Prior to the end of WWII the system of agriculture in the central
regions of Italy was known as “mezzadria” or share-cropping.
Contadini worked for landowners in houses furnished by the owners,
with whom they had a contract providing that they share everything
produced or sold.
When the war ended industries sprung up in the cities and the
contadini, given the opportunity to change their category from
“contadino” to the more prestigious “operaio” on their
identity papers, fled to the cities in droves. In Terni, Rome or
Milan they worked in steel factories, automotive factories or in
construction. Some worked as building porters and for the first time
in their lives, actually made money. A few of them, very few,
accumulated enough money to buy the houses where their parents were
still living or more often, houses in the villages they came from.
Here, in and around Acqualoreto, nearly all the farmhouses were owned
by three families living in the smaller village of Morruzze, just up
the hill. Some of the houses had held eighteen people or more.
While there were a few artisans and professionals who lived in the
village itself, by the 1960's the land and the farmhouses were
deserted. At the end of WWII, Acqualoreto had three teachers, three
doctors, a pharmacy with a resident pharmacist, a Post Office, a
general store, and another food shop which doubled as a bar. The
departure of the contadini disrupted life in the village as well as in the surrounding countryside.. The pharmacy went away, the teachers and the
doctors either died, retired or moved away. The doctor who now
serves the area lives in Terni, 50 km away. The shops stayed on until about 1990
and 2005, while the Post Office closed in 2005. Local schools from
three villages were consolidated into a new building midway between
them in the mid 1980's.
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| A large unrenovated farmhouse |
The housing bubble here, as elsewhere, expanded for years. When the
bubble burst in the US in 2008, its effects were not immediately felt
here. While there had been no influx of Americans in the new
terror-obsessed century, the slack had been taken up by people from
Holland, the Caribbean and Ireland, at least until the Irish economy
went belly up.
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| A regally renovated farmhouse |
By now the Great Recession has spread and sunk roots and both the
Italian economy and the real estate market have collapsed. People
who cleverly bought houses for a song in the 80's are getting older
and no longer feel invigorated or gratified by the hard work required
to maintain these big houses and the land that surrounds them.
Large houses are proving hard to sell in this new buyer's market but
if prices of large properties have slumped, the prices of apartments
and houses in villages and towns throughout Umbria, and probably all
over Italy, have crashed.
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| Florida bargain |
Not like Florida, where people we know
have bought houses for as little as $17,000. That's cheaper than a
mid-sized station wagon and while station wagons may be fine for
sleeping, they offer little in the way of toilet or cooking
facilities. Leafing through a current booklet of real estate
offerings in the area, I see 2 BR apartments in Todi for €65,000
and €87,000. The first even has a garage and a garden while the
other is a ground to roof building in the picturesque old center.
That sort of money will buy you a fairly flashy car but cars lose
most of their value over ten years or so. House prices can always go
lower but they're down now so the odds are on their going up. Of
course, if you have more money to invest, there's no upper limit.
Just call our friend Caroline Van Agteren at Antonini Realty and
she'll fix you right up. You could also contact another realtor
friend, Michiel Bloemgarten, who lives right here in Acqualoreto.
With the market so far down, he spends more of his time these days
back in Holland but I'm sure he'd be eager to help.
Italy's once flourishing industrial sector, which excelled in
textiles, clothing, shoes, leather goods, automobiles, glass, steel
and ceramics, has been devastated by globalization and the theologians of
austerity. While Italian “smoke sellers” have always been adept
at selling intangibles, such as “Italian design”, and some
continue to peddle pricey Italian-designed products made in China,
Italian financiers have never managed to develop that mystical aura
of unquestioned, hard-headed respectability with which Anglo-American
bankers have so successfully fleeced individual and institutional
investors, paving the streets of lower Manhattan and central London
with gold in the process. Unemployment is high in Italy and young
people are emigrating out faster than from any other country in
Europe. In many ways the situation appears bleak. The birth rate is
among the lowest in the world.
However, while our shops and our Post Office are long gone, here in
Acqualoreto we now have a restaurant and a lively summer festival.
More surprisingly, in a village of two hundred people, we have four
building contractors, all of them more than capable, and a social
circle, which maintains a bar, with members from at least a dozen
countries. Food is as good as ever, both in the fresh ingredients
and in the preparation, and the countryside is stunning. Our weather
is feeling the effects of climate change, but where is it not? At
least we're more than 400 meters above sea level so we're relatively
safe from major flooding. Although Italians used to smoke a lot, and
the lung cancer rates still reflect it, Italian life expectancy is
the highest in Europe.
With democracy in the US and the UK now just a fading memory and the
big banks having seized control of their regulators in order to
facilitate their gaming proclivities, it's only a matter of time
before the next major economic crisis. We can't predict how the
effects will play out. Will all the remaining wealth of the
collapsing countries just continue to quietly flow to the oligarchy
or will rebellion spread, with blood running through the streets as
the militarized police demonstrate why they've been so lethally
armed?
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| A perfectly restored farmhouse |
Having no plans to go anywhere, I have no vested interest in any of
this hypothetical investment but we do like to see new faces at the
weekly Happy Hour of the Circolo, as well as seeing our friends and
neighbors prosper. Membership in the Circolo is open to all and we
look forward to welcoming interesting new people.
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| Proposed retirement community, Patriot Estates, in West Virginia |
However, for any
of you reading this who might have (US) Republican sympathies, or
similar Tory leanings, it's only fair to point out that you might
find even less expensive opportunities elsewhere, more to your
liking.
American conservatives have pleaded in vain that the face of Ronald
Reagan be added to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black
Hills of South Dakota. Sorry folks, it isn't going to happen, but
new and better opportunities are coming up and the more
individualistic and adventurist people among you may want to be a
part of them. Vast areas of mountainous terrain in West Virginia and
parts of eastern Kentucky are currently being transformed into a
dramatic new landscape. This area too has a sparse population and
now that traditional coal mining has been abandoned, jobs are even
more scarce than in Umbria. (The number of people working in the WV
coal industry has dropped from 120,000 to 15,000.) Once stripped of
its coal, the land is much cheaper than anything here. Buy a plot on
one of the remaining peaks and you'll have splendid vistas into the
new valleys. No bad interactions with the townies since most have
either died or moved away or will soon. All you'll need is lots of
imagination, a little real estate nest egg to invest and small change
for bottled water to drink and bathe in. Friends, this can be an
international monument to the potential of laissez-faire government.
Those newly carved mountains would make the perfect site for gigantic
likenesses of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George
W. Bush and Ayn Rand.
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| proposed Objectivist monument |
It's time to act folks. Let us know if there's anything we can do to
help.
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