You’ve heard of houses on sale in southern Europe for the price of a cup of coffee. Now one country in northern Europe is running a similar scheme: selling plots for just a few cents. Götene, 200 miles southwest of Stockholm, is selling 29 plots of land with prices starting at just 1 krona, or 9 US cents, per square meter (11 square feet). This isn’t just any land, though. It’s land on which the lucky buyers can build their dream home – to live in, or as a holiday home, as the rules currently stand. So if the heat wave is making southern Europe seem less attractive by the day, this might just be the ticket. Götene, a rural area with 5,000 residents living in the main town, and 13,000 in the wider municipality, is rural Sweden at its finest. It’s located on the shores of Lake Vänern, not only Sweden’s largest lake but also the biggest in Scandinavia and the entire EU, at around 10 times the size of Lake Constance. Only Russia has larger lakes on the European continent. For hikers, Götene also has a small mountain nearby – Kinnekulle. It’s also home to two UNESCO-rated sites: the Platåbergens Geopark and Lake Vänern Archipelago and Mount Kinnekulle Biosphere. So why would such an idyllic town need to stage a fire sale of its land? ‘It’s become a sensation’ Mayor Johan Månsson says it’s a combination of the current economic downturn and dwindling rural populations. ”The housing market is currently very slow in our region and Sweden in general because of high interest rates and a bit of a recession, so we wanted to give an injection into the market,” he told CNN. ”We’re also seeing low birth rates and an ageing population so we have to do something, bring more people here.” Månsson said they decided to sell off 30 plots for a token fee, choosing land that had been ”on the market for many many years” without selling. ”We thought why not, it’s an extraordinary situation that requires extraordinary measures. So we did it, and now it’s become a sensation, I don’t know what to say.”
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/community/details/topicId_211000/
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/community/details/topicId_211000/
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/community/details/topicId_211000/
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