Live data from Hacker News

Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

bloomberg.com

91–100 of 190 posts

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gizmodo.com/what-if-the-entire-worlds-population-liv...

That 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.

I 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......

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#92
post #89
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I completely disagree with you. Having travelled the world, I feel the worst thing we can do is continue with the big cities. They need to be dismantled, and replaced with smaller, lighter, more local communities that do not require so much energy to maintain - very big city requires immense resources to keep it running, every single day. More rural living is what will save us, imho.

Do you know what the most energy efficient people moving device is? The counterweight elevator. It's true. Cramming a village worth of people into a highrise, surrounding it with walking distance amenities is by far the most efficient, environment friendly way of supplying said populace. Yes, you need trucks to stock said stores but then again, no matter where they live you'd still need those trucks and this way a) e…

This is why i hate cars.

Cars should be the most taxed and difficult to obtain. Cars are why humans in dense to be areas suck. Work backward from eliminating cars from daily life.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#94
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An "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.

No, 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.

Thanks for correcting me and sorry!

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#95

The 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.

In my experience, the 100-year leases (or similar) are typical of anglo-saxon / ex-British nations. AFAIK, in Spain, Italy, etc, you simply own land or not, there's no lease.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#96
post #38

If 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!

Just a house in a nice village close to constansa with fiber would do. But for us that don't know much of the country or langages it not so easy to find

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 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.

I 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......

Tokyo 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

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#98
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think parent comment was referring to foreigners buying a place and working remotely.

Yeah. 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 propert…

Do you intend to engage with the Lisbon startup community? What are your thoughts on it?

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#99
post #38

If 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!

Just a house in a nice village close to constansa with fiber would do. But for us that don't know much of the country or langages it not so easy to find

I strongly suspect that every estate agent in Romania, as well as at least one person in every office of RDS (the fiber-based ISP) speaks English comfortably. Foreigners shouldn’t have much difficulty compared to certain other European countries.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#100
post #9

I'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…

That always seems a good idea for those not living in the interior.

It is an urban myth to imagine one can easily move to the interior and then, by means of instantaneous willpower, cope with the most ruthless solitude. I've heard my share of stories about city people moving to the countryside to start living off their organic orchard. But when we stop dreaming and look around, people who were born there are going away or dying of old age in ever smaller villages. Alentejo still has the highest suicide rate.

I work in Alentejo as a farmer, and I recently moved from Lisbon to Beja. Beja is the capital of Portugal's largest district. Before I came here, I knew beforehand the kind of obstacles my family would face.

Close to where I work, less than 10 miles from Beja, the local school was converted to a multi-purpose building, because there are not enough children living there.

Infrastructure is still bad: on the farm, on windy days I have poor to no reception on the best available operator, and the Internet connection quality drops considerably around 5 pm; power shortages are frequent, which is a major problem for those with irrigation needs; the roads are in miserable condition; fuel is also more expensive; the central hospital still does not have an MRI machine.

And I say this having in mind all of those that, each day, fight for bringing to south Alentejo the investment it desperately needs. I fight for that too. In terms of agriculture there have been major changes, but there is still a lot to do.

Meanwhile, across the country, postal services, banks and public schools are shutting down.

In the past, several ideas have been put forth to combat abandonment, but I don't think any of those ideas are working. The abandonment of old villages is not fought by artificially populating them with people coming from large urban areas. Until proven wrong, I still believe that investment in fundamental infrastructure is what attracts people: energy, water, transportation and communications.

Selling whole villages to the rich as a solution for this problem is a gimmick, and an insult in my opinion.

Post reply on HN