While traveling in search of a piece of land in Sicily to build a house, some local knowledge of the dialect and traditional measurements is required. It gets very complicated as different regions of Sicily use the same words for different sizes of land in Sicily.

When evaluating land in Sicily, always have an Italian surveyor document its size in hectares. Remember that the harvest and the quality that is currently in the land is the main product that you are buying.

Most of the land is agricultural land with restrictive building permission. The restriction is that only a fixed volume of cubic meters can be reconstructed based on the existing registered cubic meters of buildings on the ground. Always check with the local Italian land registry, where the official volume of buildings on the land will be documented. Remember that some of the listed buildings may have been torn down to farm the land, so you may have more volume than you can actually see on the land in Sicily. Once you know the existing volume in square meters, divide it by 3 (the average height of a room is 3 meters) and this will give you the square meters that you can rebuild.

Sqm = square meter: Sqf = square feet: 1m2=10sqf: 1 Hectare=10,000m2

Now for the Sicilian land sizes:

One one) mound = 2,143 m² (in the province of Trapani…remember that it varies in different areas).

1) salma = 16 burial mounds = 34,288m²

1 take it = 4 mondelli : 1 mondello = 4 carozzi : 1 carozzo = 4 fourth : 1 quarto = 4 fourth

So 1 hectare is just under 5 mound.

These are important measures as they originate from the time when Sicilian barons and landowners gave land to peasants to cultivate. Most farmers in Sicily were given a “salma“, with a small country house (hardness).

Many farmers are now struggling to work the land as the price of crops has fallen with the opening of European markets. The grapes used to be sold to the vineyard consortiums to produce the wine at 120 euros per kilo, now the market only pays 30 euros per kilo. With manual labor during revenge costing 50 euros a day, they have to pick a lot of grapes to pay for it.

There is a growing trend for farmers to consider selling on their land. MIPC is currently viewing farmhouses in the Sicilian countryside. Prices vary mainly depending on the crops and the quality of the land and the density of the crops. Most of the farmhouses are very old and need a complete restoration.

Vacant land costs from 2,000 euros/tumolo, which is 10,000/ha. The most expensive land with quality grapes or olives can reach 5,000 euros/tumolo or 25,000 euros/ha.

The real farmhouses do not have a market value as there is limited demand for them, but they still have a symbolic price, depending on their size and structural condition, from 10,000 to 50,000 euros.