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Why towns in Italy’s Salento are offering new residents up to €30,000

As if the sunny south-eastern tip of Italy wasn’t enticing enough, towns in Salento have now announced big cash incentives for people moving in. Why is this needed, and what’s the catch?

Why towns in Italy’s Salento are offering new residents up to €30,000
If you're looking for your own piece of Italy's sunkissed Salento region - at a bargain price - you could be in luck. Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

Another town in southern Italy has joined a long list of depopulated areas which are trying to offload old, unwanted houses at bargain prices and offering cash incentives to new residents.

The municipality of Presicce-Acquarica, which is made up of two adjoining villages, has announced it will soon offer grants worth up to €30,000 to those willing to relocate there.

READ ALSO: The cheap Italian properties buyers are choosing instead of one-euro homes

No doubt the offer will be tempting to anyone who has visited the sunny Salento area, in Italy’s south-eastern Puglia region.

Salento sits right at the bottom of the peninsula that forms the heel of the Italian ‘boot’. It’s a highly popular summer tourist destination known for scorching temperatures, sprawling olive groves, whitewashed houses and long coastlines dotted with wild, pristine beaches.

With its famously abundant local produce, warm climate and authentic, traditional feel, Puglia (and Salento in particular) is an increasingly popular destination for foreign second-home buyers as well as holidaymakers.

The Italian region of Puglia is known for its unspoilt landscapes and agricultural traditions. Photo by Mathilde Ro on Unsplash

But the newly-announced incentives are aimed more at those who would become full-time residents, as the council hopes to attract young families and people planning to start a business.

Those moving to the villages of Presicce or Acquarica must be willing to invest in an older property in the area, and the council says it will subsidise 50 percent of the cost of a property purchase and any renovation work up to a maximum of €30,000.

READ ALSO: Why Italians aren’t snatching up their country’s one-euro homes

Houses for sale as part of the deal are reportedly priced from around 500 euros per square metre, meaning you could buy a 50-square-metre property at around €25,000.

Like other cheap or one-euro homes on sale across Italy, the eligible properties have long been abandoned and are likely to need significant renovation work.

The location of Presicce-Acquarica at the southern tip of the Puglia region. Image: Google Maps

To be eligible for the grant, the council says individuals or families must move their official residency to the town – which would require being a full-time resident in Italy, to begin with, something which could prove problematic for those who would need a visa, or who only want to spend part of the year in Italy.

And buyers would have to be sure about their decision, as the town hall is expecting them to stick around.

“The maximum sum of 30,000 euros is envisaged only if the buyer decides to move their residence for at least 10 years after the purchase,” Mayor Paolo Rizzo said, according to newspaper Corriere della Sera

The municipal council has already launched several incentives to attract new residents, including tax breaks for business start-ups and ‘baby bonuses’ for families with children.

After just 60 births compared to 150 deaths last year, the town hall says it will also grant new resident families €1,000 for every baby born there.

READ ALSO:

The municipality now has around 9,000 residents, around half of whom live in the old town, where the properties for sale are located.

But attracting new families to this sleepy area may prove a considerable challenge: like many other parts of Italy trying to reverse population decline with generous-sounding incentives, Puglia’s villages often have little public transport infrastructure, scarce public services, and limited employment opportunities.

Many villages in rural Puglia have an older population and are struggling to retain younger residents. Photo: Rich Martello/Unsplash

Perhaps the council is relying on the area’s outstanding beauty to tempt new residents: Presicce-Acquarica is designated as one of Italy’s ‘most beautiful’ villages, with a historic centre filled with ornate churches and Baroque palazzi.

The town is nicknamed the “city of green gold” due to the high quality of the oil from the surrounding olive groves, and it’s only a short drive from the Ionian Sea and the popular tourist destinations of Gallipoli and Santa Maria di Leuca.

The full details of the scheme and application process have however not been finalised yet, and will be published on the town hall’s website in the coming weeks, according to Italian media reports.

Member comments

  1. I am an American based in Rome and have owned a house in sleepy Presicce for 20 years. The onslaught of friends who forwarded the articles about the latest scheme to attract new residents was astonishing. Presicce is a wonderful place as a second home, but living there as a full time resident would be a challenge. The richness of the olive oil is mentioned as part of what makes the village so renowned- too bad the punteruolo rosso has infested 90% of the groves throughout Salento and little progress has been made to eradicate the problem or even contain it as it spreads beyond Lecce towards Brindisi. Apparently not all strains of olive trees are affected by the pest, but after nearly a decade I sadly see little replanting with young, healthy, unaffected trees. It used to be olives as far as the eye could see, but is now vast hectares of what appears to be a petrified, desolate landscape. Needless to say, I bring my olive oil with me when relocating for the summer, I can’t imagine the amount of pesticides used on the few still fertile groves. Maybe new residents in the area will take up the cause and elicit some real action.

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PROPERTY

Can you really get a €30,000 grant to move to Tuscany?

Italy’s latest repopulation scheme offers funds for those moving to the desirable region of Tuscany - so what’s the catch?

Can you really get a €30,000 grant to move to Tuscany?

From one-euro (or three-euro) abandoned houses for sale to tax breaks for foreign retirees, Italy has become famous for offering various financial incentives aimed at attracting new residents, usually to the rural south.

These schemes often target foreigners specifically, with the aim of slowing population decline, attracting investment, and breathing new life into areas where few Italians want to live.

READ MORE: Can you still buy Italy’s one-euro homes in 2024?

But a new offer from the much-loved tourist destination of Tuscany, in the centre-north of the country, is a little bit different.

Tuscany’s regional authority on Friday announced it will award grants of up to €30,000 to people relocating to the region – or parts of it.

The offer has unsurprisingly attracted the attention of many regular visitors worldwide who’d love to snap up a holiday home in the popular region, where property prices can be high.

But, beyond the major tourist destinations around Florence, Siena and Lucca, the vast, wild region of Tuscany also has large areas where homes can prove hard to sell – and populations are dwindling, as elsewhere in the country.

READ ALSO: Why Italians sell off old homes so cheaply to foreign buyers

As its name suggests, Tuscany’s ‘Residency in the mountains 2024’ scheme is aimed at people moving to a mountain town with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

Tuscany has 119 such towns, offering easy access to the region’s rugged, quiet mountain and forest trails as well as immersion in the local culture.

The region is offering grants of between 10,000 and 30,000 euros covering up to 50 percent of the cost of the purchase and renovation of a property in these areas.

Unlike the one-euro home offers however, this scheme is aimed at people who are already registered as resident in Italy.

You’ll need to move your residency to one of the eligible Tuscan towns, and you cannot already be living in a mountain town elsewhere in the country, according to the small print.

Non-Italians can apply, but they must be citizens of another European Union member state, or non-EU nationals holding a long-term residency permit.

If you meet the criteria and like the sound of life in the Tuscan mountains, you can find out more on the regional government’s website (available in Italian only).

But you’ll need to act quickly, as applications are only open until July 27th, 2024.

See more in The Local’s Italian property section.

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