Woman buys house in Italy for Rs 85, spends Rs 3.8 crore in renovations: 'I will never sell it'

Meredith Tabbone, a financial advisor from Chicago, had not even seen the house she had just bought in Italy's Sambuca di Sicilia. It was 2019, and Italy was auctioning off some of its abandoned houses for as low as $1.05 (about Rs 90). Tabbone, who has roots in the village, decided to try her and need up winning a bid on a 17th-century house that had no electricity or running water and had  "two feet of pigeon poop on the floor". Four years and $446,000 (about Rs 3.8 crore) later, she can finally call the place home.

"The condition of this property when I purchased it was dire at best," the 44-year-old told CNBC Make It. "From the moment I sent in the bid and checked my email every day and found out that I won, all the way through this process [of renovating the house] there have been four million moments of frustration and exhaustion." But Tabbone was determined to create a home in the Italian village because that's where her great grandfather lived before the family moved to the US in 1908.

Sambuca is a hilltop town with views over the Mediterranean island and nearby beaches. It had placed dozens of homes on the market for little over a dollar to revive a community that, like many other rural spots in Italy, suffered from depopulation in recent years as residents moved to bigger cities, CNN reported.

So when Tabbone got to know about it, she bid for one of the houses even before laying eyes on it. In May 2019, she got an email from the municipality that she had won the auction. She spent $6,200 (a little over Rs 5 lakh) to take ownership of the home. But she soon realised that the building was too tiny for her, so she bought the one next door as well for $23,000 (about Rs 19.5 lakh). Both the buildings shared a wall so it became easier for Tabbone to combine it into a single, comfortable home.

But it took her more than three years to complete the renovation. Initially, Tabbone's budget was $40,000 (about Rs 34 lakh), but she ended up spending close to Rs 4 crore on renovation. "I have never done a renovation like this in my life," she told CNBC Make It. "I hired an entire team to do it and the only thing that I spent a lot of time on was the design."