An idyllic Sardinian town is selling homes for €1 (but there's a catch)

The old saying that "if something is too good to be true, it probably is" surely applies in particular to historic houses in lovely locations, available at exceedingly low prices.

So the buyer's instinct to beware might be fully triggered by the news that a town on the Mediterranean idyll of Sardinia has homes for sale at the bargain cost of €1 (88p).

Ollolai, which lies almost at the centre of the Italian island, a winding 110-mile drive north of the capital Cagliari, is the tiny dot on the map in question.

It currently finds itself in the middle of a small real-estate whirlwind after its mayor put out an appeal to find new owners for a raft of vacant properties.

Efisio Arbau has announced that 200 unused dwellings - some of them more than 200 years old - can now be purchased for under half the price of a high-street coffee.

They come with lovely views of the surrounding Sardinian countryside, and can be picked up without the usual property-acquiring worries about arranging a mortgage and dealing with chains of other buyers struggling with their own arrangements.

The inevitable catch?

The new owners have to agree to commit a reasonable additional sum - likely to be about £20,000 - to the renovation of their bargain des-res, which is likely to have fallen into a state of disrepair after years of being left uninhabited. Work would also need to be completed to a time-scale - within the next three years.

Arbau says that, despite the extra cost, successful purchasers will be gaining something remarkable.

"They are picturesque old buildings made with Sardinia's typical grey granite rock that grows on mountain peaks and shores," he says.

The scheme is part of a plan to reinvigorate a town which has seen its population levels plunge in the last half a century. In the last 50 years, its head-count has shrunk from 2,250 to around 1,300, as young people have been lured away to jobs in other parts of the island, or on the mainland - and have not been replaced by fresh residents.

The empty houses were once owned by shepherds, farmers and other villagers, but have been standing idle for years - a visual representation of Ollolai's fears that, unless its population trend is reversed, it will become a ghost town in the coming decades.

Arbau has been one of the brains behind the idea of attracting would-be residents from elsewhere, and was active in convincing the crumbling buildings' current owners to put them on the market by signing them over to the local authorities.

Such a plan, Arbau says, is essential to Ollolai's continued existence.

"We need to bring our grandmas' homes back from the grave," he told CNN.

"We boast prehistoric origins. My crusade is to rescue our unique traditions from falling into oblivion."

"Pride in our past is our strength. We've always been tough people and won't allow our town to die."

Ollolai has already sold three of the houses, and received enquiries about a further 100, suggesting you may need to be quick if you want to take advantage of the offer.

Certainly, interested parties may well consider a fee of £20,000.87 a hugely attractive amount to pay for an Italian home - even if Ollolai's location does not make it the most obvious of contexts for a place in the sun.

Sardinia attracts plenty of tourists in the summer, but the majority are drawn to the beaches and coastal towns of an island which, as the second largest in the Mediterranean (smaller only than Sicily), boasts 1,149 miles of shoreline.

Not that you can see the sea from Ollolai. It lies at least 45 miles from the water, depending on which road you take - high up in the mountainous interior, in the rocky area known as Barbagia.

Visitors can nonetheless expect a welcoming atmosphere, and culinary delights such as porceddu (roast piglet).

Whether the placing of the town's unused housing stock in the international shop window will have the desired reenergising effect remains to be seen - but the concept is not unprecedented, and certainly not in Italy.

In recent years, several other small Italian towns have played similar cards.

Gangi, in northern Sicily, put 100 abandoned homes on the market in 2015 - while Carrega Ligure in Piedmont, and Lecce nei Marsi in Abruzzo, also advertised tumbledown houses at nominal price tags.

"I want to stop the historical centre from crumbling to pieces," Gianluca de Angelis, the mayor of Lecce nei Marsi explained.

"There are no public funds for maintenance, and I'd like young couples to return." 

The town remains an enticing prospect for savvy shoppers - it sits just 80 miles east of Rome.