About.

Hello. Ciao. Olá. こんにちは.

Remnant is a collaboration by Malia Márquez and Wally Rudolph. We're Los Angeles based writers and we adore this city but the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. Like a lot of people across the globe, we've done the thing many times where you click on a real estate listing in another country, late at night, when it all just seems like too much. The result is usually two hours you didn't plan on, spiraling on questions about risk, reward, what would be gained or lost if you actually picked up and left.

Remnant is a place on the internet where a curious person can begin to constructively imagine a new life. Maybe that ends with the fantasy of it — we all need a little escapism. Or maybe it starts a more serious conversation:

Would it actually be simpler to move somewhere else? And where?

What would that mean for a family, an older person, a queer couple, a single woman?

What we publish.

Every Sunday we publish a letter of curated listings from the parts of the world where people are making efforts to revitalize their communities — incentive programs, abandoned properties, the kind of places where a different life is still possible. The full issue for subscribers includes featured properties, additional listings, some practical information about relocation programs, and a lifestyle section at the bottom with snacks, reading, and a parody of 'our own group chat'.

Editorial note on AI transparency: we are creative writers and artists whose personal work is unassisted by artificial intelligence. However, this project is different. AI is used as an editorial tool to assist with organizing and synthesizing large amounts of information. It keeps the project sustainable (a controversial word in this context, to be sure) for two people with busy lives, and our overarching human labor, ideas, research, and organic voice keeps it real.

As writers and artists, it feels important at this time to actually work with and further study this technology that is viewed by many in our creative field as a significant threat. Presently, we live firmly in the curiosity camp, knowing the river can't be stopped, interested in being informed about this evolving terrain and educating ourselves on its possibilities and very real pitfalls, ethical issues, and limitations.

Your Ghost subscription includes:

— Access to every issue we've published, with a searchable database of all curated listings — filterable by country, region, price, and character.

— Country guides, with Italy and Japan first. For each country we gather the incentive programs, the buying process, the visa pathways, the taxes, and what things really cost once you've added the renovation, in one place, with every claim linked to its source. We're not lawyers, accountants, or an authority of any kind. We collect the information; what you do with it is yours.

— A running record of new incentive programs as they're announced. The number of countries paying people to move into empty houses keeps growing. We track them.

Thanks for reading and supporting this experiment.

— Wally & Malia