Ollolai, Italy, is selling homes for $1.25. That's cheaper than a cappuccino.

It’s a historic town with cozy cafes on picture-perfect piazzas set on a sunny Italian island — and now you can buy a house there less than the price of a cup of coffee.

Ollolai, a hillside town toward the center of Sardinia, a large Mediterranean island west of Italy, is offering crumbling dwellings for 1 euro (about $1.25) in an effort to boost the shrinking population of the mini-metropolis, which dates back thousands of years.

The catch? You have to spend about $25,000 to renovate the home you buy and do the work within three years. You can sell it after five years.

Over the past half-century, as reported in official figures, the town's population has declined from 2,250 to 1,300, leaving hundreds of abandoned homes.

According to Britain’s Independent newspaper, Ollolai sits on the slopes of Monte San Basilio Magno, and is one of the few remaining Sardinian towns where a local martial art, S’Istrumpa, is still practiced. It also keeps up traditional artisan crafts such as the weaving of baskets.

"We boast prehistoric origins," the town’s mayor, Efisio Arbau, told CNN. "My crusade is to rescue our unique traditions from falling into oblivion."

Having dreamed up the idea, Arbau contacted former homeowners and asked them to sign the houses over to town authorities, according to CNN.

"They're picturesque old buildings made with Sardinia's typical gray granite rock," he said. "We need to bring our grandmas' homes back from the grave."

Arbau said three houses have already been sold, the first in the spring of 2016,  and that his office has received more than 100 purchase requests from across the world.

In fact, demand has been so great the town has now set Feb. 7 — next week — as a deadline for submitting an application, according to the Independent.

Arbau issued a statement saying: “The Municipality of Ollolai announces that with effect from 2 p.m. on 7 February 2018 it will no longer be possible to submit applications for participation in the ‘Case a 1 Euro’ scheme, as the number of requests submitted has potentially exhausted the number of available properties.”

After the cut-off date, applications will be evaluated in the order they were received, he added.

The project follows that of another Italian municipality, Bormida, which last year floated the idea of offering 2,000 euros to people willing to move into houses in the village. Thousands of people responded.