There’s a bloke who’s bought a house in Mussomeli in, he says, the house for 1 euro scheme. Now his Instagram feed is full of videos of him hitting things with a hammer and trying to flog off tat he has found in the house. All well and good, but it is hardly a lesson in how to do things.
If he bought the house as part of the 1 euro scheme, he has an obligation to submit a full restoration project within a year of purchase applying for a building concession. As he seems to think he can do the building himself, he has already fallen foul of this particular requirement. For any of you thinking of following George in his travails here are a few pointers.
1. You cannot do any structural work yourself. You must use a company which has the relevant certification and which are nominated in the permission from the comune to do the work.
2. Any restoration of a house in a bad state of repair will need to incorporate the seismic regulations. Failure to do so results in an abusive property. The obligations of any structural restoration requires the release of a certificate of agibilità once the works are completed. The Genio Civile will not release the permissions necessary if the work is not done to code. Mussomeli falls in zone 3 of seismic risk and is therefore subject to all the seismic building regulations.
3. Without agibilità you cannot rent the property.
4. To sell a property you now need to provide all the documentation going back (in a city centre) to 1942. If you have a house which you have bought and the atto says its in a bad state, you cannot suddenly have a restored house without the paperwork to back it up. The fines and penalties for not declaring work are increasing.
5. Need a new roof? – you cant do this yourself. Under the recent laws it must be done by qualified personnel and include things like hooks for safety lines. Permission to put up scaffolding must be got from the comune if the scaffolding is on a pavement or public land. You must have a geometra to submit the plans and get everything signed off.
All this is to stop people like George mucking about in sandals and plummeting to his death through a rotten roof. It’s also to stop substandard work collapsing on top of you when there is an earthquake. As in most of the areas where you can find 1 euro houses, earthquakes are the reason for there being a sizeable abandoned housing stock.