we owned it, before it was ours. In the end it worked out, but [we were] a little bit stressed out.’Despite the challenges, the couple are extremely happy with their bargain buy. They say: ‘The quiet and peace is something that we were really looking for. The concept of time is also completely different here. You go for a coffee and you end up chatting for two hours.’Follow them on YouTube @leaw to watch the renovation journey.
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