A town 200 miles southwest of Stockholm is selling 29 plots of land with prices starting at just 1 krona, or 9 U.S. cents, per square meter (11 square feet).
This amazing price point doesn’t just come with the land itself; it allows the recipient to build their dream home, whether it’s to live in or utilize as a holiday home, as the rules currently stand.
Götene, a rural area with 5,000 residents living in the main town and 13,000 in the wider municipality, sits on the shores of Lake Vänern, the largest lake in the entire EU. Only Russia has larger lakes on the European continent.
With a real estate deal this enticing, in such a serene and cultured area, why is the town of Götene pushing this deal?
Mayor Johan Månsson says it’s a combination of decreasing population and economic downturns.
“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 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.”
The initiative was launched in May with about 30 interested buyers. Four of them bought plots at the one krona per square meter price. Plot sizes ranged from 700 to1,200 square meters.
Since then, word of the deal spread like wildfire, and the number of buyers has skyrocketed.
“It went viral, and we’ve had thousands of requests to our telephone exchange,” Månsson said. “We have two people in our phone exchange in City Hall and they have been very sweaty over the past few days. We’re basically in crisis mode.”
Månsson says there have been requests from all over the world, and that authorities have paused the bidding process until early August to work out how to proceed.
The large influx of calls may be a result of the terms of the initiative, as you don’t have to be a Swedish citizen to take advantage of the deal. The town’s only requirement is that construction of the house starts within two years of buying the plot.
The deal is being compared to a similar bargain being offered in Italy, where following a large influx of buyers in 2019 and 2021, Sicily’s Sambuca di Sicilia is preparing to put a third batch of homes for sale, this time with starting prices of 3 euros, or just over $3.
The Götene fire sale doesn’t end with these 30 plots. Månsson said that it’s “not impossible” that they might do some kind of cheap housing scheme, like the “one euro” houses that the rural communities in Italy are famous for.
“We have a lot more land, and we must sit down and see if we can do something to make something more of it other than just these 30 plots. We need something to offer the callers,” he said.
If the scheme bears fruit, Månsson believes the remote community of Götene could soon be bustling.
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