The cost of owning this building isn't the cost of buying it, it is the cost of maintaining it. And you need pretty deep pockets for that. And it's not like you will be allowed to dig a swimming pool in the courtyard. It is highly protected by the French historical monuments authority which must vet every single change you are making. It's more of a liability than an asset.
You're right about the cost of maintaining these properties. This year I came across a funny British show called "Escape to the Chateau" [1]. The couple there paid <400K GBP for a 45 room chateau. At one point they're not sure if they need a new roof. If they do? That'd cost ~250K GBP.
But one interesting thing they mentioned was that in France, heritage of old buildings like these is opt-in. If you choose to opt-in the French government will pay you but you then need to abide by all sorts of standards.
This is in stark contrast with, say, English Heritage where they can decide at some point that your building is now listed, you get paid nothing and any alternations or renovations need to be approved (for maintaining the character).
If that's true about France, I prefer the sound of that system. There are literally thousands of castle/chateuas in France. Is it really justifiable to preserve all of them? Especially given that many are falling into disrepair and many of these buildings are already falling into disrepair through lack of demand for buyers.
English Heritage sounds a lot like heritage in Ireland, where a heritage officer can make your home worthless (or worth literally less than nothing!) on a whim.
Worked out handily for me, buying a 200+ year old cottage for less than the cost of the land, but I've been DIY'ing everything but the thatching.
Horrible, awful for the previous owners who saw at _least_ €100,000 knocked off the value of their house.
Edit: to give context, I bought it for far less than €100k, meaning the site lost most of its value.
IIRC, this couple made a massive success out of this though. A lot of persistent hard work, and they now rent it out for weddings and function as a hotel (or pre-covid they did anyway).
The hard work included producing and selling a film of their experience, which might obscure the natural profitability of what they are attempting to do with the castle.
Interesting tidbit: in the Netflix show The Crown, there's an episode[0] where the queen's mother buys a castle in Scotland where the owner is happy to get rid of it because of all the pains of maintaining it.
Which is based on real-life event of the purchase of the Castle of Mey (1952):
This is a plot point in the Guy Ritchie movie "The Gentlemen," where Mickey's (Matthew McConaughey) marijuana growing operation is protected from discovery in part by renting land from broke nobles desperate to maintain their estates. I wonder, is this a common trope in England?
A lot of the castles and palaces have been donated to "the public" that maintains them as tourist attractions or museums. Also Europe is not like the US, where you can just build in a lot of unincorporated areas, so building a new luxury home out of sight of the castle on your property is most likely impossible as well. I'm not 100% sure about this, but my guess is that the presence of the castle might even devalue the land in a lot of these cases, ie you would pay more for an equivalent amount of "empty" land.
There's an interesting case going on right now; while not a castle, an 'old' royal palace has been sold to a developer and they're considering turning it into an event center with a hotel and apartments nearby (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...)
Sure, if you see it as property and expect it to make you money somehow.
But like everything else in life, castle ownership is temporary. It's such a rare thing to own, preserve, and pass a castle along to the next humans that it could be seen as a great honor. History needs to be nurtured and shared or it dies.
Yes it is truly an egregious injustice that thousand year old castles remain out of reach of the middle class. Something like 100% of castles are owned by the top 1% wealthiest people. Unconscionable.
Maybe it didn’t came out that way, but I just wanted to say that you need to be at a certain level of wealth to not seek profit from such an investment and to see it as an honor.
"He who lives without madness is not as wise as he thinks", one of François-de-la-Rochefoucauld’s maxims. His statue adorns the park. This maxim could become that of the future occupants.
You'd need to have people like gardeners, maintenence staff, and cleaners just to stop nature taking over. To actually fix problems you need conservators and specialist builders. Plus you have to heat the place to prevent damp and mould.
My family inherited a large estate in the South of France and the roof alone was half a million. Now you don’t have to fix things right away, but it quickly becomes a hazard.
When they where fixing the roof of Notre-dame, they had to source wood (oak) that was as old as the original. That kind of thing would really accelerate costs.
As someone who owns a castle/manor house and desperately wanting to sell it... I agree completely. At least theres normally no property taxes on listed buildings, but just keeping it from falling apart is enough to eat a moderate income.
Very easy to say, but would require multiple years worth of salary for me to open that, and the location is not suited to a museum. A wedding venue maybe, but still the investment required to start that is beyond what I can do. I also do not want to quit my software career in London to bank everything on a hospitality business in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe.
Lots of these places do just that -- but unless you want your job to be "I run a tourist attraction/wedding venue as a small business", you might prefer to sell the place and let somebody else do it...
As many startups realize when the investor’s money runs out, getting revenue isn’t sufficient.
I guess making the revenue pay for the investments in art, maintenance of the building, security, etc. and buying you clothing and food is left as an exercise for the reader.
Art would be $10-30k. No need to go overboard. Get some exhibits about local culture or something like that. Screw that, get some cool shit made by some online blacksmiths or woodworkers. Put a bunch of placards about the history of the place. Security isn't a big deal if you don't have much of value.
More importantly, make sure this is a passive business of sorts. Works well if you live in or near the same place.
Often the local governments (whether that's the town, the department, the region, or all of the above), along with some funds from the nation. This is usually thanks to one or more residents of the town who get together to try to save the structure by getting public funds allocated for it.
Not a tax lawyer but I believe only on the income and assets in France. So I assume you would be paying the French wealth tax on the value of the castle.
Except for the US which will tax its citizens anywhere no matter where they derive their income and assets. It is a leading reason why a number of Americans renounce their US citizenship.
No, not so! A number of countries consider worldwide income. Generally it must have been taxed somewhere, and in a place with a tax treaty with your primary residence, or it will get taxed as foreign income.
It gets even more complicated with capital gains or losses, and different rules for how losses can be moved between financial years.
The best thing about HN is being downvoted to greyed out when factually correct. "You're opinions offend me Sir, your facts run counter to my views on what the facts should be, and I desire you to depart."
No, there's an important distinction here. Many countries tax world-wide income, but USA is one of the few that taxes your non-US income even if you are not considered a resident for tax purposes. For example, if you are a Canadian expat and notify the CRA, you do not have to file a tax return at all unless you earn income from Canada. However, if you are a US expat, you still must file US taxes each year (and pay the difference between my local taxes vs. what you would have owed in the US).
Exactly. If you live in a high tax / high social benefit country it isn't so bad, but if you live in a no tax (but high income, high cost) country like the UAE it would be painful. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion is like $100k but that isn't so much in some countries. Luckily US income taxes are quite (scandalously) low.
(And if you live in the UAE that US passport will be really valuable if you need to avoid having you hand chopped off for pissing off the wrong people.)
take someone who makes a million+ dollars in california. Their marginal rate is 50% (37% federal + 13% CA, and with the note that the SALT limits due to Trump, dont really get them 37% back on the state tax anymore).
compare this to most european countries where your income tax rate at the top is 50% or less.
now, they have other taxes they pay (social and the like) outside of income taxes, but so does the US. FICA and ss fees also "taxes" in a way.
The marginal rate is really not particularly relevant unless you earn far more than that, which most people don't. What matters is the effective rate, and even California, which is one of the highest taxed states in the US, and so misleading if you want to talk about the overall US tax burden, is lower than a lot of Europe.
I agree with you they're not particularly low, though, especially when factoring in what you get or don't get. E.g. add health insurance into the picture and starts to look very different.
The US is pretty middle of the road in terms of tax.
+ Taxe d’habitation (city tax), 10-20k€ if it is proportional (depends on sqm and salary, and decreasing with children).
+ Taxe foncière (land tax), same amount as previous.
But French people earn about twice as less due to taxes, so you don’t have much competition from French buyers ;) I’m not a lawyer, just a big house owner. Who got rich abroad obviously.
Absolutely absurd. The comparables are a quarter of the price or less in any other major city.
SF as a tech hub needs to die. There are better cities that are far less NIMBY and regressive.
If you don't succeed in launching a startup, you're just participating in a meat market. Your salary goes to rent. It's not sustainable.
My SF coworkers often have roommates. You can't live like that in your 30's. You can't get married or raise kids like that. I've owned multiple concurrent properties in the heart of a city - historic properties with 25' ceilings - and I still pay less than SF rent. It floors me people put up with SF living conditions.
NYC, Boston, Portland, Austin, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami have way better adjusted costs of living and aren't so broken politically. You can probably pick two cities and own homes in each for the cost of your SF rent.
Let the land owners have what they deserve. A brain and wealth drain.
I was visiting SF for business a while back and while I was going for a walk the following kind of just hit me:
"San Francisco is someone else's house."
I can't explain exactly what prompted it, but I got the sense that there exists in SF a deeply embedded property-owning class that owns the city. The city is theirs. If you are not one of them, you are only visiting. The city will never truly be your home. It's possible to buy into this class, but the cost of doing so is intentionally kept so high that it's unreachable to all but the extremely wealthy.
Has the city always been like this? I don't know, but I wonder if maybe it has... if the various waves of hippies, post-hippies, ravers, hackers, and tech bros weren't just visitors permitted to crash on the couch for a little while.
There are many other cities all over this country where you are permitted to become a true resident, often for a very sane price. I don't get this feeling in most other cities.
There’s a reason why I call the property owning class in coastal CA neofeudal. The property tax cuts for property passed down in the family doesn’t help.
You lost me completely when you said Miami is less broken politically than San Francisco. Have you spent much time in these places? Miami is a mess of planning and corruption with none of the modern industries like tech that create quality employment for the middle class with reasonable wages, quality healthcare, and partial ownership of their employers. After decades you still can’t take a train from the airport to the main destination (Miami Beach). They won’t even admit climate change is happening as the state suffers worsening floods every year. In fact the governor has banned the use of the term “climate change” to help avoid the issue. You must be pretty far to the right if you’re going to argue Miami is working well
Employment allows people to afford things. Also when you live in a place with $8/hour minimum wage you quickly realize that nothing is affordable for most of the service industry workers. $320 per week before taxes with no stock options or healthcare and you think the basic affordability is better in Florida than California? What are they going to buy things with?
Florida is great if you made money elsewhere and want to come spend it in a low tax state where people move to retire to the suburbs and die. If you’re actually working then you realize there is no major industry outside of things like tourism which leads to a lot of low paying dead end jobs.
There's a massive difference between states and cities. Are you talking about states now?
Why are you comparing service workers in Florida to software engineers in California? Being in the service industry is worse in CA than FL, even with a higher min wage (which usually increases cost of living just as much). And there's not much of a middle class in CA either regardless of industry, in fact the entire state is known for its vast wealth inequality and disappearance of the middle class.
As far as affordability of housing in SF, it's because of city policies that refuse to let new housing be built, not because people don't make enough to buy a home. Same with extremely high taxes that deliver no value to citizens while the city is overrun with crime and homelessness and deteriorating infrastructure. This is separate from employment, and really needs to be fixed first before you can increase opportunities for people.
“Extremely high taxes that deliver no value to citizens”
Hah! Yep the money just disappears
Your comments throughout this thread make it clear you don’t want to have a discussion on the issues. So we can agree to disagree.
In summary, the point is software engineers in Florida rarely get equity or decent healthcare either, if they can even find a real software job in FL that isn’t just IT for some company that has nothing to do with computers. Most of the Floridian software engineers I know work for companies based in California or NY / MA where there are networks of successful startups and angel investors who help get new companies off the ground. You criticize San Francisco for deteriorating infrastructure when places like Florida haven’t even managed to build comparable infrastructure. It’s easy to critique BART but until you take Tri-Rail you’ll never realize that it’s like BART is from the future in comparison. The machines to buy tickets routinely don’t work to the point that I had to board without a ticket and just pay a fine when they checked tickets so I didn’t have to wait an hour for the next train.
Meanwhile the state is sinking while they deny climate change. Truly an infrastructure disaster.
> "make it clear you don’t want to have a discussion"
We are literally having a discussion. Does it only count if we agree? Call it a debate then if you must.
And yes the money does disappear. It's called waste, a very common problem with how governments spend money. The quality of life and govt services in SF and CA are not commensurate with the taxes collected.
The wider point is that ratio of avg income to expenses is worse in CA than FL. This is what "adjusted" cost of living means, and is regardless of various specific niches and industries that you're focusing on.
If you still think FL is worse than fine, just move to CA. You might love it here, but I doubt you will once you realize just how bad the politics are, which was what the original claim was.
"make it clear you don’t want to have a discussion on the issues"
You literally chopped off the last three words to try to make it sound like it said something different. Saying that when you pay more taxes it just blanketly disappears is both demonstrably false and clearly an exaggeration to the point of no longer being a discussion on the issues.
I spent over a decade living in California. I'm well aware what its like.
What else are we discussing other than the issues? Do you have an actual argument? First you said Miami isn't better than SF, then you compared Florida and California based on service workers vs software engineers while ignoring the cost of living actuarials, and now... you're arguing that California doesn't waste taxes?
Based on what? Taxes are the highest and constantly increasing, meanwhile every possible metric about livability, govt services and quality of life have dropped drastically. It's absolute fact that tax money is being wasted and the state is insolvent with a severe deficit. [1][2][3][4]
Do you have any actual evidence to the contrary? Is living here for a decade supposed to mean something? Because I've lived here 2.5 decades and millions of other residents agree with my assessment. Please discuss or show something that backs up your claims now.
> You must be pretty far to the right if you’re going to argue Miami is working well
That's a baseless and factually incorrect accusation.
> Have you spent much time in these places?
Yes, and I don't see it the same way you do.
> After decades you still can’t take a train from the airport to the main destination (Miami Beach).
That's a problem? There are other forms of public transit and low-cost transportation. The US has by and large opted not to invest in heavy rail - that's not a local issue, that's a federal one.
It's not like California is leading the way on trains anymore.
> Miami is a mess of planning and corruption with none of the modern industries like tech that create quality employment for the middle class with reasonable wages, quality healthcare, and partial ownership of their employers.
Sharing a flat with two roommates isn't quality middle class living, either.
> In fact the governor has banned the use of the term “climate change” to help avoid the issue.
Florida is a purple state. You can point fingers, but the state is at the precipice. The election was incredibly close. You shouldn't diss those living there - they have an outsized impact on the direction of this country. Their electorate matters more than California's, and we should hope more liberal voters move to Florida and similar states.
You totally missed the point. It’s not that Miami designed some great alternative to get to Miami Beach and I am mad they didn’t use heavy rail. There is no good way to get around without a personal vehicle. Going from the airport to Miami Beach is the most common trip for visitors and they haven’t even done basic planning for it. It’s completely a local issue.
In fact, even if you want to talk about heavy rail, it’s been a local or at least state issue. The voters of the state passed a referendum for a bullet train nearly two decades ago and then the state government went to great lengths to avoid building it anyway. The Obama Administration even offered federal funds for it since it was the project that could be completed most quickly. But the state refused. And yes California is proceeding with a high speed train despite the anti-train hit pieces from the LA Times.
Sure rent is lower but the incomes are so much lower and the minimum wage is so low that the average worker is worse off.
There has not been a Democratic governor in Florida since the 1990s and we have had a member of the Bush family and one of the biggest Medicare fraudsters in history since so I would say it’s been a relatively red state other than occasionally swinging blue in the presidential race.
Thanks for telling me I shouldn’t diss people who live in Florida. I live in Florida so I don’t really need the advice. After several decades here I am well versed in the many issues here including finding any neighborhood larger than two blocks that is walkable. Or finding a public park since the land was all sold to private developers. That’s not how urban planning works in functioning cities like San Francisco.
Maybe you should take your own advice and not diss people in California since you don’t live there.
> And yes California is proceeding with a high speed train despite the anti-train hit pieces from the LA Times.
So far the high speed train has been a boondoggle, not a good example of a success. It will be decades before it goes anywhere useful.
> Or finding a public park since the land was all sold to private developers. That’s not how urban planning works in functioning cities like San Francisco.
Have you ever actually lived in San Francisco? A significant chunk of it (and 95% of the rest of the bay) is not walkable. And there is no functional urban planning in San Francisco. A policy of rejecting every new substantial proposal is not “planning”.
When was the last time they agreed to allow dense housing to replace single/multi-family homes? When was the last new BART line added? When were new commuter rail lines added in?
I lived in the Bay Area for over a decade now and this fantasy you have of a functioning local government doesn’t exist. The only people that make good enough money to be worth it are senior software folks. Everyone else is better at their slightly reduced equivalent wage anywhere else in the US (aside from maybe NYC).
Tax money is absolutely being pissed away at an alarming rate based on what citizens get here. The schools are frequently garbage, the public transit is useful for maybe 5% of the population, and the homeless problem is as bad as ever. All of this for the low price of one of the highest income tax states + sales tax.
I chose the bay because of the tech economy and nice weather in spite of the blisteringly incompetent government. I don’t think any of my friends or coworkers are in SF or the wider bay because they think it’s a good governance model. The thought is likely pretty laughable to most residents.
You don't need to replace historic Victorian and Edwardian houses necessarily, although its one option. Instead you can extend zoning in areas like SOMA to allow much larger buildings there where there aren't as many people already living there and most of the structures aren't nice historic houses. This is exactly what they've done. San Francisco has a whole area of very tall residential skyscrapers in various stages of completion as well as the tallest building on the west coast (the Salesforce Tower) as part of a new transit hub.
Many of the schools are great. Sorry if your school district is bad. There are excellent schools in many areas. Cupertino, most of the Peninsula, Berkeley have some really great ones.
My coworkers for a decade took public transit more often than not. You live in the suburbs if you think 5% of the population takes BART or Muni to work. Plus many people walk or bike.
I've walked all over San Francisco so if you don't find it walkable its on you. Grab an electric scooter, a bike share, an electric skateboard, some rollerblades, or one of those uniwheel things and the hills won't be so bad if you can't handle walking them. The Mission has more streets of great walkability with restaurants and small businesses everywhere than almost anywhere in America.
Perhaps the fact that you don't even know about the BART expansion should be the warning sign that you don't really follow Bay Area transit very closely. Ironic that you ask if I have ever actually lived in San Francisco. Yes I have. Trying to act like the government is so incompetent that they can't open a station when they just opened Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose stations on June 13 says more about your lack of attention to local issues than it does about their urban planning. They also built 7,000 nearby housing units. Its actual transit-first development as they've been doing in SF for years.
I've met more people in junior roles get rich in the Bay Area from equity than would ever be possible by trying to live in the cheapest possible place with minimal opportunities such that your expenses are a slightly lower percentage of your take-home pay as a new graduate. If you did an entry level job at Twilio you're probably a millionaire now. People get promoted significantly faster in the Bay Area due to the number of fast growing companies and the pay, which started out higher, grows that much more every year due to promotions, larger cost of living increases, etc.
So sure make your money and leave. Don't try to improve things you don't like, just complain about them. Go somewhere new and find out all the issues there that you didn't realize including several of the ones I brought up here. Learn what a truly unwalkable place is like.
> most of the structures aren't nice historic houses. This is exactly what they've done.
So they prioritized nice houses over solving the housing problem. Not to re-assuring if you aren’t rich enough to own one of these houses or compete for the few high rise units there are.
> Many of the schools are great. Sorry if your school district is bad.
Lol, the embodiment of what’s wrong with California politics. That’s almost literally NIMBY.
> My coworkers for a decade took public transit more often than not. You live in the suburbs if you think 5% of the population takes BART or Muni to work. Plus many people walk or bike.
Yes, I live where the majority of the Bay Area lives - outside of San Francisco proper because SF has such hostile housing policies. Nobody would give a shit about the bay bridge if public transportation was decent but instead it’s a parking lot every day (non-covid).
> Perhaps the fact that you don't even know about the BART expansion should be the warning sign that you don't really follow Bay Area transit very closely.
If you’re talking about the track extension to San Jose, that’s pathetic. That’s something that should have been done about 20 years ago and it still doesn’t solve shit for most of the peninsula. It also doesn’t do anything for most of San Jose itself. If people cared about transit there would be multiple lines up and down the peninsula, cross lines, and a way to get to Mountain View from SFO that runs 24/7 and doesn’t require waiting at a bart/Caltrain interchange for up to an hour when it is running. As it’s run now, BART and Caltrain are red-headed step children used as lip service by politicians afraid to do anything serious to address public transportation in a meaningful way.
> I've met more people in junior roles get rich in the Bay Area from equity than would ever be possible by trying to live in the cheapest possible place with minimal opportunities such that your expenses are a slightly lower percentage of your take-home pay as a new graduate. If you did an entry level job at Twilio you're probably a millionaire now.
What a sad distraction from the point about the incompetent government. I already said the business environment is great and operates in spite of the incompetent government. Also, keep in mind that only a couple percent of the population work for tech companies and only maybe 1 percent of that group get to ride a successful exit. For every millionaire junior engineer you met, there are 10,000 people being failed by the current Bay Area government.
> So sure make your money and leave. Don't try to improve things you don't like, just complain about them.
What makes you think I haven’t worked on improving things? You might learn that the ability to identify problems is the only way to actually meaningfully fix anything.
It sounds like you’re just happy with your rich circle of friends in the city, that’s great for you. IMO that “I’ve got mine” attitude is what makes the bay so miserable for the rest of the 99%.
> Learn what a truly unwalkable place is like.
I’ve spent months in Tokyo and over a year in NYC. The Bay Area is a joke when it comes to walkability. Small segments of SF can be suffered through and then everyone else is just fucked without a car or ride sharing.
I suggest the opposite to you. Go spend some time in walkable cities to open your eyes to how mismanaged the governance of the bay is. Try Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Osaka, etc.
Your point of comparison might be some suburb rust belt US city so it might look golden to you, but it’s shockingly bad compared to governments that are truly motivated to support car free lifestyles.
Cars are the de facto American transportation and what most cities are designed around. LAX is the 2nd biggest airport in the USA and has no direct rail connection either.
LAX was supposed to have a direct rail connection 20 years ago from the green line, but you can thank private parking lot owners for trenching up local opposition and the FAA for driving in the death knell on that effort. It does have a shuttle connection to the green line, and in the near future that shuttle will be replaced with a people mover.
> "we should hope more liberal voters move to Florida and similar states"
Why? Seems like a good way to get the worst of both sides with constant gridlock. I prefer states to have a clear political stance so citizens can clearly choose the rules they live under.
Liberal voters staying in liberal states might learn more about how their policies work instead of escaping the consequences they voted in once those policies ruin the city, like they did to SF.
Of course you can raise kids and be married while having room-mates, it's just not the standard way of living. I know of some homes where 4-5 people live together and all their salaries are put on the same bank account. Doesn't matter if someone's a student or working full time.
It's obviously an alternative lifestyle and I don't know if I could do it. But saying that having kids, being married and having room-mates is impossible is not a fact, but an opinion.
I wonder if there are people living together in the some home and in a polyamorous relationship and simultaneously have kids, also living in the same home. Basically a whole community living together.
Well you know how nuclear family conflicts are right? But now imagine if multiple nuclear family conflicts were to happen in the same dwelling. Even better, when those conflicts feed off each other and fester.
This is so absurd, I left SF last month and I still can't fathom why anyone would spend that much money to get a house there. I guess if you are stuck there because of work, and work pays really well? But I can't see any other reason why you would pay that much money for a place that is not that nice.
It is less logical, but when you see all your peers here spend that kind of money for houses, you start to question less. Also, it is a market, which is controlled by supply and demand dynamics.
... which, of course, include rampant speculation and wild assumptions about return on investment based on past history that may or may not reflect future performance.
I believe you’re paying for location there. It’s in the Marina district and a short walk to the yacht harbour where a person buying this house also (ostensibly) owns a yacht.
I wonder how expensive it is to maintain the castle. And since it has some kind of official designation, if you have to use period-accurate materials for repairs.
Rather expensive. The walls must be keep repaired and strong, a moat must be filled with water, a forest must be cleared up to a distance of a trebuchet shot, the locker must have enough food supplies. Fail to do any of this, and an eventual siege will end in a disaster.
And of course you'll need a retinue to man the walls.
Though as Dumas shows through countless examples in his works the retinue of defenders need not be large if they are very doughty. [1] The works of Goscinny and Underzo also explored the proposition that the defenders might further increase their advantage through judicious use of technology. [2]
Same here. There's probably space here for an off-topic thread on words we misread/mispronounced as kids and how long it went on. In my case it's about 45 years.
AFAIK the biggest ongoing expense which such castles is the heating bills which are insane since castles are very big and badly insulated. The gardening expenses are also quite intense; depending on the size of the property you may have to hire personnel.
The price of repairs are also mind-boggling, but for those you can get state subsidies
It gets down to the 50s (or sometimes high 40s). There are fireplaces. Not saying it would be my choice but it's not unreasonable given apparently existing fireplaces plus electric heaters. (My house is never above mid-60s in the winter with heat.)
But, yes, I'm sure maintenance is in the $100K+ a year area easily.
Which sounds like a huge renovation bill if you actually want to use the thing (plus most buildings of this type tend to be light in things like indoor plumbing)
Who said you would get permission to renovate? It's historic and made from stone. You can't add windows or insulation, it needs constant ventilation to prevent mould (no water barrier in the construction).
Basically it's only pleasant in the summer or if you're being raided by a neighbouring state.
"HOAs" in the American sense are a 20th century construction that originally had ethnicity clauses in and have tried to replicate those with proxies since they were banned. They only exist when they're put in by contract law by the builder; I don't believe they can be "retrofitted"?
This castle is from the 11th century. It might have had the 11th century equivalent, which was feudal burdens, but those have almost certainly been abolished since the revolution.
Scotland has formally abolished the feudal system; England, however, has not, so you may still find yourself liable for the repair of a church built ten centuries ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability
Yeah, I know about those, but they can't kick you out of your home or demand payment for BS. If anything, it's the other way around, as long as you respect the law, they're at your mercy, usually. If you don't want to cooperate with them, they can't do anything.
I'm not totally familiar with French law on the matter, but, it's likely that, in addition to needing period-accurate materials, you also have to use period-accurate methods. This is what makes it expensive, since very few people are familiar with obsolete, 4-500 year old building methods.
Someone on Twitter said the maintenance is likely around 200k/year. I don’t know how they got there but at the same time you probably need at least one full time staff at that size right?
Wow, that house sold for $3.6M on Mar 1, 2001 according to the records on the county's website and is now for sale for only $2.5M, if it can get that. ~$71k in property taxes per year and rising, that's a tough pill to swallow.
Also, an hour away with zero traffic to Manhattan means you need to budget 2 hours during non covid times outside of the dead of night.
This is Northeast realtors for you. French this, Italian that, European these. The listings' descriptions are usually so grandiosely overdone that I barely ever can read them keeping a straight face.
It seems inspired by Bretagne to me. Granitic walls, white windows. Nothing too French specific though, if there is ever something French specific about houses. You know, walls, roof, windows and doors.
If shape follows function though, I could not tell what this place function is.
Yes, I remember it almost being a meme about SF tourist groups being told the prices of European castles/estates by tour guides and being completely unimpressed.
But you could buy a 1902 fixer-upper “castle” in SF for $1.8M. Some of the architectural details in this place (the fireplace, the windows) are insane. Why is this place still available?
The comparison isn't really meaningful thought: this french castle is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You are 2h away by car from the either Bordeaux or Nantes, which are your closest chances to find an IT job.
Although it's tempting to shell out a million or two on a stately home (like a historic castle in Scotland), since it seems like you're getting way more for your money, it's the repair and maintenance fees that can be insane.
This chateau, on the other hand, appears to be in good condition and I reckon that much of the costs would involve hiring gardeners and landscapers to keep the property in good shape.
Edit: I can't imagine what the heating bills are like.
One thing about US houses is that the property taxes are really a huge burden. Around here its 2-3% of the property value every year. Most Europeans think Americans pay low taxes, but if you live around NY its normal to pay 40%-50% by the time you include all the extra taxes, and that doesn't include paying your own healthcare. (OK sales taxes are lower)
I was definitely shocked at the amount of taxes you pay - especially considering you get very little (no, I don't consider the US army a good way to spend your money).
On the plus side, you have lots of space, beautiful nature, cheap real estate and lots of money (which translates to higher salaries and better opportunities).
Property taxes are a huge burden where I live. Esp when you retire and have lower income you still have to pay $1-2k every month in taxes which is nearly as much as SS pays.
Marginal is well over 50% in NYC, CA. eg top bracket marginal is 37% federal + 12.3% CA state + 1.45% Medicare is over 50% before property taxes. 40% total tax is very easy to hit.
Like I said before if you're on Social Security or unemployed its really tough, I know someone who's out of work and paying $2.5K a month in property taxes, it eats up your savings super fast.
> Marginal is well over 50% in NYC, CA. eg top bracket marginal is 37% federal + 12.3% CA state
The top tax rate is actually 13.3% state, but even the 12.3% kicks in at over $590k for a single taxpayer, well above the 99th percentile individual income for the state, which means it's very much not normal for people to pay that much.
For comparison, the highest marginal income tax bracket in Norway is 46.4%, which applies from $100,000 per year.
On top of this is 25% VAT on all purchases, 32% capital gains tax and 0.85% of net worth (with conplex deductions; 75% for primary home and 40% for stocks) each year.
Employer pays 14% of your salary in tax, as well as 22% on all profits before owners pay capital gains on dividends on the remaining.
Property taxes are only that high in NJ/CT/IL/TX maybe, or other states and cities that have grossly underfunded and mismanaged pension debt and other debt from government employee retiree benefits.
I find that staggering. I live in Massachusetts which is not considered a low cost state and have a nice house with a fair bit of property if nothing high-end and I'm less than 20% that.
What is really surprising for me was that when Tesla (or somebody like that) opens a factory (or something) in Texas, locals complain because their property taxes go up and that can be a huge issue.
Of course that means their property value goes up too, and that should be a good thing in the general case.
Its a strange kind of situation where you make the same money and then a factory opens close to you and you now make less money.
Property taxes go up because government spending per property goes up, not because property values go up. There’s no reason the tax rate on the property value can’t go down if the property value goes up. People’s problem is with their governments spending more.
The only reasoning for Prop 13 is to distribute more of the burden for paying the government’s expenses to people who move to California later than those who moved before.
1) Christine McVie bought s similar mansion in Kent, England and spent years and millions remodelling it. Unless she had a lot of writing credit (how you make money in the US music business, aside from touring), it might have been a large chunk of her fortune from Fleetwood Mac. She listed it afterward:
2) Everything is hard with an old mansion. For example, often they used lead sheets for roofing. So you need to fly in a lead roof craftsman. Then a stonemason. You get the picture. What owners do when they find a problem is to say budget 25% per year of the roofing problem, etc. and stretch it out, unlike a normal building.
Makes sense. If you own an apartment a fair chunk of your body corporate fees go into the shared pool for maintenance and it would all be planned out well in advance.
Between Poitiers (a french "tech hub") and Angoulême, next to a "national" highway, close to La Rochelle and l'île de Ré, pretty cheap for a castle, seems like a bargain to me for whoever can afford it.
Of course it is. PR from the selling agent for a major property sale. It's likely that the agent's side also provided all the details about property ownership details in France to pad it out and get prospects thinking.
Even if not directly pitched by the agent themselves, you often see these at the lower end where the property arm of a publication (lift-out or sub-site) features interesting/grand properties as a sweetener to whoever is advertising with them.
The thing is with this kind of building sometimes new landowners fail to take care of them. A popular example is the Fort Harbour [1] that Alain Delon acquired during the 60s. The actor faced with the constraints imposed by French historical monuments and was unable to renovate it as he wanted. He ends up selling it.
The most interesting part about this place is not mentioned: it was the home of François VI de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), moralist and author of the "Maximes".
The historic place of the family was the chateau de la Rochefoucauld, located about 25 miles to the south of Verteuil, and from which the family got her name (la roche à Foucauld: Foucauld's rock).
But nobody actually lived in La Rochefoucauld, they lived in Verteuil most of the time (and in Paris as well).
Some members of my family are from that region and I've been there often. It's a very nice region with lots of nice places, castles, churches, etc. But there isn't much to do.
I had to laugh at the annual property tax fees, $3350 Euros? Is there some other tax for owning the Castle or fees of some sort? Are property taxes low in France as a rule?
US property taxes can get really expensive in some areas of the country to where it can be a major portion of a mortgage payment if escrow is used that way. Even my thirty mile outside the metro property tax is over three thousand US and I have a friend in New Jersey who pays four times what I do.
Note the painting of Francois de La Rochefoucauld to the right - it would be interesting to see the valuation of the artwork unless it doesn't come with the property.
Come on, la nationale à coté, you're not that much in the middle of nowhere. I used to commute almost that long everyday. Ya Poitiers à coté quand même non, c'est sympa?
As for the neighbours well, as long as the owner is discreet...
It's not really middle of nowhere if you've got neighbours. This castle seem to be in a middle of the town which kinda defeats purpose of owning one. Buying a large home in vineyard/farm would be nicer.
Large estates rented for extended family holidays or events are not uncommon in France and Spain. A few years ago, we had a family holiday/celebration in a four-storey French mansion in the middle of nowhere and it was fantastic. That slept 22, though looks like this castle is a couple of notches up from that!
That “lake front house” is just a townhouse, which kinda proves the parent’s point. $3m and you have to listen to your neighbor’s TV and toilet flushes through a shared wall.
