A Small Town in Croatia Is Selling Homes for 16 Cents
It's also chipping in $4,000 for renovations, but there's a pretty big caveat.
In the US, the coronavirus pandemic has caused housing prices to skyrocket, leaving many hopeful homeowners unable to buy their dream house.
Other countries seem to be having the opposite problem: They can’t get rid of real estate fast enough. After $1 homes in Italy and cities in Japan giving houses away for free, Croatia is the latest destination to practically beg people to move there.
Legrad, a small, rural town in Croatia with a population of around 2,000, is hoping to lure residents by selling homes for a single Croatian kuna—or around 16 cents. The caveat? You’ll need to make a 15-year commitment.
Legrad was once a bustling town—Reuters reports that it once boasted the second-largest population in Croatia—but has seen a massive decrease in inhabitants since 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed and new borders were put in place. People increasingly moving to more urban cities also hasn’t helped, and its population is currently around half of what it was 70 years ago.
In an attempt to combat its dwindling population, the town put up 19 abandoned homes and empty plots for sale for 16 cents last year, with only a handful left, Reuters reports. Most are fixer-uppers, to put it mildly, but the town will pay buyers around $4,000 for renovations.
To snag one of these homes, buyers must be “financially solvent,” per Reuters, under the age of 40, and willing to stick around for 15 years.
The town’s mayor said that the initiative has garnered a lot of interest from far-flung places like Argentina, Colombia, Russia, and Turkey. However, he’s trying to keep things local for now in order to avoid tricky immigration issues. But who knows, a 16-cent home and bucolic life in the Croatian countryside could be in your future soon.
h/t Reuters