If someone said you could buy a house for a dollar, your reaction might be disbelief. That was how Rubia Andrade felt when she read a news article in 2019 about towns in Italy selling properties for one euro. “Obviously, your first thought is that this can’t be true. I needed to see it in person,” said Andrade, a Brazilian American who works in California’s solar industry.

Andrade booked a flight three days later and drove to Mussomeli, Italy, a hilly town in central Sicily with about 11,000 residents that had recently launched a program selling hundreds of properties in the run-down historical center. Of course, as Andrade discovered, the houses sell for the price of an espresso for a reason. There’s always a catch.