Meredith was 57 and living in Chicago when an email told her she had won the bid on a one dollar house in Sambuca, Italy. What she had actually bought was a shell with no power, no running water and an asbestos roof over her head. Four years of work later, the place looks like somewhere you would happily spend the rest of your life.
A Village Where Old Stone Sells For Pocket Change
This is the kind of building that a one dollar listing actually gets you. Honey coloured stone, a tiled roof with a little bell tower, a wooden balcony bolted to the front and an archway wide enough to walk a cart through. Ivy has taken over one whole corner. Behind it, the hills roll away green and quiet, which is the part no photograph ever quite does justice.
Sambuca made international news when it offered up its empty houses for a single dollar, and Meredith was one of the people who put in a bid from thousands of miles away. She was 57, based in Chicago, and about to become the owner of a property she would spend the next four years rescuing.