For Sale – Nonno’s Abandoned Italian Property
For Sale – Nonno’s Abandoned Italian Property

For Sale – Nonno’s Abandoned Italian Property

This morning on the internet and in the Italian press reports surfaced that the mayor of small Italian town, Vincenzo Tamburi, has taken some innovative action to repopulate a small ghost town, San Basile (Province of Potenza), by putting up for sale 150 abandoned homes some for as little as €5,000 ($6,000) each.

Past decades of immigration from this and many other towns throughout Italy have not only created ghost towns but also voids of unassigned properties that should have passed to their rightful families living outside of Italy, a big problem for Italy since there is no trace of the children and thus no real estate revenue is derived. Thus thousands of parcels of abandoned land and many structures that should have transferred to successive generations have not, and the original owners, deceased many decades ago, are still found on title today.

Their issues now live predominantly in the US, Canada, Australia and Argentina are living in total darkness of their right to inherit according to Italian succession law. With only a few computer key strokes lists of family names and their specific abandoned property locations are available for review and consideration.

More importantly how can the Italian American Community be awoken to the realization that their property rights are being stolen by squatters and frequently by distant cousins with whom there is no longer any communications. To find abandoned property surprisingly only the following data is needed:

  1. Italian name (if female, maiden) of presumed owner, even if deceased
  2. Exact town of birth in Italy (mandatory)
  3. Father of this person (optional, but very useful)
  4. Birth year of the above. (No birth years before 1880)

To see a partial list of abandoned properties go to http://www.landfinder.it/emigrantproperties.asp

For more information, simply answer the above four questions and email to Anthony Alioto with your contact information.

Anthony Alioto, ITALIAN LEGAL LANGAUGE SERVICES, San Francisco, CA