A scenic town in Sweden may have gotten more than what it bargained for after interested residents responded to the authorities’ efforts to raise the population numbers in the picturesque locale.
The town of Götene, 200 miles southwest of Stockholm, is selling 30 plots of land with prices starting at just 1 krona, or 5.58 pesos, per square meter (11 square feet).
In a statement given by the town’s Mayor Johan Månsson to CNN, this said promotion aims to lure new residents to the rural region amidst the national housing crisis, high interest rates, and declining birth rates.
Götene gives residents a taste of a quiet slice of rural Sweden, with about 5000 full-time residents and 13000 people living in the surrounding municipality. It is located on the shores of Lake Vänern, the largest lake not only in Sweden but also in Scandinavia and the entire EU with it being around 10 times the size of Lake Constance.
The only requirement needed in order to acquire this land was that the lucky buyers start building a home on the site within two years of their purchase.
When the land went on sale last May, Månsson stated that there were about 30 interested buyers that had reached out. In the following weeks, the program went viral that led to thousands of new buyers starting to contact the Götene City Hall.
“We have two people in our phone exchange in city hall, and they have been very sweaty over the past few days,” he stated. “We’re basically in crisis mode.”
With the program becoming a quick sensation, calls are now coming from around the globe, as stated by Månsson.
The local authorities have decided that they would put a pause on the program until early August in order to create a plan for handling incoming requests.
Månsson also stated that four buyers were able to get four of the cheapest plots before everything went into chaos.
The program will most likely be using a bidding for the remaining land when the applications reopen next month.
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