Real estate auctions in Italian villages
Real estate auctions in Italian villages

Can property auctions breathe new life into Italian villages? While 1-euro houses in Italy are doing their part to repopulate certain areas of the country, according to Reviva, a company specialising in campaigns to revitalise real estate auctions, property auctions can also breathe new life into Italian villages. The number of properties sold at auction in small Italian villages is increasing, and as this trend grows, these properties and villages can then be redeveloped and enhanced, putting an end to depopulation. We have the details. 

The company has just completed the sale of 32 properties in its latest campaign to boost property auctions in small towns, and has succeeded in increasing by as much as 300% the number of properties sold in 2 Italian towns that had been experiencing depopulation for some time: Rocchetta a Volturno, a town of 1,000 inhabitants in the province of Isernia, and Fiumalbo, a town in the province of Modena with around 1,200 inhabitants.

"More and more financial companies, after seeing the success of Fiumalbo and Rocchetta a Volturno, want to implement new sales actions with us in almost completely uninhabited villages," comments Giulio Licenza, co-founder and CBDO of Reviva. "This is an important opportunity for us both to specialise in this market segment and to give new life to villages that would otherwise struggle to evolve, demonstrating the enormous value and importance that real estate auctions can now have in our country".

"Both locations had the particularity of being in a strategic point, halfway between important cities such as Modena and Naples and ski resorts. We therefore thought it was a golden opportunity to relaunch these 2 towns, attracting high-end buyers who could actively participate in the rebirth of these villages," adds Ivano De Natale, co-founder and CEO of Reviva.

The case of Rocchetta a Volturno, this Italian village saw a total of 31 lots sold at auction (worth 930,000 euros). Rocchetta a Volturno is a perfect example of how the mechanism of real estate auctions can bring immediate benefit to the territory, especially in those areas where the real estate market is almost non-existent.

This is in fact the third experiment of the Milan-based startup in the Molise village: during the second one, which took place in 2020, Reviva had already been entrusted with the task of selling a residential complex with 51 flats. The result was immediately positive. One third of the properties have already been sold and overall Reviva has tripled the annual sales in the area.