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Comment by deanalevitt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"Ownership" is meaningless. Each region of Europe have their own laws regarding what you can and cannot do with the land you "own" and what duties and rights you get by owning it. For example, you might buy one of these houses but the building codes mandate that you renovate and preserve the exterior. Heck, in some countries you are not allowed to even live in structures outside the habitable region.

Right, that's why I brought it up. In Italy, they were selling houses for $1 but the regulations around it plus the ongoing property taxes change the entire calculus.

Regardless, land is valuable but only if you own it and have some control over monetizing your ownership.

> Heck, in some countries you are not allowed to even live in structures outside the habitable region.

Isn’t that the law in most developed countries? I live in an Eastern European country that is not quite well developed and we’ve had this type of law for as long as I can remember.

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.

I'd be curious about taxes and other costs involved in ownership.

There's communal property in Spain, but That's tipically for shared land, forests and so on. I don't think you can build on that, so that would be a private property, yes.

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