A mother-of-three has radically transformed six crumbling Italian villas she bought for just £5 all in to allow her friends and family to move in.
Rubia Daniels, 51, paid just one euro for each of her six homes in Mussomeli, Sicily, in April 2019, taking advantage of a council scheme to encourage people to renovate abandoned homes.
Admin costs, agency fees and the deeds took the cost of each property to 4,000 euros (£3,400), a total of 24,000 euros (£20,500).
Several of the properties were bought with fully collapsed roofs and infrastructural issues such as no water and no electricity.
But Rubia – a planning consultant by trade – used her 16 years of experience in the construction industry to break down the walls and renovate the properties.
Now, some of the six homes are reaching completion and she hopes her family and friends will move to the Mussomeli area to work and retire.
Rubia was keen to make the most of the council scheme and was one of the first to buy the homes – signing three for herself and carrying out the paperwork of one for her adopted daughter and two for her aunts.
Her two aunts, Marilu Ferreira, 70, and Marua Fatima, 82, plan to move into their homes in Mussomeli permanently for the rest of their retirement.
Rubia Daniels (pictured) paid just one euro for each of her six homes in Mussomeli, Sicily, in April 2019
She spent a total of £20,500 on her homes
Several of the properties were bought with fully collapsed roofs and infrastructural issues such as no water and no electricity
Rubia – who is originally from Brazil but has lived in San Francisco since 1996 – said: ‘We bought all six in April 2019. In June, I did all the paperwork and then got the deeds later that summer.
‘I packed six suitcases of all my tools and a generator, and then me, my husband and my brother-in-law, who was in Brazil, flew out to get the keys.
‘The house was fully collapsed, but now it’s fully renovated and has a beautiful marble bedroom.
‘Once the roof was fixed and water tight, the rest of it sort of fell into place from there.
‘It’s been my passion and I just have so much feeling for these houses and the community as a whole.’
Rubia believes her job makes her adept to the task of converting a derelict property into a beautiful Italian home.
She said: ‘I’m very comfortable with the idea of transforming things and breaking walls. When I see something fully collapsed, I can already see what’s going to look like, which is not for everybody.
‘For example, my husband panics when he sees me eyeing up projects like this, but for me it’s just a combination of excitement and joy.
‘Once the roof was fixed and water tight, the rest of it sort of fell into place from there’, she said
‘The house was fully collapsed, but now it’s fully renovated and has a beautiful marble bedroom’, she said
The living room after the renovations
She made use of a scheme set up by the local authorities to buy homes in the region
Rubia – a planning consultant by trade – used her 16 years of experience in the construction industry to break down the walls and renovate the properties
She said: ‘I want to convert one of them into a wellness centre, where people can come and do yoga and meditation and the like’
‘I packed six suitcases of all my tools and a generator, and then me, my husband and my brother-in-law, who was in Brazil, flew out to get the keys’, she said
‘When I first told my friends and family about it, they couldn’t believe it.. They thought I was kidding when I said I was going to buy six’, Rubia said
‘We sourced all the furniture locally, everything is from that little town – the kitchen, the flooring, the mirrors, the bath and sink’, she said
‘But you have to see beyond the way a place looks at the start, and imagine how it’s going to be in the end.
‘And my ‘one euro’ home is exactly the way I imagined it, and I’m proud because it was a small investment.’
Rubia spent a total of 60,000 euros renovating her first purchase in Mussomeli, with the intention that she will not have to do any more work ‘for 50 years’.
But she hopes she can do up each of the rest under this budget.
She said: ‘I want to convert one of them into a wellness centre, where people can come and do yoga and meditation and the like – it would be nice to give back to the community this way.
‘My daughter’s one is almost done, we did a full remodel. I have a few changes still to make to mine, but it’s my aunts which are the ones we’re trying to move along the most now.
‘I’m very happy I landed there and bought them early after reading an article about the project, because there are about 30 people looking at just one home now – they’ve increased a lot in popularity.
‘When I first told my friends and family about it, they couldn’t believe it.. They thought I was kidding when I said I was going to buy six.
‘It can be intimidating, but you’re getting the house basically for free and you can turn that into whatever you desire and it’s just a really fun project – especially when your husband and entire family help out with the manual labour.’
Rubia believes her job makes her adept to the task of converting a derelict property into a beautiful Italian home
‘It can be intimidating, but you’re getting the house basically for free and you can turn that into whatever you desire and it’s just a really fun project’, she said
Rubia has massively transformed the homes she bought
‘We love it here – it’s much nicer than California’, Rubia claimed
She said: ‘I’m very comfortable with the idea of transforming things and breaking walls’
‘When I see something fully collapsed, I can already see what’s going to look like, which is not for everybody’, she said of her work
‘People actually mean it when they ask you how you are, and it’s this social aspect which really attracted me to the area’, Rubia said of living in Italy
‘We sourced all the furniture locally, everything is from that little town – the kitchen, the flooring, the mirrors, the bath and sink.
‘But we wanted to do it with the community in mind. We love it here – it’s much nicer than California.
‘People actually mean it when they ask you how you are, and it’s this social aspect which really attracted me to the area.
‘Nobody is rushing around, everything is affordable. You can eat really well with very little money – a coffee and a croissant costs Euro 1.50.
‘In California, it’s a very stressful environment and everything is so superficial.’
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