Luca : Bonjour Anna
Anna : Bonjour Luca. Où es-tu en ce moment ?
Luca : I’m actually at Catane Aéroport.
Anna : Pourquoi ?
Luca : I’ve just come back from a little tour of Sicily. I spent a week going around. Visiting places. Meeting up with expats.
C'était très agréable. Mon seul problème avec la Sicile, c'est qu'à chaque fois que j'y vais, je prends trois ou quatre kilos.
Anna : Mm-hmm.
Luca : So it’s a bad place for me to be.
The, the food is amazing, but there’s a lot of it that’s fried. So it’s good, but it’s dangerous.
Anna : Oh, et où étiez-vous ?
Luca : Il y a eu une tournée un peu large, qui a commencé à Caltagirone. Licata Sciacca et s'est ensuite rendu à Mussomeli. Non. Dont, vous savez, oui. Vous en savez beaucoup sur Mussomeli, donc,
Puis il s'est retrouvé à Catane.
Anna : Mais désolé. Est-ce que [00:01:00] les maisons à un euro sont réelles, ou est-ce que c'est juste.
Luca : Oui, oui. Oh, je peux attester qu'ils existent.
There’s not many of them. In fact, I don’t think there’s any of them left. That’s actually a funny, a funny thing that all the expats I met, none of them bought a one euro home. They heard about the place from, of course from George Laing, and we know him. From the one euro home system, but none of them bought a one euro home, but they’re still affordable homes, you know, so.
Anna : Oui, c'est vrai. Avez-vous pu voir l'une de ces propriétés ? Dans quel état se trouvent-elles ?
Luca : Il faut comprendre ceci. Mussomeli, comme beaucoup de villes siciliennes, a un vieux centre historique qui n'a pas été fait pour les voitures.
De petites maisons, souvent en très mauvais état, entourées de bâtiments plus récents, construits pour la plupart dans les années soixante et soixante-dix. Hier, j'ai discuté avec un architecte sicilien qui ne [00:02:00] souhaite pas être nommé. Il m'a dit que c'était presque inévitable en Sicile, qu'il ne connaissait pas une seule ville en Sicile qui n'ait pas cette couche de bâtiments franchement un peu laids des années soixante et soixante-dix autour d'elle.
So what you can play with is the size of the historical center. Some have a very large historical center like Catania, Catania, five kilometers wide historical center. Some of them have a very small historical center and, in the case of Mussomeli, you have the outskirts, which are like I don’t wanna say modern, you know, semi modern sixties and seventies buildings. Not super pretty, although the nature around it is very pretty. Then you have the historical center, which has all these very cute, lanes, alleys, stairs, going up and down, winding, absolutely not made to be driven with a wide car. I am thankful that I had a, a Cinquecento, Fiat Cinquecento with me [00:03:00] so it will fit and the one euro homes are in this section.
They’re mostly very old buildings, they need a lot of love.
Anna : S'agit-il d'un endroit où l'on pourrait vivre toute l'année ou plutôt d'un endroit où l'on pourrait s'évader lentement de la campagne ?
Luca : It is surprising when George says that there’s a lot of expats. He is not kidding. I personally met quite a few of them and I’m just gonna say hi to Charlotte and Tim, I know you’re listening, so I’m saying hi to you.
There’s maybe four restaurants. Mm-hmm. But they are quite busy with expats and you find people from everywhere. Family from Colorado, there was a German couple, there was a girl from Milan, so we may have internal expats. A person from Australia, a gentleman from the UK.
It’s a bit of a varied group. It’s an interesting kind of setup.
Anna : L'anglais est-il largement répandu dans les bars ? Ou faut-il parler italien pour se débrouiller dans la vie de tous les jours ?
Luca : I wouldn’t say [00:04:00] that English is commonly spoken, younger people get by a little bit easier, but if you remember, George himself told us that he uses Google Translate to survive.
Anna : So what’s around Mussomeli?
Y a-t-il des villes, des plages ou des villages intéressants à proximité ? Est-ce que c'est..,
Luca : Now this is the tough point with the place because, to be completely honest with you, Mussomeli is not near anything. It is set atop a, well, it depends. If you’re British, you call it a mountain, and if you’re not, you call it a hill, but a high hill. And, it’s a couple of hours away by, from Catania and maybe 40 minutes from Caltanissetta. It feels remote, uh, to be sure there are shops and the supermarket, et cetera, and the nature around is very nice, but it is a little bit isolated, so one has to be ready for that. But then again, [00:05:00] most 7% towns are like this, trust me, I have seen places like, to mention one Palazzo Adriano, where they shot, Cinema Paradiso, you know, the Italian movie that won the Oscar for best foreign film in what is it, 89? Yeah. It was shot in that town and that, for instance, is even more remote. Beautiful, but extremely remote, maybe three hours from Catania. So, you have to keep in mind that, while there is a, an expat community, that you’re gonna have to be traveling from far afield to get there.
Anna : À qui recommanderiez-vous Mussomeli ? Aux retraités, aux travailleurs isolés, aux familles ?
Luca : I’ll tell you who I saw that is the happiest there. I met a mm-hmm English gentleman that found that the combination of property affordability and his desire to help people and to have a social business, so to say, allowed him to invest his capital. And like now he wants to set up a [00:06:00] coworking space. There is one expat that set up a sort of like community kitchen. The fact the property is cheap allows you to do things. Mm-hmm. And you know, you couldn’t just start a coworking space in the central of Milan for a hundred thousand euro.
You have to keep that in mind that if you wanna do a fair bit with, uh, a limited amount of money, I think it’s a good place if you, don’t need to be in a big town. It’s a good place. And I think some people are attracted to the fact that it has a growing expat community. I would not recommend this to someone that feels like they have to be in the center of the world or even remotely in the center of the world.
Ce que je viens de dire correspond-il à ce que George a dit, à ce que vous avez compris en lui parlant ?
Anna : Yeah. It’s definitely what George said that, I mean there’s a growing expat community that, you need a car outside of Mussomeli, [00:07:00] but like the city center is walkable and we are doing lots of projects and stuff, so that’s great.
Luca : Yeah. We’re gonna be keeping an eye on this one. I think I’ll be back in the next, month or maybe two. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, I should probably say the other, the place that really stole my heart and, you know, that I’m a picky person i I really liked it. It’s on the sea, not too far from Agrigente. Et, c'est incroyablement beau. Toute la ville perchée au sommet de la propriété maritime, à des prix abordables.
I would be lying to you if I told you that I haven’t spent a bit of time thinking about and then looking at a few properties and, excellent food. You know, it, it has a port. So fish is the, fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner almost. The only bad thing it has going for itself is transportation links to some degree [00:08:00] because you only have buses to other major cities. But it is also too big to be a 7% town, it has 40,000 inhabitants. And, unfortunately that will preclude it from becoming too much of a expat magnet in my view, but absolutely stunning, stunning.
Anna : Yeah, I would say the pictures actually, it really seems like the, you know, one of those post postcards that you see of the Amalfi Coast, like this town by the sea with the boats, it’s beautiful.
Luca : Oui, tout à fait. Voilà. Ce sont là mes très brèves observations, en direct de l'aéroport.
Anna : Aujourd'hui, nous avons un autre invité spécial, Eliseo, notre spécialiste des données.
Luca : Notre homme de données, d'accord. Vous aimez qu'on vous appelle "data man" ? Préférez-vous ne pas être un analyste de données, un scientifique de données,
Eliseo : Peut-être quelque chose de plus professionnel ?
Luca : Right. I think so. Welcome Eliseo. It’s a [00:09:00] pleasure to have you. Eliseo has been our data analyst since the beginnings of of Magic Towns. Is it your first time on a podcast?
Eliseo : Yes. Thanks for having me. It’s my first time and it’s a pleasure
Luca : Nous avons invité Eliseo parce qu'il travaille sur une toute nouvelle fonctionnalité pour Magic Towns, les abonnés. Voulez-vous en parler très brièvement ?
Eliseo : Sure. So, uh, we’ve been working on a property evaluator application. So our main goal is to make the decision of buying property easy for our subscribers. Either if they want to make a, a simple investment or for people that want to relocate from different countries. So it’s a data driven insight that, we provide them before they commit to investments. It’s easy to use. So users simply, provide a property URL that they have [00:10:00] liked or they have found and they provide that to the application.
So the system, leverages enrich data for cities across all Italy, covering data points like demographic trends, economic performance, geographic characteristics, social dynamics, infrastructure quality. it gives comprehensive, insights and recommendations. And maybe, it’s more insight, and fact driven than emotional.
Luca : Mais comment le système peut-il savoir si le bien convient à la personne qui pose la question ?.
Eliseo : Avant que l'utilisateur ne demande une évaluation immobilière, nous lui demandons quel type d'investissement il souhaite réaliser. Nous nous en souvenons ensuite, puis nous lui fournissons une recommandation.
Luca : So if I had to summarize this in very non-technical terms, it’s a sort of chat bot that remembers what kind of property you like and you’re looking for, and it tells you whether the property you’re [00:11:00] considering is a good match for you. If it’s a good investment, what the town is like, et cetera, would that be right?
Eliseo : Oui, tout à fait. Nous enrichissons l'évaluation avec nos données et nous fournissons la recommandation.
Luca : Lovely. I’m looking forward to using it. When do you think this might be ready?
Eliseo : We plan to release this, to the general public in April, and it’ll be live then and, every user can, evaluate their property there.
Luca : Lovely. Well, thank you Eliseo. This is only one of the many things that you help us with. It’s great to have you on the call.
Eliseo : Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Luca : Anna fell asleep during this, you know she’s allergic to data. The two of you are yin and yang. Data and emotion.
Anna : Exactement.
Eliseo : Différents pôles de l'aimant.
Luca : Bien dit. Je pense donc que nous pouvons conclure pour aujourd'hui.
Anna : Oui, c'était très intéressant.
Merci beaucoup.
Luca : We’ll be back next week with a more normal podcast, not recorded at Catania Airport. And so all our listeners for the background noise [00:12:00] if you heard any.
Anna : Au revoir. Je vous remercie de votre attention.
Luca : Au revoir. Je vous souhaite un bon week-end.
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