7 ms·

The cost of owning this building isn't the cost of buying it, it is the cost of maintaining it. And you need pretty deep pockets for that. And it's not like you

by cm2187 6y ago

The cost of owning this building isn't the cost of buying it, it is the cost of maintaining it. And you need pretty deep pockets for that. And it's not like you will be allowed to dig a swimming pool in the courtyard. It is highly protected by the French historical monuments authority which must vet every single change you are making. It's more of a liability than an asset.

Schnitz 6y ago
A lot of the castles and palaces have been donated to "the public" that maintains them as tourist attractions or museums. Also Europe is not like the US, where you can just build in a lot of unincorporated areas, so building a new luxury home out of sight of the castle on your property is most likely impossible as well. I'm not 100% sure about this, but my guess is that the presence of the castle might even devalue the land in a lot of these cases, ie you would pay more for an equivalent amount of "empty" land.
- JimTheMan 6y ago
  I'd be running non stop murder mysteries if I owned a castle. But hey, that's just me.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  There's an interesting case going on right now; while not a castle, an 'old' royal palace has been sold to a developer and they're considering turning it into an event center with a hotel and apartments nearby (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paleissoestdijk.nl%2Ftijdlijn%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...)
julienchastang 6y ago
Moreover, are you not exposing yourself to French tax liabilities on your income and assets if you own property in France?
- cm2187 6y ago
  Not a tax lawyer but I believe only on the income and assets in France. So I assume you would be paying the French wealth tax on the value of the castle.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Most of the world considers only income and assets that happen to be inside the country to be taxed by that country, yes.
    - julienchastang 6y ago
      Except for the US which will tax its citizens anywhere no matter where they derive their income and assets. It is a leading reason why a number of Americans renounce their US citizenship. [1]https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/more-americans-are-renouncing-their-citizenship-11602840602 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/more-americans-are-renounci...
      - angry_octet 6y ago
        The difference with America is they tax you if you're a citizen, regardless of whether you are abiding (tax resident) there.
      - cromka 6y ago
        Citizens, but not the property owners, which is what is being discussed here.
    - angry_octet 6y ago
      No, not so! A number of countries consider worldwide income. Generally it must have been taxed somewhere, and in a place with a tax treaty with your primary residence, or it will get taxed as foreign income. It gets even more complicated with capital gains or losses, and different rules for how losses can be moved between financial years.
drewcoo 6y ago
Sure, if you see it as property and expect it to make you money somehow. But like everything else in life, castle ownership is temporary. It's such a rare thing to own, preserve, and pass a castle along to the next humans that it could be seen as a great honor. History needs to be nurtured and shared or it dies.
- nickpp 6y ago
  Such an "honor" can only be afforded by the hyper-rich. The rest of us need to carefully plan our money and investments.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    Yes it is truly an egregious injustice that thousand year old castles remain out of reach of the middle class. Something like 100% of castles are owned by the top 1% wealthiest people. Unconscionable. Yeesh.
    - nickpp 6y ago
      Maybe it didn’t came out that way, but I just wanted to say that you need to be at a certain level of wealth to not seek profit from such an investment and to see it as an honor. Sorry if I didn’t express myself clearer.
pcurve 6y ago
Yes, for something like this, you're looking at quarter million / year in bare minimum upkeep. I think half a million is more realistic, if not more.
- hevelvarik 6y ago
  Wow, why? That’s hard to fathom.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    You'd need to have people like gardeners, maintenence staff, and cleaners just to stop nature taking over. To actually fix problems you need conservators and specialist builders. Plus you have to heat the place to prevent damp and mould.
    - gabaix 6y ago
      My family inherited a large estate in the South of France and the roof alone was half a million. Now you don’t have to fix things right away, but it quickly becomes a hazard. Castles are very much a leisure expenditure.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      And don't underestimate the cost of traditional materials either. Those usually have a high labor component baked into them.
    - Chris2048 6y ago
      When they where fixing the roof of Notre-dame, they had to source wood (oak) that was as old as the original. That kind of thing would really accelerate costs.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- jgalt212 6y ago
cletus 6y ago
You're right about the cost of maintaining these properties. This year I came across a funny British show called "Escape to the Chateau" [1]. The couple there paid <400K GBP for a 45 room chateau. At one point they're not sure if they need a new roof. If they do? That'd cost ~250K GBP. But one interesting thing they mentioned was that in France, heritage of old buildings like these is opt-in. If you choose to opt-in the French government will pay you but you then need to abide by all sorts of standards. This is in stark contrast with, say, English Heritage where they can decide at some point that your building is now listed, you get paid nothing and any alternations or renovations need to be approved (for maintaining the character). If that's true about France, I prefer the sound of that system. There are literally thousands of castle/chateuas in France. Is it really justifiable to preserve all of them? Especially given that many are falling into disrepair and many of these buildings are already falling into disrepair through lack of demand for buyers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_the_Chateau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_the_Chateau
- imdsm 6y ago
  IIRC, this couple made a massive success out of this though. A lot of persistent hard work, and they now rent it out for weddings and function as a hotel (or pre-covid they did anyway).
  - hardlianotion 6y ago
    The hard work included producing and selling a film of their experience, which might obscure the natural profitability of what they are attempting to do with the castle.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  English Heritage sounds a lot like heritage in Ireland, where a heritage officer can make your home worthless (or worth literally less than nothing!) on a whim. Worked out handily for me, buying a 200+ year old cottage for less than the cost of the land, but I've been DIY'ing everything but the thatching. Horrible, awful for the previous owners who saw at _least_ €100,000 knocked off the value of their house. Edit: to give context, I bought it for far less than €100k, meaning the site lost most of its value.
SilasX 6y ago
Interesting tidbit: in the Netflix show The Crown, there's an episode[0] where the queen's mother buys a castle in Scotland where the owner is happy to get rid of it because of all the pains of maintaining it. Which is based on real-life event of the purchase of the Castle of Mey (1952): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Mey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Mey [0] s1e8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crown_(season_1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crown_(season_1)
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Wikipedia has an article on exploding houses in Britain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_in_20th-century_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_... (There is also an article on exploding houses in Ireland, but for entirely different reasons): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Irish_country_houses_(1919%E2%80%931923) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Irish_country_h...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  This is a plot point in the Guy Ritchie movie "The Gentlemen," where Mickey's (Matthew McConaughey) marijuana growing operation is protected from discovery in part by renting land from broke nobles desperate to maintain their estates. I wonder, is this a common trope in England?
m3kw9 6y ago
What happens when someone forfeits it? Who’s gonna pick up the maintenance bill?
- aeden 6y ago
  Often the local governments (whether that's the town, the department, the region, or all of the above), along with some funds from the nation. This is usually thanks to one or more residents of the town who get together to try to save the structure by getting public funds allocated for it.
dreen 6y ago
As someone who owns a castle/manor house and desperately wanting to sell it... I agree completely. At least theres normally no property taxes on listed buildings, but just keeping it from falling apart is enough to eat a moderate income.
- fakedang 6y ago
  As someone dating someone whose family owns multiple, buy some art, maintain a garden of sorts, set it up as a museum, bam, revenue.
  - pm215 6y ago
    Lots of these places do just that -- but unless you want your job to be "I run a tourist attraction/wedding venue as a small business", you might prefer to sell the place and let somebody else do it...
  - dreen 6y ago
    Very easy to say, but would require multiple years worth of salary for me to open that, and the location is not suited to a museum. A wedding venue maybe, but still the investment required to start that is beyond what I can do. I also do not want to quit my software career in London to bank everything on a hospitality business in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe.
    - whythre 6y ago
      Probably a good call- quitting your job go open an event venue in an Eastern European castle sounds like the beginning of a vampire novel.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Oh, I thought you lived near the place. Then certainly not feasible. Most of them section off part of the palace/castle for personal use while putting up the rest as a museum.
  - Someone 6y ago
Someone 6y ago
The seller warns you for that. https://www.patrice-besse.co.uk/ads/castles-chateaux-historic-buildings-hunting-grounds-for-sale-in-france-charente-near-angouleme-south-west-perigord-dordogne-quercy-limousin-poitou-pb917282 https://www.patrice-besse.co.uk/ads/castles-chateaux-histori...: Our opinion "He who lives without madness is not as wise as he thinks", one of François-de-la-Rochefoucauld’s maxims. His statue adorns the park. This maxim could become that of the future occupants.

by cm2187 6y ago

Schnitz 6y ago

A lot of the castles and palaces have been donated to "the public" that maintains them as tourist attractions or museums. Also Europe is not like the US, where you can just build in a lot of unincorporated areas, so building a new luxury home out of sight of the castle on your property is most likely impossible as well. I'm not 100% sure about this, but my guess is that the presence of the castle might even devalue the land in a lot of these cases, ie you would pay more for an equivalent amount of "empty" land.

JimTheMan 6y ago
I'd be running non stop murder mysteries if I owned a castle. But hey, that's just me.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
There's an interesting case going on right now; while not a castle, an 'old' royal palace has been sold to a developer and they're considering turning it into an event center with a hotel and apartments nearby (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paleissoestdijk.nl%2Ftijdlijn%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...)

julienchastang 6y ago

Moreover, are you not exposing yourself to French tax liabilities on your income and assets if you own property in France?

cm2187 6y ago
Not a tax lawyer but I believe only on the income and assets in France. So I assume you would be paying the French wealth tax on the value of the castle.
- p_l 6y ago
  Most of the world considers only income and assets that happen to be inside the country to be taxed by that country, yes.
  - julienchastang 6y ago
    Except for the US which will tax its citizens anywhere no matter where they derive their income and assets. It is a leading reason why a number of Americans renounce their US citizenship. [1]https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/more-americans-are-renouncing-their-citizenship-11602840602 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/more-americans-are-renounci...
    - angry_octet 6y ago
      The difference with America is they tax you if you're a citizen, regardless of whether you are abiding (tax resident) there.
    - cromka 6y ago
      Citizens, but not the property owners, which is what is being discussed here.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    No, not so! A number of countries consider worldwide income. Generally it must have been taxed somewhere, and in a place with a tax treaty with your primary residence, or it will get taxed as foreign income. It gets even more complicated with capital gains or losses, and different rules for how losses can be moved between financial years.

drewcoo 6y ago

Sure, if you see it as property and expect it to make you money somehow. But like everything else in life, castle ownership is temporary. It's such a rare thing to own, preserve, and pass a castle along to the next humans that it could be seen as a great honor. History needs to be nurtured and shared or it dies.

nickpp 6y ago
Such an "honor" can only be afforded by the hyper-rich. The rest of us need to carefully plan our money and investments.
- imgabe 6y ago
  Yes it is truly an egregious injustice that thousand year old castles remain out of reach of the middle class. Something like 100% of castles are owned by the top 1% wealthiest people. Unconscionable. Yeesh.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    Maybe it didn’t came out that way, but I just wanted to say that you need to be at a certain level of wealth to not seek profit from such an investment and to see it as an honor. Sorry if I didn’t express myself clearer.

pcurve 6y ago

Yes, for something like this, you're looking at quarter million / year in bare minimum upkeep. I think half a million is more realistic, if not more.

hevelvarik 6y ago
Wow, why? That’s hard to fathom.
- onion2k 6y ago
  You'd need to have people like gardeners, maintenence staff, and cleaners just to stop nature taking over. To actually fix problems you need conservators and specialist builders. Plus you have to heat the place to prevent damp and mould.
  - gabaix 6y ago
    My family inherited a large estate in the South of France and the roof alone was half a million. Now you don’t have to fix things right away, but it quickly becomes a hazard. Castles are very much a leisure expenditure.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    And don't underestimate the cost of traditional materials either. Those usually have a high labor component baked into them.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    When they where fixing the roof of Notre-dame, they had to source wood (oak) that was as old as the original. That kind of thing would really accelerate costs.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
jgalt212 6y ago

cletus 6y ago

You're right about the cost of maintaining these properties. This year I came across a funny British show called "Escape to the Chateau" [1]. The couple there paid <400K GBP for a 45 room chateau. At one point they're not sure if they need a new roof. If they do? That'd cost ~250K GBP. But one interesting thing they mentioned was that in France, heritage of old buildings like these is opt-in. If you choose to opt-in the French government will pay you but you then need to abide by all sorts of standards. This is in stark contrast with, say, English Heritage where they can decide at some point that your building is now listed, you get paid nothing and any alternations or renovations need to be approved (for maintaining the character). If that's true about France, I prefer the sound of that system. There are literally thousands of castle/chateuas in France. Is it really justifiable to preserve all of them? Especially given that many are falling into disrepair and many of these buildings are already falling into disrepair through lack of demand for buyers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_the_Chateau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_the_Chateau

imdsm 6y ago
IIRC, this couple made a massive success out of this though. A lot of persistent hard work, and they now rent it out for weddings and function as a hotel (or pre-covid they did anyway).
- hardlianotion 6y ago
  The hard work included producing and selling a film of their experience, which might obscure the natural profitability of what they are attempting to do with the castle.
CalRobert 6y ago
English Heritage sounds a lot like heritage in Ireland, where a heritage officer can make your home worthless (or worth literally less than nothing!) on a whim. Worked out handily for me, buying a 200+ year old cottage for less than the cost of the land, but I've been DIY'ing everything but the thatching. Horrible, awful for the previous owners who saw at _least_ €100,000 knocked off the value of their house. Edit: to give context, I bought it for far less than €100k, meaning the site lost most of its value.

SilasX 6y ago

Interesting tidbit: in the Netflix show The Crown, there's an episode[0] where the queen's mother buys a castle in Scotland where the owner is happy to get rid of it because of all the pains of maintaining it. Which is based on real-life event of the purchase of the Castle of Mey (1952): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Mey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Mey [0] s1e8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crown_(season_1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crown_(season_1)

HarryHirsch 6y ago
Wikipedia has an article on exploding houses in Britain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_in_20th-century_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_... (There is also an article on exploding houses in Ireland, but for entirely different reasons): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Irish_country_houses_(1919%E2%80%931923) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Irish_country_h...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brendoelfrendo 6y ago
This is a plot point in the Guy Ritchie movie "The Gentlemen," where Mickey's (Matthew McConaughey) marijuana growing operation is protected from discovery in part by renting land from broke nobles desperate to maintain their estates. I wonder, is this a common trope in England?

m3kw9 6y ago

What happens when someone forfeits it? Who’s gonna pick up the maintenance bill?

aeden 6y ago
Often the local governments (whether that's the town, the department, the region, or all of the above), along with some funds from the nation. This is usually thanks to one or more residents of the town who get together to try to save the structure by getting public funds allocated for it.

dreen 6y ago

As someone who owns a castle/manor house and desperately wanting to sell it... I agree completely. At least theres normally no property taxes on listed buildings, but just keeping it from falling apart is enough to eat a moderate income.

fakedang 6y ago
As someone dating someone whose family owns multiple, buy some art, maintain a garden of sorts, set it up as a museum, bam, revenue.
- pm215 6y ago
  Lots of these places do just that -- but unless you want your job to be "I run a tourist attraction/wedding venue as a small business", you might prefer to sell the place and let somebody else do it...
- dreen 6y ago
  Very easy to say, but would require multiple years worth of salary for me to open that, and the location is not suited to a museum. A wedding venue maybe, but still the investment required to start that is beyond what I can do. I also do not want to quit my software career in London to bank everything on a hospitality business in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe.
  - whythre 6y ago
    Probably a good call- quitting your job go open an event venue in an Eastern European castle sounds like the beginning of a vampire novel.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Oh, I thought you lived near the place. Then certainly not feasible. Most of them section off part of the palace/castle for personal use while putting up the rest as a museum.
- Someone 6y ago

Someone 6y ago

The seller warns you for that. https://www.patrice-besse.co.uk/ads/castles-chateaux-historic-buildings-hunting-grounds-for-sale-in-france-charente-near-angouleme-south-west-perigord-dordogne-quercy-limousin-poitou-pb917282 https://www.patrice-besse.co.uk/ads/castles-chateaux-histori...: Our opinion "He who lives without madness is not as wise as he thinks", one of François-de-la-Rochefoucauld’s maxims. His statue adorns the park. This maxim could become that of the future occupants.