Is Ireland paying people to move to islands? How these grants work.

“I did no research on any of this,” the 44-year-old financial analyst said. “I assumed a lot of people would put in bids since it was in major news outlets. I was shocked when I won the bid.” The only condition: Tabbone had to renovate the property within three years.

The internet is full of listicles with seemingly too-good-to-be-true offers from countries to effectively pay people to move to remote locations or islands with few facilities and to repopulate villages and towns that have been gutted as youths move to urban areas.

But do these programs actually work? The short answer is: Yes. But there are caveats.

This month, Ireland came up with a tantalizing proposal. The government will give renovation grants of 60,000 to 84,000 euros (around $65,000-$91,600) for people to fix up properties that have been vacant for at least two years, as part of a wider plan for the sustainable growth of 30 offshore islands. These islands are geographically isolated and cut off from the mainland, and some have as few as two residents. They are also breathtaking: rolling hills, dramatically craggy cliffs and historic ruins.

“Issues such as the provision of housing, the delivery of education and health care, access to high-speed broadband and employment opportunities are magnified on the offshore islands. There is also an added challenge of retaining young people on the islands as the population profile is aging,” Ireland’s Rural and Community Development Department said in an email, adding that it was not paying people to move.

The grants — which are for renovations, not the home purchase — were first launched last year on the mainland to revitalize cities and rural areas that had a large number of vacant buildings. The response was strong, the department said, and more than 500 applications had been approved by the first quarter of 2023. None of the policies — for the mainland or the islands — include help with immigration or resettlement, it added. (While non-residents can purchase property in Ireland, homeownership does not guarantee residency.)

Immigration and residency requirements can be a big stumbling block for foreigners willing to relocate full-time: Some want to move out of stressful cities to embrace a slower life in rural areas, others want a vacation home, and some are looking to escape conflicts unfolding in home countries.

Various other impediments can make such projects daunting. Renovation can be challenging under unfamiliar circumstances, especially when facing language barriers, limited labor availability and supply problems. Some look at buying these properties to turn them into rentals, but such locations are often not a big draw for tourists.

Toti Nigrelli, the deputy mayor of Mussomeli, another Sicilian town looking to revive itself through the 1 euro home program, said foreigners do not require any permits or residency rights to purchase a home in his town. (The length of stay will depend on the type of visa they hold.) The municipality facilitates utility connections among other provisions.

The town, which began selling cheap homes in 2017, has sold more than 300, including to dozens of Americans, he said. Mussomeli had 40,000 homes but only 10,000 residents, he said, forcing it to look for new residents.

Since 2000, there has been a trend toward abandonment not only of small rural settlements in Europe but also main villages and even medium-sized cities, Serafin Pazos-Vidal, an expert on rural development with the European Association in Local Development, wrote in an email. One of the primary factors for this, he added, was the reduction of public services and job opportunities amid deindustrialization and mechanization in rural areas.

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Nigrelli said Mussomeli has benefited from its new inhabitants economically and socially. Construction business has boomed with all the renovation works underway, and recently the main hospital’s surgery department, shut for two months because of a lack of doctors, reopened after 10 medics from Argentina moved to the town under the program, the deputy mayor said.

One newcomer, Danny McCubbin, a 58-year-old Londoner, now lives there and runs an initiative called the Good Kitchen that uses unused food from supermarkets to cook meals for vulnerable people. He said the deal was responsible for bringing him to the town where he is now a valued member of the community.

“There’s no high street. The cinema opens once a month. It’s an hour from the beach,” he said. “It’s too quiet for some but it’s just quiet enough for me.”

Sometimes, such incentives have been exaggerated or inaccurately reported in the media. In 2016, when Kaitangata, a former mining town in coastal New Zealand, put out an offer of three-bedroom turnkey homes for an affordable $240,000, international news outlets reported that the government was paying people to move there.

Half a million messages, calls and emails poured in from the world over, overwhelming officials. The town was looking for new residents because it had a glut of jobs and not enough people. But it was not offering work or residence permits, which is the ambit of the federal government.

“People were calling me from war-torn countries pleading [with] me to give them a chance,” said Bryan Cadogan, the mayor of the district in which Kaitangata is located. “We never wanted to give false hopes to anyone. I told them if you can make it here, we’ll welcome you.”

The policies have also stirred debate in Italy, with some criticizing them as a way of selling off the country’s landscape or degrading its culture.

“This might not be a perfect way to restore places, but it can help turn [such towns] into places of opportunity,” said Marco Pizzi, a rural development researcher at the University of Perugia. He is also a consultant with 1eurohouses.com, a site — which he describes as a “restoration” project — that aggregates information on such programs from across the country in English and facilitates travel or local introductions for foreigners. While the government should help municipalities with advertising these offers and immigration support, Pizzi added, responsibility also rests with the buyers.

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“Foreigners should try not to look and treat them as tourist places but think what it means to live in a quiet place with culturally different people in a respectful way,” he said.

For Tabbone, the Chicago resident who recently acquired dual citizenship, the Italian dream on the Mediterranean is only beginning. In July — four years after she started, with some pandemic-related delays — the work on her four-bedroom, four-bathroom home is set to finish after what she described as a “life-changing experience.”

“The best part has been the people — locals and foreigners have all become friends,” she said. “It’s just beautiful. In your mind, what [you think] it could be, it really holds.”

Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.