Remnant – Issue No. 20
Six houses near the water, from €29,000 in Bulgaria to a whole island in Donegal
When we started writing Remnant, we sent it to our friend Neha Choksi, who said Is this a place for dreaming? With all of this week's houses located within reach of a large body of water, most of them within spitting distance, we wanted to linger on why it never gets old to browse for empty houses in beautiful but economically challenged places. Sure, it's partly fantasy that would eventually have to face up to reality (the flip side of "unspoiled" natural areas is often the lack of jobs and humans with money to spoil it), but it goes beyond that into imagining what it would be like to live in a place that holds the potential to calm our nervous systems, feed our senses, and provide access to a slower, more deliberate and tactile way of life, despite its drawbacks, and despite obvious ethical considerations around globalization. There are real health benefits to spending time in green and blue spaces. Community and social connection are equally essential. Dreaming is also important – we can't always trust we will actually want the reality version of what we're fantasizing about, but maybe we can trust it's leading us in the right direction. We come across the word "revitalization" often in our research. In a nutshell, that's the ultimate goal of many of these places, and upon reflection, we realized its also a deeply embedded component of the dream. Should we take the leap, might we ourselves be revitalized.
Just imagine – in the northwest corner of Ireland, where the River Erne meets the sea at Ballyshannon in County Donegal, you can buy a half-acre island for €299,000, with a really lovely three-bedroom house and a floating jetty.
All six houses this week are within reach of the water, whether by jetty, by a beach ten kilometers (about six miles) down the road, or by a forty-minute drive to the Riviera. We are in Ireland, Japan, Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, with listings ranging from €29,000 to €299,000. Also, Greece's 7 percent tax for foreign retirees, what an akiya broker's advice to foreign owners about becoming good neighbors, two recipes from the map with bonus snail content in the reading list, and our silly group chat.
Ireland
Inis Saimer, Ballyshannon, Donegal · €299,000 · 219 m²
You get the whole island, sitting in the Erne Estuary one minute by boat from the Mall Quay in Ballyshannon. The house is 219 square meters (about 2,360 square feet), with an open-plan kitchen, dining and living room, a big reception room with ceiling beams, three bedrooms, one bathroom and an attic the agent says you could develop. Every double-glazed window looks out over the water, the floors are timber throughout, and there's mains electricity and water, a septic tank and an outbuilding for storage. The energy rating is G.
The name comes out of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the medieval book of Ireland's invasions. Partholón, one of Ireland's first mythical settlers, around 2,700 BC, left his wife Delgnat on the island, came home thirsty, and worked out from his own cup and golden drinking straw that she'd been with his servant Topa. He killed Topa, and he killed Delgnat's hound, Saimer. The Brehon Academy calls what came next Ireland's first recorded judgment. It went Delgnat's way, and in their telling she took the island as her damages and named it after the dog. Donegal Live adds that the island was later linked to the O'Donnell clan, the Jacobite-Williamite War and Ballyshannon's fishing industry.
It's going to online auction through iamsold unless a pre-auction offer gets accepted first, and the listing says it "may be eligible" for the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant.
The case for: it's a whole island with a working house on it, ten minutes from the shops in town. The case against: every grocery run, every delivery and every contractor comes across by boat.
Sean O'Boyle Auctioneers, Ballyshannon.
Bunnacurry, Achill Island, Mayo · €125,000 · 0.75 acres
A derelict three-bedroom cottage near the sea in Bunnacurry, on Achill, sits on three quarters of an acre with its old stone outbuildings still standing. The listing doesn't say how far it is to the beach, so ask, and ask which beach. Piped water is there already, electricity and a phone line run past the site, and it's BER exempt (BER is Ireland's energy rating).
Bunnacurry's landmark is the ruined Franciscan monastery, which the Catholic Church built between 1852 and 1854 as a direct answer to a Protestant mission settlement on the island. The monks stayed until 1978, and inside you can still find fragments of the original tilework and plasterwork.
The agent says the cottage qualifies for the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant (Issue 16 has the full rundown). Achill is joined to the mainland by a bridge, so the 20 percent island top-up doesn't apply, and the ceiling for a derelict house here is €70,000 rather than €84,000.
The case for: Achill, the stone outbuildings, and a grant designed for exactly this kind of house. The case against: it's a full rebuild, and you'll have to ask how close the sea is.
Martin Finn & Nigel Dineen Auctioneers, 094 9362216.
Japan
Muroto, Kochi · ¥2,300,000 (roughly $14,500) · 72.77 m²
Muroto is on the Pacific coast of Shikoku, in Kochi Prefecture, and this wooden 3DK (three rooms plus a dining kitchen) went up there in 1974. You get 72.77 square meters of house (about 783 square feet) on a lot of 102.67 square meters, a gas cooktop, a spot indoors for the washing machine, and sewage that gets collected rather than piped away. There's no parking, but the hospital is 380 meters away, the convenience store 660 and the supermarket 740. Akiyahopper puts the total purchase cost, with broker commission, taxes and fees, at about ¥3,660,000, give or take ¥950,000, which is roughly $23,000 at this week's exchange rate.
On the map, the listing's pin sits about five and a half kilometers up the coast from Cape Muroto, part of a UNESCO Global Geopark. At the cape is Mikurodo, the cave where the monk Kukai trained and lived in the early Heian period, more than 1,200 years ago, and he took his name from the view out of its mouth, ku for sky and kai for sea.
The case for: it's a house in a Pacific coast town with the hospital around the corner. The case against: it's a 1974 wooden house with no parking, and the listing doesn't say how far the beach is.
Via Akiyahopper, also listed on homes.co.jp.
Bulgaria
Zahari Stoyanovo, near Shabla · €29,000 · 88 m²
The cheapest house of the six is one you could move into as it stands. It's a one-story stone and brick house from 1957 in the village of Zahari Stoyanovo, with two bedrooms in 88 square meters (about 947 square feet) on a plot of 1,165 square meters (about 12,500 square feet). There's a garage, outbuildings, a kept garden facing south and southeast, and access to an asphalt road. The agent calls the condition average and says it needs renovating, and Durankulak South Beach is 10 kilometers (about six miles) away.
You're in Bulgaria's far northeast corner here, on the Black Sea. The Shabla lighthouse, built by the Ottomans in 1856, is the oldest in the country and stands on its easternmost point. Up the coast at Durankulak, a freshwater lake cut off from the sea by dunes holds 260 rare and endangered species and gets large numbers of pelicans in winter. Excavations there between 1974 and 1997 turned up 1,204 prehistoric burials, and the lake's Big Island holds an Eneolithic settlement from 4600 to 4200 BC, which is why people call it the "Bulgarian Troy."
A reminder from Issue 11: a non-EU citizen can't own land in Bulgaria in their own name, so the standard route for an American is a Bulgarian single-member company to hold the plot.
The case for: it's €29,000, livable now, with a big garden and pelicans up the road. The case against: as a non-EU buyer you'd need to set up a company to hold the land.
Bulgarian Properties, Krasen Zahariev, Varna office, reference Vna 86507.
Greece
Kritsa, East Crete · €44,500 · 55 m²
Up in the top of Kritsa, a stone corner house on two floors has 55 square meters in total (about 592 square feet) and a view over the village to the mountains. Upstairs you get two interconnecting bedrooms, a balcony and a fireplace with an arch, and downstairs there are three more interconnecting rooms, an outside WC, and a little storeroom across the lane. Water and electricity are connected, and you park a short walk away. The floors and roof are concrete, it's listed as needing restoration, and the energy certificate is pending. Budget for agent fees, legal costs and purchase tax on top of the price.
Kritsa sits between 330 and 365 meters up on the foothills of Mount Kastellos, about 10 kilometers from the nearest beach, 11 from Agios Nikolaos, and within an hour of Heraklion airport. Jules Dassin shot scenes here in 1957 for He Who Must Die, his film of the Kazantzakis novel. The fifteenth-century Panagia Kera church is known for its frescoes, the Doric ruins of ancient Lato are three kilometers away, and the village is known for its embroidery shops.
The case for: it's a stone house with a village and mountain view, 10 kilometers from the beach and an hour from an airport. The case against: the bedrooms open into each other, and you'd be carrying your shopping from the car.
Cretan Residences, Wanda Kobylewicz, 0030 28410 21241.
Italy
Corte, Molini di Triora, Liguria · €35,000 · 80 m²
The family selling this house in Corte wrote the listing themselves, about summers there, neighbors out talking in the cooler evening air and kids free to roam the village, and they sign off hoping "the next owner will enjoy it just as much." It's a terraced village house on three floors with 80 square meters (about 861 square feet), a 20 square meter garden and 100 square meters of land, and it needs restoring. The energy rating isn't available.
Corte is a hamlet of Molini di Triora, up in the Argentina Valley, and the coast is 19.5 kilometers (about 12 miles) away as the crow flies. By car, the family says, the Riviera dei Fiori beaches are about 40 minutes. The nearest ski resort is 8.2 kilometers away, so you could ski and swim on the same day, in theory. The comune has 613 people at 460 meters, and the bakery, a café, the pharmacy and the elementary school are all within a kilometer.
Molini di Triora held its 65th Sagra della Lumaca (snail festival) this September, and it has been running since 1959. A short drive up the road is Triora, the "Village of the Witches." In 1587, during a famine, the authorities there offered 500 scudi to find whoever was to blame and imprisoned twenty women, and one of them, sixty-year-old Isotta Stella, died under torture. Triora has had a witchcraft museum since 1960.
Ask the family three things first. The data panel says five bedrooms and the description says four, there's a kitchen on the first floor and another on the third, and it lists one bathroom while the description also has a separate toilet.
The case for: it's €35,000, sold by a family who loved it, with a bakery and a school down the road. The case against: the listing disagrees with itself about the rooms, and the sea is forty minutes by car.
Private sale via Gate-away, reference Corte-house.
The Fine Print
Greece's Article 5B lets a foreign pensioner who moves their tax residence to Greece pay a flat 7 percent on all their foreign-sourced income for up to fifteen consecutive years. That can include pensions, dividends, interest, rental income and capital gains. Anything you earn inside Greece is taxed under the normal rules.
To qualify, your pension has to come from outside Greece, you generally can't have been a Greek tax resident in five of the previous six years, and your last tax residence has to be in a country with a tax cooperation agreement with Greece.
Pappas Post runs the numbers on a €55,000 foreign pension, which would owe roughly €14,750 at standard Greek rates and €3,850 at 7 percent.
Lifestyle & Culture Notes
Reality of Akiya life & how to be a good foreign buyer
From Linh Nguyen's piece in the autumn issue of Metropolis:
She and her husband watched dozens of akiya videos before they ever set foot in Japan, and now that they live there, she asked Shu Matsuo Post, co-founder of AkiyaHub, what happens after you buy one of these fixer-uppers. Japan has about 9 million vacant homes, which is 13.8 percent of all its housing.
His advice for becoming a neighbor rather than a visitor with a house:
- Learn about the area you're buying in, and learn some Japanese, because outside the big cities a lot of people don't speak English. Arigatou gozaimasu (thank you) and konnichiwa (hello) open a lot of doors.
- Bring omiyage (a small gift) to the neighbors in your first few days. "It's not about making mistakes or sounding silly," he says. "People really appreciate the effort made."
- Live in the house, or use it as often as you can, and go to community events. Most of his clients spend two to six months a year in Japan, and he sees that time and money as part of what keeps small towns going.
- Keep the peace next door. Some locals, he says, have had bad experiences with foreign owners, particularly with short-term rentals where "people are super loud every night."
- Expect paperwork. Since April 2026, foreign buyers have to disclose their citizenship when they register a property and file a residential use report within 20 days of buying. He thinks it'll weed out the "dreamers."
One client stands out in his mind, an American who'd been living in Seoul and bought a house in rural Saitama because he wanted land to try farming, despite having very little Japanese. He tracked down solar panel subsidies on his own, and when a neighbor turned up at his door with a clipboard to hand him the neighborhood's garbage collection schedule, a duty that rotates between households, he went and found the local group leader himself and worked out what the job involved. "That's pretty brave," Matsuo Post said.
Recipes from the Map
Katsuo no Tataki: Kochi's Straw-Seared Bonito via Shikoku Tours. Kochi's signature dish is bonito seared over a burning straw fire so the outside smokes and the inside stays raw, then sliced over onions with garlic, ginger, green onion, salt and citrus. At home a hot pan or a kitchen torch does the job.
Traditional Greek Dakos Salad Recipe (by a Cretan) via The Hungry Bites. Efthimis Koukakis grew up eating dakos on Crete, and he tells you to grate the tomato on the big holes of a box grater, dip the barley rusk in water for a second or two, and pour on more olive oil than you think you need, because "less is not more."
What we're reading
La ricetta segreta delle lumache di Molini di Triora via Riviera Time, in Italian. They cook about 660 pounds of snails for the Pro Loco festival in the Valle Argentina each year using a time-honored preparation of olive oil, garlic, onion, red wine, bay, rosemary, mint, thyme and parsley.
Sun, sea and soldiers: Greek island tourists get front-row seats for military drills via AP, in the Mercury News. On September 18th, vacationers on the sunbeds at Maleme, outside Chania, watched Medusa 15, the Greek and Egyptian military exercise, come ashore right in front of them, with fast boats, colored smoke, jets overhead and military police holding the bathers back behind a cordon. Louise Carr from York: "You'd pay thousands to watch this, wouldn't you?"
Greece's 7% tax rate is part of a broader push to attract foreign retirees via Pappas Post.
Shaynna and Darren take the ultimate Italian gamble in 1 Euro House via Nine. The design duo from The Block buy a one-euro house in Castronovo, Sicily, with no structural reports, and it premieres Tuesday, October 6th, at 8:40 PM on Channel 9 and 9Now, for anyone in Australia or anyone with a VPN.
In pictures: fascinating story behind entire Donegal island for sale for under €300,000 via Donegal Live, with local historian Anthony Begley on the island's legends, and the photos.
The Akiya Dream: Life Beyond the Front Door via Metropolis, by Linh Nguyen, on pages 22 and 23 of the autumn issue, which is themed Earth. The same issue has a guide to fruit picking at more than a thousand orchards, Yakushima's moss forest, and a piece on the farm labor shortage behind Japan's tea-picking photo trend.
Live from our group chat
Wally: Being close to the water is at the top of my list.
Malia: Same. How about those military exercises though.
Wally: Maybe we should buy a fort somewhere, like they did in the olden days.
Malia: You buy the fort, and I'll launch an offensive, just for fun.
That's issue twenty. Thanks for reading.
Until next week, Wally & Malia
Remnant is a weekly newsletter about distressed and beautiful houses around the world. We are not real estate agents. We just got a little obsessed and started digging. What will you do with what we find?