4 ms·

Where I live there are countless rustic properties, the vast majority of which will remain empty due to generations of infighting between relatives. Similarly,

Where I live there are countless rustic properties, the vast majority of which will remain empty due to generations of infighting between relatives. Similarly, plots of land are carved up over the years until a single field may have 20+ owners. I know of one such case: they were offered a huge, insane amount of money for the land. But each one of the owners wanted more for their piece than the others, and tried to do private deals, and some refused to sell even though their piece was a mis-shapen series of lines on a government map that gained them zero benefits (farmers can't farm the land either), so nobody gets anything and the place is just rotting. Along with the houses surrounding. That have multiple owners.

opportune 3y ago
Where is this? Southern Europe? It makes me very sad seeing so many stone buildings left uninhabited and overgrown with plants when I visit Spain and Italy. I always thought it was just the cost to upgrade them to modern living standards that was prohibitive, but from personal experience [0] with similar situations in the US, I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. [0] One set of my grandparents split their house equally among their 3 children. Because it has immense sentimental value to those children, they have not sold it and currently “rent” it at no cost to one of the children. Depending on the order in which those 3 children pass, the state of the house could easily become deadlocked for decades as I know one of my aunts would refuse to sell it even if the other aunt (who lives in it) passes. Thank god none of my cousins would want to live in it so we probably would eventually be able to sell it. It’s not even close to a mansion or anything… just a regular 1960s middle class house in an area where land is pretty cheap. If I had a shitton of cousins and the property was very valuable land I could totally envision it getting permanently deadlocked.
- pacbard 3y ago
  While inheritance laws in Southern Europe are weird, I don't think that partial ownership of buildings is the issue here. The real issue is that old buildings are not useful anymore: 1. Buildings that are not longer needed. For example, you can walk in woods and see old, run down, metati [1] in Italy. While chestnuts still keep a sentimental value, mountain people do not rely on them for sustenance anymore. Therefore, the drying sheds and mills have been abandoned. 2. Buildings that are not just functional anymore. Our barn had 20 stalls. It was functional as of the 1800s, but it's no longer a viable building to host a herd of milk producing cows. It has small stalls, lack of windows, difficult sanitation. People just build new barns and abandon the old ones. The problem is that the barn is build of rock, so it won't decay so easily. 3. Buildings that are no longer comfortable. Similar to point 2, old stone houses are not that comfortable. Having 3-foot wide stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space. A house with a regular footprint (maybe 100 sq. feet) is much smaller once you consider all the space that stone walls take up. Plus, old houses don't have plumbing, electricity, etc, are damp and cold in the winter (but somewhat pleasant in the summer). People just prefer to live in a modern place rather than fix up an old one (which might be marked as historical and will need much more money to fix up). [1]: https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/ https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/
  - Toreno96 3y ago
    > stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space Why is it not possible to use stone wall space?
    - 22c 3y ago
      I think it's more accurate to say that there simply is no wall space, because the walls ARE the stones. There are ways around it, probably using copious amounts of conduit etc. but it's a lot of work compared to simply living somewhere that already has utility outlets where you need them.
    - andrewpolidori 3y ago
      They are saying that the footprint of 3ft thick walls takes up a lot more of your usable floor space than a modern home's walls would.
  - SenHeng 3y ago
    Here's a Youtube channel of someone restoring one of these remote Italian cabins to live in. It's not easy. https://www.youtube.com/@MartijnDoolaard https://www.youtube.com/@MartijnDoolaard
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  > I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. I don't know about the US, but where I live, I think I think that if you don't want to be, the other owners have to buy your slice. If they can't they need to sell the house.
  - samtho 3y ago
    This rule in many areas is how real estate developers acquire lots of land cheaply that has been in a particular family for generations. They find a family where the previous owner has passed and thus the ownership defaults to then next kin. They approach one next of kin who doesn’t know they even inherited it, buy out their slice, and require the remaining members to buy them out, forcing them to sell it… likely to the same investor.
- thrashh 3y ago
  I don’t know about Spain but why would these houses need to be filled when Italy’s population has stagnated? There’s no one to live in them!
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  Not OP but I will say I've heard stories like they describe from at least 3 different Spanish people I know, inheritance laws there do seem to cause some problems.
  - Gare 3y ago
    Might as well be Croatia
    - southernplaces7 3y ago
      Just out of personal curiosity, what makes Croatia so bad for inheritance and property law?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rcme 3y ago
Many places allow minority owners to force the selling of land by petitioning the courts.
alliao 3y ago
Thanks for reminding me the time I visited Peru in the early 2000s and saw fields of orderly criss crossing rows of rocks acting as boundaries. The tour guide said generations of owner kept dividing the land till the land's no longer usable.
wrp 3y ago
Primogeniture gets a lot of criticism because of its perceived unfairness, but this illustrates why societies could see benefit in it for so long.
WheatMillington 3y ago
This is so wild to me. Coming from a place in New Zealand where property is incredibly valuable, nothing in my city is ever vacant for more than a few weeks. The idea that land and buildings could remain empty is economically unthinkable.
- satori99 3y ago
  A man did this in Sydney fairly recently. He discovered a vacant house whose occupant had died, changed the locks and tidied the property before renting it out to other people. After 20 years he applied for the deed. Relatives of the deceased owner were tracked down, and tried to fight him in court, but he won. He got to keep 20 years of rent payments and a multi-million dollar property. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-battle-to-become-owner-of-vacant-sydney-house-20181031-p50d4v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-bat...
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Seems fine to me. No one cared enough to do anything with it and people need living space, so he utilized it. After a while if you tend a property and no one complains it is yours -- squatter's rights.
    - vintermann 3y ago
      I would agree, except that he rented it out. He should get compensated for the part of cleaning the place up, but the people he rented to got scammed - he lied to them, took their money and let them carry the risk of getting thrown out if the real owner turned up.
- everyone 3y ago
  property is incredibly valuable in Dublin City centre. However there are many vacant lots and abandoned buildings. There has been an issue with "land barons" for decades. They own a lot of property in Dublin, and leave it vacant to create scarcity and drive up the price of property, and then they use the leverage of their now more valuable property to buy more. It was identified in the 70's that there were gaps in Irish property laws that could allow this to happen but nothing was eventually done about it.

opportune 3y ago

Where is this? Southern Europe? It makes me very sad seeing so many stone buildings left uninhabited and overgrown with plants when I visit Spain and Italy. I always thought it was just the cost to upgrade them to modern living standards that was prohibitive, but from personal experience [0] with similar situations in the US, I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. [0] One set of my grandparents split their house equally among their 3 children. Because it has immense sentimental value to those children, they have not sold it and currently “rent” it at no cost to one of the children. Depending on the order in which those 3 children pass, the state of the house could easily become deadlocked for decades as I know one of my aunts would refuse to sell it even if the other aunt (who lives in it) passes. Thank god none of my cousins would want to live in it so we probably would eventually be able to sell it. It’s not even close to a mansion or anything… just a regular 1960s middle class house in an area where land is pretty cheap. If I had a shitton of cousins and the property was very valuable land I could totally envision it getting permanently deadlocked.

pacbard 3y ago
While inheritance laws in Southern Europe are weird, I don't think that partial ownership of buildings is the issue here. The real issue is that old buildings are not useful anymore: 1. Buildings that are not longer needed. For example, you can walk in woods and see old, run down, metati [1] in Italy. While chestnuts still keep a sentimental value, mountain people do not rely on them for sustenance anymore. Therefore, the drying sheds and mills have been abandoned. 2. Buildings that are not just functional anymore. Our barn had 20 stalls. It was functional as of the 1800s, but it's no longer a viable building to host a herd of milk producing cows. It has small stalls, lack of windows, difficult sanitation. People just build new barns and abandon the old ones. The problem is that the barn is build of rock, so it won't decay so easily. 3. Buildings that are no longer comfortable. Similar to point 2, old stone houses are not that comfortable. Having 3-foot wide stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space. A house with a regular footprint (maybe 100 sq. feet) is much smaller once you consider all the space that stone walls take up. Plus, old houses don't have plumbing, electricity, etc, are damp and cold in the winter (but somewhat pleasant in the summer). People just prefer to live in a modern place rather than fix up an old one (which might be marked as historical and will need much more money to fix up). [1]: https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/ https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/
- Toreno96 3y ago
  > stone walls for each internal room seems like charming until you realize that you can't use wall space Why is it not possible to use stone wall space?
  - 22c 3y ago
    I think it's more accurate to say that there simply is no wall space, because the walls ARE the stones. There are ways around it, probably using copious amounts of conduit etc. but it's a lot of work compared to simply living somewhere that already has utility outlets where you need them.
  - andrewpolidori 3y ago
    They are saying that the footprint of 3ft thick walls takes up a lot more of your usable floor space than a modern home's walls would.
- SenHeng 3y ago
  Here's a Youtube channel of someone restoring one of these remote Italian cabins to live in. It's not easy. https://www.youtube.com/@MartijnDoolaard https://www.youtube.com/@MartijnDoolaard
yodsanklai 3y ago
> I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem. I don't know about the US, but where I live, I think I think that if you don't want to be, the other owners have to buy your slice. If they can't they need to sell the house.
- samtho 3y ago
  This rule in many areas is how real estate developers acquire lots of land cheaply that has been in a particular family for generations. They find a family where the previous owner has passed and thus the ownership defaults to then next kin. They approach one next of kin who doesn’t know they even inherited it, buy out their slice, and require the remaining members to buy them out, forcing them to sell it… likely to the same investor.
thrashh 3y ago
I don’t know about Spain but why would these houses need to be filled when Italy’s population has stagnated? There’s no one to live in them!
CSMastermind 3y ago
Not OP but I will say I've heard stories like they describe from at least 3 different Spanish people I know, inheritance laws there do seem to cause some problems.
- Gare 3y ago
  Might as well be Croatia
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    Just out of personal curiosity, what makes Croatia so bad for inheritance and property law?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rcme 3y ago

Many places allow minority owners to force the selling of land by petitioning the courts.

alliao 3y ago

Thanks for reminding me the time I visited Peru in the early 2000s and saw fields of orderly criss crossing rows of rocks acting as boundaries. The tour guide said generations of owner kept dividing the land till the land's no longer usable.

wrp 3y ago

Primogeniture gets a lot of criticism because of its perceived unfairness, but this illustrates why societies could see benefit in it for so long.

WheatMillington 3y ago

This is so wild to me. Coming from a place in New Zealand where property is incredibly valuable, nothing in my city is ever vacant for more than a few weeks. The idea that land and buildings could remain empty is economically unthinkable.

satori99 3y ago
A man did this in Sydney fairly recently. He discovered a vacant house whose occupant had died, changed the locks and tidied the property before renting it out to other people. After 20 years he applied for the deed. Relatives of the deceased owner were tracked down, and tried to fight him in court, but he won. He got to keep 20 years of rent payments and a multi-million dollar property. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-battle-to-become-owner-of-vacant-sydney-house-20181031-p50d4v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-bat...
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Seems fine to me. No one cared enough to do anything with it and people need living space, so he utilized it. After a while if you tend a property and no one complains it is yours -- squatter's rights.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    I would agree, except that he rented it out. He should get compensated for the part of cleaning the place up, but the people he rented to got scammed - he lied to them, took their money and let them carry the risk of getting thrown out if the real owner turned up.
everyone 3y ago
property is incredibly valuable in Dublin City centre. However there are many vacant lots and abandoned buildings. There has been an issue with "land barons" for decades. They own a lot of property in Dublin, and leave it vacant to create scarcity and drive up the price of property, and then they use the leverage of their now more valuable property to buy more. It was identified in the 70's that there were gaps in Irish property laws that could allow this to happen but nothing was eventually done about it.