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I come from a small rural place in Norway, at the lowest point the municipalities started selling old houses for next to nothing, as in equivalent to $100. No s
by TrackerFF 1y ago
I come from a small rural place in Norway, at the lowest point the municipalities started selling old houses for next to nothing, as in equivalent to $100. No strings attached.
But of course, the person living there would have to pay (equivalent to) $1000-$1500 / year on fees related to water, waste management, cleaning of chimney, etc. And you'd probably like to have the house insured.
And these weren't nice new houses. Mostly shacks built right after ww2, some not having been lived in for 10-15-20 years. Complete renovation projects.
What would happen is that some people from out of town would buy a house, plan to renovate it, but then mostly do nothing. Then many would forget to pay the municipality fees, often times for years. Eventually the unpaid bills would be sent to collection agency, and then a forced sale on behalf of the creditors. But now the houses were in even worse shape, so no one would purchase them at all.
Eventually they'd be torn down.
- larsiusprime 1y agoMaintenance of old crumbling European castles in inconvenient locations are also often famously bad deals for the owner.
- umeshunni 1y agoHa, yes. I found dozens of articles about castle renovations gone awry https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/no-way-back-1-15m-120000548.html https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/no-way-back-1-15m-120000548.... https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/1212/12121.html https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/1212/12121.html
- akudha 1y agoThis might still be appealing to young people, especially those who do not like the noise/pollution of big cities and can't afford them?
- bee_rider 1y agoI could see the appeal of a shack, but I suspect a castle would be quite a maintainence burden. I guess nowadays one would not need to employ as large a retinue… but you don’t get to tax the local villages anymore. Seems like a wash.
- AndrewDavis 1y agoI really enjoy the TV show Escape to the Chateau. A lot of couple buy an old run down French chateau and move in with their two kids. Each episode is roughly them doing up a part of it. Often with ideas for making money out of it. Very much light entertainment, but it's eye opening how significant of a restoration and maintenance burden it is.
- thefz 1y agoDo you have any idea of the thermal inertia of a castle? How are you going to heat it to an acceptable living temperature?
- yread 1y agoIf you spend 700k eur on heating instead of on the purchase price you can stay warm for quite a while
- Someone 1y agoI wouldn’t count on that. https://www.lifestyledaily.co.uk/article/2021/03/23/how-much-it-costs-heat-bridgerton-and-crown-lookalike-palaces https://www.lifestyledaily.co.uk/article/2021/03/23/how-much... gives £209k as an estimate for heating the main house from Downton Abbey. Now, Italy is a bit warmer than the UK, and most castles a bit smaller, but castles in Italy can be on colder mountaintops.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y agoAnd that's why they should have put the "must renovate" clause!
- RandomBacon 1y agoWith a bond that can be returned with proof of renovation.
- guywithahat 1y agoThere's an irony in that there is often a regulatory issue with the local government, not just some "shortage of humans". The same thing happened in one of the most populated regions in the US. The area between Boston/NYC and DC, containing Baltimore, was once a city of a million people. It contains an underground subway and was once referred to as the Paris of America, however through regulation and unions it became completely impossible to do business in or live in, and the city collapsed. They also sold $1 row houses, which should have been a dream come true, except in practice the issue was never the house, it was the city government. Cities offering $1 houses just means the government has ignored the actual issues for decades and is probably incompetent.
- jonstewart 1y agoThe history of Baltimore is a far more complex story than "regulation and unions" results in "and the city collapsed."
- guywithahat 1y agoI would argue it really isn't. Massachusetts still has some of the strongest union protections, is one of the most unionized states, and Baltimore has worked hard to maintain an incompetent government for decades. Given the outrageous rents in nearby states and cities Baltimore should have kept growing but has instead shrunk to a half million. The rust belt as a whole was primarily just companies escaping unions. Cheaper labor may have been an incentive but it fundamentally started with companies who were forced to move production, and US regulation which prevented them from benefiting from local supply chains once they became unionized.
- jonstewart 1y agochat, what would David Simon say in reply to this
- bpt3 1y agoI'm far from a union sympathizer, but you've already moved from your initial, absurdly simplistic description of the issue to a major symptom (decades of ineffective government, ranging from benign incompetence to intentional malice). Also, the rents in nearby areas to the north are far from outrageous (hint: there are no major cities for a couple hours), and the Baltimore metro area continues to grow because the area is desirable, even though the city is completely mismanaged.
- mastax 1y agoSounds like there were many strings attached actually.
- tshaddox 1y agoApparently not very strongly attached.
- cloudbonsai 1y agoIn Japan, we have a special term for real estate that has become a financial burden on their owners: "負動産" (fudosan, negative real assets). It's such a huge social problem that people choose not to accept the inheritance if it involves old properties in rural areas.
- ta12653421 1y agoMay i ask, is there also a dedicated term for "positive real asset" in Japanese?
- cloudbonsai 1y ago> a dedicated term for "positive real asset" in Japanese? Some seems to use the term "富動産" to mean that, but I don't think it's catching on. Side note: normal real assets are called "不動産" (which pronounces as "fudosan"; it originates from Immobilière in French) in Japan. It's all about puns.