My husband and I became interested in the 1-euro housing schemes in Italy last year but were concerned about investing time and money into a house in a village that was dying out. We are in our early 30s and had read online that the catch to these 1-euro homes was that they're usually falling apart and located in towns that are basically desolate retirement homes with little to no businesses.

We were coming from Hamburg, Germany, which has a population of 2 million and were nervous about what life would be like and being lonely in one of these small Italian towns. However, after visiting some properties in one of these towns, we decided to take the risk, and it was worth it.