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Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain
- MordodeMaru 8y agoIt's a pity Spain country side is becoming a vacuum.
- y4mi 8y agoIt's not unique to Spain though... And neither surprising, tbh. Who in their right mind would even want to live without stable electricity, good waste management and all the other things you take for granted in even small villages (<1k)? There is literally nothing there besides some houses. That's enough to take a break on some holiday... But very few people would be willing to suffer through that long term
- mc32 8y agoYep. Most places with advanced economies went through this phase decades ago. It’s actually surprising that some of these settlements held on for so long, even in parts of interior France (though that was completed by the 70s-80s.) It’s kind of romantic and idyll a sort of throwback to what Van Gogh at al might have seen in Avignon or the Comargue way back when.
- Scoundreller 8y agoAnd if you’re driving through France, just turn on “no-tolls” and you can drive through them. And save a fortune in tolls and cheaper gas.
- ben_w 8y agoMy siblings were interested in buying an old place in the Spanish countryside as a BTL holiday home, but heard some worrying things about the Spanish legal attitude to inheritance that put them off second hand places. (I won’t repeat what they said; they are neither lawyers nor speakers of Spanish so I give their fears no more than 50% credence).
- jxub 8y agoAn "interesting" fact of Spain is that all unwritten inheritance goes to the state, and this includes foreigners. Therefore, makes sense to lay down 200 bucks or so in lawyer fee and write the inheritance asap.
- kgwgk 8y agoInteresting, but untrue.
- squeezingswirls 8y agoExactly
- squeezingswirls 8y agoNo, that's not true at all. Please read the Spanish Civil Code, starting at Chapter 3 ("De la sucesión intestada") to see what's the order of heir prevalence in case of "unwritten inheritance". Only in the case that there isn't any relative, or widow, or widower, the State will get a 'abintestato' inheritance.
- jxub 8y agoThanks for correcting me and sorry!
- ez7r6i 8y agoIn some areas of Spain, the state gets to keep a high percent of the inheritance, they go up to 50% or maybe more in some places.
- AdrianB1 8y agoThis can be a problem for some people, but based on the comments I've read in the years I've been reading this site most people are in favor of paying huge taxes. Let's say you pay 75% taxes, what is the problem? When you die, the state will get the place and sell it someone else that wants to pay for it; again, and again, and again. You kids will have to work and pay to get it, for the state is just $$$ profitssss. Good business.
- rdl 8y agoTechnology has advanced. You can do reasonable off-grid utilities (solar/battery/water/waste/internet) for 25-100 people at grid-level prices.
- dalbasal 8y agoNo access to grid power is a pretty rare circumstance in most of the west, but even so, "off grid" (as long as you're not also "off road") is not so difficult or expensive to solve these days, on the scale of construction/real-estate costs. "Mod cons" aren't generally the problem. What's missing is people who want to be there.
- ez7r6i 8y agoNo healthcare, no chemists, no good Internet access, have to literally travel to buy clothes or go to the supermarket, and especially no jobs. Even in big towns jobs are scarce. Hence the asphyxiating housing bubble in big cities. It just makes no sense to live in any of those ghost villages. Unless you're some wealthy screwhead who can't stand the smallest amount of street noise.
- iagovar 8y agoWell, it's inconvenient but in many regions you can call for a doctor visit, for example. The Castilla y León healthcare system has rural doctors that visit this places periodically.
- Scoundreller 8y agoA mostly abandoned village in Croatia that I was in still had a food truck come by 3x/week in a Sprinter. A meat truck once a week and some other food truck. Pricing was somewhere around what the city grocery stores charged. You could phone in orders. In business for decades. Meanwhile in the “modern” world, I have to go to the store for my food... One local said he only went into town once a month.
- iagovar 8y agoThere are plenty of small villages like that. You can even expect DSL from 1 to 6mbps, and 3G depending on the size of the place. Some of them even more. The vacuum is mostly in Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha. As some of you may know regions in Spain have state-ish status, and Castilla y León actually does a surprisingly good job on education, healthcare and pretty much every social service. I'm sayin this because they have been ruled by the good old corrupt party since I have memory, have tight budget and is sparsely populated.
- pavlov 8y ago”The company recently got a boost after Gwyneth Paltrow flagged one of its villages on her website as a good Christmas present.” I thought this was a joke, but clicking on the link reveals that a $172k village in Spain was indeed listed in “gift ideas” alongside such more traditional items as a $7700 Hermès surfboard. As fitting a portrait of our present era’s wealth distribution as any. Future generations may look back on us as a bunch of Marie Antoinettes tinkering with our programming languages while the world burned.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoHeck, just look at the thread on the cancellation of Apple's wireless charger. Part of me wished I could post a gif of the daunting and terrifying task of putting a phone in a docking station.
- village-idiot 8y agoYou say that in jest, but that is actually how this process works. Remember when touchID came out and many people mockingly thanked Apple for not having to enter 4-6 digits? Now how many people get pissed off when their wet thumb doesn’t read right and they have to enter their pin? People get used to new luxuries.
- paganel 8y agoI’m wondering if I’m not the only person who’s not locking his smart-phone. At the same time I’m also making sure to never leave it out of sight and I have no Internet banking. I also have my WiFi network at home open, have had it for more than 10 years now.
- village-idiot 8y agoThat seems unnecessarily risky to me.
- paganel 8y ago
- veryworried 8y agoYes, how dare somebody buy something expensive with their own money!
- moorhosj 8y agoTaking a stand against a comment that nobody made!
- wickedsmile 8y agoIt's funny that the ones who complain about wealth distribution the most are the ones who have insanely more wealth that includes pretty much everyone on HN. It's a pool club where only rich come.
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoTime to bitch is a luxery good too by now.
- MeltySmelty 8y agoKeep crying you poor.
- rorykoehler 8y agoIf we’re part of the problem does that mean the problem doesn’t exist?
- ethbro 8y agoI identify as self-hating bourgeoisie.
- jplayer01 8y agoI'm not sure where you get the impression that the only ones complaining are well-off. To some degree, it's just a matter of demographics. One can assume that the more you earn, the more free time you have. The more free time you have, the more time you have to think and talk and learn about things like wealth disparity. Best example might be academics who can afford to spend a lot of time researching this stuff and consequently have the most compelling data about it to share with the greater populace, and generally have the means to do so because of their credentials and standing. The vast majority who are directly affected simply don't have the same kind of voice (that people care to listen to) or the time and energy to have a voice when they're working 3 jobs. On the other hand, it could just be that you live in a bubble surrounded by moderately well-off to wealthy people. Of course then it's obvious why it would seem that only well-off people complain about. They're the only people that are visible to you. And finally, who cares who says it if it's true?
- pseudolus 8y agoThere's a similar ongoing phenomenon in Italy as well, with villages selling homes for ridiculously low prices [0]. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/italian-villages-selling-dollar-homes-2019-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/italian-villages-selling-dol...
- trickstra 8y ago> Villages across Italy are selling abandoned properties for 1 euro or less, provided that owners take care of the renovations. These renovations are typically more expensive than tearing down the house and building a new one, but that is forbidden, because there is probably some kind of regulation and "historical value". So saying that these are low prices is super misleading
- davidw 8y agoMy wife (who is from Italy) looked into the total costs in one place (somewhere in Sardinia), and renovations and all, it's still not that expensive.
- rdl 8y agoI'm sure there are plenty of people who can work remotely who would love to live in a place like this, if it were either turnkey or at least if there were some collective action organization. Makes even more sense in Portugal, though -- you could live in a place for 182 days/yr, after putting 350k euros investment into it, with a grant of portugese citizenship. I'm sure there are similar villages/properties in rural areas too.
- reidrac 8y agoIt may be tricky to do remote work from one of these places. In Spain, rural areas may not have broadband at all. You may have phone line, but the quality is so bad that not even ASDL is usable.
- ez7r6i 8y agoRural areas of Spain usually have decent 4G service. Good luck getting hired for remote work in Spain, though. Edit for the guys below: obviously I meant working for a Spanish company.
- atomical 8y agoI think parent comment was referring to foreigners buying a place and working remotely.
- rdl 8y agoYeah. I am planning to get Portuguese residency through property purchase along with some friends, although we might not go for rural. Only need to spend 14 days/yr there, though. It is a 350-500k EUR investment. If you rent the property out you should be able to cover the debt service. (Obviously it exposes you to Portuguese RE risk, as well as EUR currency risk, and requires good credit, but a 500k piece of property is a lower bar than, say, a 150k fee, and a Portuguese passport is a whole lot better than most citizenship by investment programs.) I’d probably spend 2-3 months/yr in Portugal if I had a nice small house or apartment somewhere. It is a good country.
- deanalevitt 8y agoThe big question is land ownership. Does the buyer get to own the land? Or is it more like a 100-year lease from the state? $100k for large swathes of land anywhere in Europe sounds like a steal to me.
- deanalevitt 8y agoI'd be curious about taxes and other costs involved in ownership.
- iagovar 8y agoThere's communal property in Spain, but That's tipically for shared land, forests and so on. I don't think you can build on that, so that would be a private property, yes.
- lumberjack 8y ago"Ownership" is meaningless. Each region of Europe have their own laws regarding what you can and cannot do with the land you "own" and what duties and rights you get by owning it. For example, you might buy one of these houses but the building codes mandate that you renovate and preserve the exterior. Heck, in some countries you are not allowed to even live in structures outside the habitable region.
- deanalevitt 8y agoRight, that's why I brought it up. In Italy, they were selling houses for $1 but the regulations around it plus the ongoing property taxes change the entire calculus. Regardless, land is valuable but only if you own it and have some control over monetizing your ownership.
- paganel 8y ago> Heck, in some countries you are not allowed to even live in structures outside the habitable region. Isn’t that the law in most developed countries? I live in an Eastern European country that is not quite well developed and we’ve had this type of law for as long as I can remember.
- 8y ago
- kgwgk 8y agoI think people overestimates how "remote" those "ghost villages" are. They are very small settlements (the article mentions six houses) which may be a few hundred meters from the next inhabited place. It's likely that there are at least ten thousand people living in a 10 miles radius. (I'm refering to the regions that the article talks about, population is much more sparse in other regions in Spain.)
- rujuladanh 8y agoIndeed. Spain is the size of California, so that may give some perspective...
- HillaryBriss 8y agoindeed. it's California + 80,000 KM^2 (i.e. about 20% bigger than California)
- iagovar 8y agoThat's a bit of a strech. You can definitely be 50km away of everything in Galicia, and probably way more in Castilla. It's true that population is more dispersed in the northwest though.
- kgwgk 8y agoI don't say that there are thousands of people around any random point, I meant that I would be really surprised if any of the places being talked about in the article is really isolated. It also depends on your definition of being "50km away from everything". What place are you thinking of?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- oblio 8y agoIf you want a village plus broadband, buy one in Romania. Still in the EU, less developed (but for this scenario, who cares?). Heck, it's probably going to be cheaper!
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoI agree. As someone from Romania who works remotely, I moved from the big city to a village about 50 km away, seeking a quieter life. Even there fiber had been run out. It only took a few days for the ISP to show up and run some fiber from the pole to my home, and then I was enjoying speeds as fast as I had previously had in the heart of the city. Romanians are lucky that this country saw an early broadband boom in the 1990s and early millennium, and fiber was run out everywhere. Sadly, the neighbouring countries tend to emphasize mobile internet for getting villages connected instead of physical links, but that means that in villages there you cannot, for example, torrent Bluray images to your heart’s content.
- Scoundreller 8y agoMeanwhile, in Canada, the providers are starting to market 5G, but the data pricing is so terrible, 3G is more than enough and still requires ample rationing. I have to be careful not to stream too many podcasts. Forget music or video.
- randomdata 8y agoAt least we have decent wired service in Canada. Out on the farm you can get unlimited gigabit service for under $100/month.
- geoka9 8y agoI can't get that in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood in a major city (in Canada).
- Scoundreller 8y agoIn some very specific places maybe (Wightman telecom? Maybe in Saskatchewan where they have the sensibility to consider telecom a public asset?
- rorykoehler 8y agoAm I the only one who sees depopulation of rural areas as a good thing? It's an opportunity to rewild large parts of the continent. We don't need humans dominating every last square metre of the globe. That's part of what is causing most of our problems in the first place.
- flippyhead 8y agohttps://gizmodo.com/what-if-the-entire-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city-1787022943 https://gizmodo.com/what-if-the-entire-worlds-population-liv...
- rorykoehler 8y agoThat was quite interesting. I knew Tokyo was big but wow! I live in Singapore. I think it's a sweet spot for high density cities.
- samstave 8y agoI was dumbfounded just the other day when i learned that tokyo is 38 million... So basically that one city has the population of caifornia. If i were a wantrapeeneur id be seeing what app services tokyo specifically from and economic and cultural perspective as if you can monitize just fraction of tokyo businesses......
- Hamuko 8y agoTokyo is not a city. It's a metropolitan area and one of the 47 prefectures in Japan. It contains a bunch of special wards, towns and cities inside it with their local governments. The special wards of Tokyo are even called cities in English by the wards themselves. One example is Shibuya City: http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp
- grzm 8y agoI don't think the point your parent is making hinges on the definition of city. The Tokyo metropolitan area is smaller and more populous than than all of California. One can refer to LA or New York as cities and mean to include their metropolitan areas. Washington, DC is a separate political jurisdiction which is usefully and colloquially referred to as a city as well.
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoAnother sign that industrialized civilisation consumes its inhabitants. All to the citys, to sit in tiny cubicles and apartments, waiting lonely for ones demise. What a triumph, what a archivment.
- Pfhreak 8y ago> waiting lonely for ones demise I mean... there's a whole lot of assumptions there...
- hatchnyc 8y agoReading this just made me think, imagine someday, perhaps a few hundred years, if the world's population were to rise even higher briefly and then dramatically fall simply due to falling birthrates. The ruins of a worldwide infrastructure of abandoned towns and cities built for 10 or 20 times the current population would probably seem very eerie.
- volkl48 8y agoRecent book came out arguing fairly persuasively that we're basically there and you're going to see unprecedented depopulation in many areas by the end of the century. Title is Empty Planet - the shock of global population decline. Places like China are potentially going to shrink by hundreds of millions of people this century.
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- qndreoi 8y ago"such efforts can help stem rural desertification before it tips into crisis territory." I think Bloomberg has just invented a new definition of "desertification", unless the implication is that these new residents would have to implement "regenerative agricuture" or other desertification fighting practices.
- akudha 8y agoThis would be a good opportunity for a bunch of people to collectively buy a handful of villages and turn them into creative spaces!
- markdown 8y agohttp://tribewanted.com http://tribewanted.com
- heliodor 8y agoGeneral opinion seems to be that this is a bad thing but I disagree. Modern life offers us much more than we'd get by being farmers. We also need fewer farmers because of automation and large-scale farming. People want to move to urban areas. Let them, and don't judge.
- mojuba 8y agoWas my first thought too, but villages not growing into towns is also an indication of a different problem: it's a demographic disaster of declining birth rates.
- saalweachter 8y agoOr consolidation of a population via internal migration into a smaller number of larger towns.
- pxndx 8y agoI've been thinking that if I suddenly had a large sum of money, I'd buy one of these villages, renovate it, add amenities and proper internet, and then rent the individual homes to people that work remote, or set it up as a kind of co-living and co-working space, like a company town.
- AdrianB1 8y agoAnd nobody will come if the closest hospital is a 2 hour drive and the closest store is far enough that whatever you buy costs double when you factor in the transportation. And you can believe it is a great place to raise kids if you want them to be loners, 'cause there is no school or other kid on a 50 kilometer radius. A great place to live for a monk, not regular people.
- pxndx 8y agoA store is one of the "amenities" I'd provide. But you're right about the hospital and education part. I'd probably have a daycare, but anything higher gets harder to do. In any case, it'd be a temporary thing for digital nomads
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoNo REC in Spain - so no electricity, no water, no communications. Maybe build your own solar or something?
- Razengan 8y agoIn all these comments re: rural versus urban versus megacities, nobody seems to have brought up arcologies (as per the sci-fi'ish concept, not half-baked experimental villages like Arcosanti): A city contained within a single megastructure, or a small cluster of megastructures, with large areas of natural/semi-natural, green, forested lands around them. Manufacturing and energy generation for all the needs of their residents would be done inside the megastructure or adjacent to it. Let's see: • People love living spaces that they have complete control over. • People love being near other people, without being forced to always be near other people. • People hate feeling crowded, without any convenient escape to solitude. • People hate long commutes. • Unbroken stretches of concrete jungles are dystopian and depressing as hell, no matter how "modern" or glamorous they may be (see places like Dubai.) • People love greenery, occasional communes with nature, the babbling of brooks and seeing other lifeforms flourish without impinging on human habitats. • If given a choice without giving up convenience, people want to avoid pollution. Cities compressed into a few ecological + ergonomic + economic megastructures would tick a lot of those boxes. The tech may not be there yet, but I hope to see a functional arcology in my lifetime.
- Zanni 8y agoIf you drop the self-sufficiency requirement, then cruise-ships--which are now the size of small cities--fit the bill.
- Razengan 8y agoWithout self-sufficiency it won't fix the problem that they will still be exacting a toll (in pollution, destruction of habitat for other species) on places that they don't physically occupy. Completely self-sufficient megastructures may still pollute their immediate surroundings, but that may be easier to contain and manage.
- bawana 8y agoAre these villages truly for sale? Or do you have to pay a ton of taxes, fees, (or as in Vancouver, BC - a foreign investment tax),etc? If they could be made into tax free municipalities-then great.